Gliding stories
 

We touched on some gliding stories in a recent thread - anybody got any interesting/funny gliding stories/events ??

And my 666th post as well da da da da :)

Well, my only ever flight in a glider was yesterday.

Interesting, but I'm not sure I want to do it again!

It certainly confirmed my pre-conceived prejudices, that you spend half a day humping aircraft around on the ground for ten minutes in the air.

Still, it was very slightly cheaper than powered flight, if you don't cost your time.

On the other side of the coin Gertrude - once you are solo and with a wee bit of experience then you can buy your own glider or join a syndicate and then the work to flying ratio will change somewhat :)

Some years ago after I bought my own wee glass glider - over the first summer of just weekend flying I did 79.35hrs in 34 launches - all off winch launches and including a successful 300k diamond goal which i managed to squeeze in on the last possible day of the season :)

And gliding is a great way of seeing the country - x country flying can be very challenging/satisfying/scary at times :)

Feeling a bit down at present - my syndicate partner bent our glider in a landing accident. He ground looped it and smashed the fuselage just ahead of the tail. Repair estimated at £12K and off line until about October. I'd arrived to fly just after it went tits up and people were asking if the pilot was unhurt. Seeing the look on my face someone said, 'Well, he is at the moment!'

I am not soaring now because in our last move I lost my wife's support to pursue my passion. I would say you are better off!

Bryan

Interesting/funny story. I don't have as many gliding hours as powered (not unusual) but have a silver c and have been gliding through four decades. Two instances spring to mind, K18 on approach, popped the brakes and the brake handle came off in my hand; not just the handle but the whole shebang. Landed OK, still pulled back on the handle that was hanging loose in my left hand....old habits etc.

Second: ASW 19 flying a bit near a very large CB, no comments thank you, full brake and Vne, still going up, only time I've ever considered taking to the 'chute except I knew I would probably go up faster in the 'chute. Got out of that by spinning it out. Bottom clenching moment.

Other than that, the usual stuff that glider pilots go through.

I notched up hundreds of hours in some interesting old vintage tractors at Derby & Lancs in the late '70s. Oh, and a (very) occasional circuit in a Ka4. :rolleyes:

Jacked it in as I believed slavery had be abolished; went to Barton. Got my PPL and a Chipmunk share inside 6 months! Never looked back!

Gliding? Pah!

Yeah but there's nothing like scratching away at a thousand feet, spending fifteen minutes getting to two thousand and then blasting off. Each to their own but IMO gliding and powered are two completely different disciplines. I was gliding on Wednesday and was powered yesterday; two completely different experiences. Bit like driving a motorboat and sailing a dinghy; both are on the water but the similarity ends there.

Edit: I don't prefer one above the other; gliding is by far the most skilful way of flying but you can't stick a couple of mates in a glider and go to Dublin for breakfast.

A few weeks ago a friend phoned me about 6 pm. In the background i could hear what sounded like the bar at out gliding club. It turned out to be the canteen at RAF Lynton on Ouse north of York. He had landed his glider there and wanted me to collect him. Not a problem exept that his trailer was at Lasham in hampshire! He stayed the night and I set off next morning towing the trailer. 500 miles and 13 hrs later we arrived back at Lasham. He owes me a few beers for that one.

Thanks for the replies gents - I cannot post much at the mo because last weekends lightning strike has taken out my weekday broadband LOL - and until bt/sky fix the local area cables/box - I am screwed :)

Ahhhh - Ka4 - I did a little Ka4 flying at a certain pembrokeshire airfield (RAF Brandy) but mostly drove the winch as they were trying to set up a GC there,it was an old bus winch and had to be driven in reverse everywhere (because of the winch conversion) but otherwise nice to drive with (i believe) a 9 litre diesel engine...we used to get some interesting wind shear off the cliffs there and whilst almost full power might be required for the initial launch - they sometimes were waving off speed by 200' with the drum stopped (cue some gentle and accidental 'drum slip' :))

LOL I have heard that sort of comment before - but sorry to hear about your glider !

I'll say he does :)
I took a friends trailer up to near cranfield where he had landed his lovely open cirrus on a private strip - only expecting to tow the trailer on the outbound leg - however - when I arrived he says ''its my birthday - and I have been to the pub for a coupla beers'' - so muggins had to tow the feckin thing home as well - almost 20 years later he still owes me a beer for that :)

I landed out in a stubble field one day and rolled to a standstill near to the farmer who was trying to fix his irrigation pump at the field edge.

So I walked over to him and said "Do you want a hand with that?"

Sometimes it's handy being an agricultural engineer.

He was well pleased. We were pretty good mates by the time the trailer arrived.

