I'm glad you enjoyed it. I loved flying in the mountains and, a few years after this experience, kept a DG400 at a little airfield called Asiago (1000 metres amsl) just north of Vicenza in Italy. Back then the Dolomites had never really been explored from the gliding point of view but provide some of the most glorious sights and testing flying I have ever experienced. I heartily recommend it. I think I still have a Michelin road map somewhere marked with possible out landing sites!

Club class nationals at Sutton bank with my 20 year old son retrieving with my 67 Bristol 409.
Flying a phoebus C 17m. Unusual glider with a broad chord..under camber lower surface which gave the polar curve a dent, large rudder which aerodynamically locks on in side slip - airbrakes mounted too far back and only effective below Vapp and no tail parachute.
First day in a national competition..two air misses in the pre start thermal..one a DG accelerated in the