Another time a few years back, I landed out in a nice bare set-aside field just behind a farm. Wandered into the farmyard and there was farmer fixing his baler.

"Sorry, but I've just had to land my glider in your field" Be humble.

"Which field" he asked, sounding quite alarmed

"That bit of set aside out the back"

"Oh that's OK then" with considerable relief.

I still wonder, did he have a marijuana crop or something in another field?

But he was pleased to have a hand with his baler as well!

Sure not the first one to arrive to collect a landed out glider with an already very full trailor.:D

I did hear about a competition in France where quite a few gliders landed out a few miles from home in the same largish field. The tug arrived to retreive them one by one back to base. Front of the queue was a large German chap in a very heavy glass glider. The tuggie looked at the glider, the pilot, and the field length, and shook his head. "Non".

The German insisted, so he was hooked onto the tow rope and they set off, the tug at full chat, down the field. When about 20 metres from the hedge the Tuggie knew for sure that the glider wasn't going to get off the ground in time so he released the tow, hopped over the hedge, flew a tight circuit, and landed back. Meanwhile the heavy glider ploughed into the hedge in a shower of disintegrating fibre glass.

Tuggie taxied up the waiting line of gliders.

"And 'oo ees next?".

They are pain in the butt. Bunch of amateurs who don't show up on radar, difficult to see and have very little control over their flight path. My closest airmiss ever (6 ft) was with a glider I was twin turbine. The pompous little :mad: then had the audacity to seek me out and accuse me of trying to kill him. Go and fly over tbe Sahara - plenty of thermals there.

Dear Mr Exascot

would you care to provide more details of the incident? Then we can possibly decide for ourselves which of the two of you was the :mad:

Typical reply from a minority of power pilots who are so wrapped up in their fancy glass cockpits and chattering on the radio they dont actually look out.
The 2 near misses I have had in 30 yrs of gliding have been with power pilots who had no idea i was there before or after.

Playing devils advocate.

I would say a glider, the majority painted white with no strobe lights and of a very slim profile are actually quite difficult to spot until very close.

I was going to disagree with you but then noticed that Mr Exocet has to get within six feet to see one.

During a brief period of unemployment from a proper job, I became a PROFESSIONAL WINCH DRIVER at a renowned gliding club on top of a Cotswold. Not too far from Stroud.
I became pretty good at launching all types of gliders, reading the curve in the cable.
To be a good winch driver, you need to take responsibility for the integrity of the cables, and to conduct a thorough DI at the start of the day, replacing splices as necessary. If conditions were good, you needed a thick skin to cope with the members demands to get on with it....

This is what happens when the members are too precious to drive their own winch.

Current PROFESSIONAL WINCH DRIVER checking in here, at another renowned gliding club somewhere a bit further south-east...

Sure, he was in a danger zone. I was para dropping. Say no more.

Because of my Air Cadet background and a disagreement with the RAFGSA 'god of gliding' in the early 70's - when I went back to gliding in the 80's I still had no idea about thermalling LOL
I ended up doing some gliding in southern Africa - boy did they have a good laugh at my 300+ launches and 25hrs TT :)
Anyway they gave up trying to teach me to thermal so I carried on 'bashing the circuit in our Swallow and then Skylark 3b...and of course one day - it just 'clicked' and I spent the next hour or so turning left - I eventually got bored with that and straightened up - closely followed by the strongest feeling of me going to fall out of the right hand side of the cockpit LOL !
I had to sit there and tell myself not to be so stupid because I was strapped in and the aircraft was still in one piece !
I suppose it was some sort of 'Leans' and I never experienced it again but it would probably have been more worrying for somebody with a non aviation background !

Quote.... 'it just 'clicked' and I spent the next hour or so turning left'....


Well at say +400ft/min that would be a height gain of 24,000ft.... Sure you were not just running out of Oxygen???


btw, I get giddy just riding my bike around in circles on the back lawn....


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Quote.... 'it just 'clicked' and I spent the next hour or so turning left'...



Cannot get the 'quote facility' to work :)


The turning left was not always thermalling upwards you understand - it took me a while to form a rough mental picture of a 'thermal' :)

You sound like a man after my own heart; I must be the only glider pilot that can thermal downwards. It's an art I tell you. The others are jealous.

One was telling me recently of a day when there was lift everywhere, and he eventually got back on the ground only by finding a downdraft and spiralling downwards in it. To the great confusion of those who followed him, thinking he'd found a thermal.

(Unless of course this is simply a regular tall story told by gliding folk to non-gliding folk.)

One that always creases me up was long ago when we had a club Ka6E. Some unfortunate had landed it out, no problem, and a posse of club members had gone off to retrieve him. On getting back to the club, they drove past the bar and stopped on the apron. One of the drinkers came out and asked where the glider was? “Ha Ha Ha” went the pilot, "very funny, get back to the bar." “No, where is it?” enquired the holder of the pint, pointing to the open back door of the trailer.

Sure enough, of the fuselage there was no sign! Wings still bolted in but fus & dolly not present. Oh ****. The club drive was very steep and the glider had (luckily, considering the drive back from the field) chosen that moment to break free of the trailer and roll back down the hill. We found it on its side at the bottom of the slope, miraculously undamaged without even a scratch on the canopy...

Lots of little laughs to be had in a glider GTW...like the time I was getting a little low and then saw a glass glider bank steeply into a turn - so beetle off to join him - thinking he had found lift - but as I got near he 'popped' his engine out of the top of his fuselage and sailed orf into the distance - leaving me scratching around and cursing gliders with retractable engines LOL

Full wings - not the only occurrence. A long time ago a distinguished doctor (who later got a student to take his glider all the way to Nepal to soar the Himalayas, couldn't get permission to fly so the student had to drive it all the way back, but that's another story) borrowed the Surrey Gliding Club brand new glider for the National Championships. Having done a field landing in East Anglia, returning round the North Circular they were at a set of traffic lights when a boy racer revved his engine beside them. Determined to be competitive, B******g J****s took off smartly on the amber and won the grid start. A mile or so down the road they were flagged down and informed 'something fell off the back of your trailer'. Inspection revealed an open door and missing fuselage. Returning to the junction, no sign of the fuselage, but a search of the area found it rolled down a side alley by some well meaning passer by. There were only a few paint scratches, and the crew were sworn to secrecy, but somehow the story was revealed and substantial beer fines paid.

Many, many years ago on a Cranwell gliding camp at Weston Super Mare, went out on a retrieve in the Mendips. Found the glider in a field that even our tug pilot refused to tug it out of, so set off with glider in the trailer. Stopped at a pub - 4 of us in the old blue fabric flying suits. "Aah", said the blonde behind the bar, "You are glider pilots, I can tell from your flying suits and the glider trailer outside". "No" came the flash reply from a member of a more senior entry than mine. "This is the uniform of the stud for dachshund racehorses, and that is a dachshund horse trailer". She is probably still wondering..............

A long time since I flew a K4, but I do seem to remember that the cable release was a lever and the airbrakes were activated by a cable with knob on the end. The knob also had another knob on the end that day. !!!

A coupla years ago I was just doing the power checks prior to a much anticipated days' flying from our own strip, when a glider suddenly landed ahead of me:

Than another, then another, then a fourth, with a fifth in the crops nearby.

They'd all been competing in a competition at a well known E Anglian glider field 20 miles away when they all suddenly 'ran out of lift'

Completely b*ggered my day, that did.

Never found out why they didn't chose a closed but flyable RAF base 5 miles away with a massive concrete runway......

On a cross-country flight and over North Yorkshire, ran out of lift and ideas. Chose to land at the ex RAF Melbourne airfield and whilst flying a conventional circuit remembered that it was now a drag racing strip. The only bit of runway I could have used had 'stuff' all over it which turned out to be mostly traffic cones. So landed to the side on an area of grass that had recently been cut - no problems. Along comes a chap in a 4X4 pick-up who had a face like thunder telling me I was the seventh glider to land that afternoon and he was p****d off with us all. He said that they had all moved his traffic cones to allow a tug to land and take off with the retrieves. 'And, he thundered, none of them put the bl**dy cones back'!!! I explained that I wouldn't need to move the cones as I'd got someone coming with a trailer to take my glider away.

Evening all! Today was forecast by our Club Guru to be a Day of Days, so what are you doing reading about it when you could be doing it?

:)Gliding on the gravel plain east of Sharjah in the mid 60s, we could only launch to about 450ft due to lack of winch cable. We would wait for the approach of a dust devil and launch our Ka8 into it. They were visible to about 4000ft, but then continued up to 10-11000 ft. Soaring round the edge of the funnel looking down the hole in the centre gave me the only feeling of vertigo I've experienced flying. Good fun followed by suitably fortified deep sleep in the open back of a 3-tonner.

One of my current syndicate partners used to reply to enquiries regarding whether his wife objected to how much time he spent gliding 'My first wife did!'

Well, in my case strapped and locked into the tug. It was good, but not exceptional, here in the middle of France. Anyone do anything good in UK?

Something I noticed during my brief flirtation with gliding was that most if not all of the club regulars were divorced, such were the time commitments of the hobby. Those that had re-married had done so with a partner also into gliding!

C - what is the registration of your Cub - if I see you anywhere I will come and say "Bonjour"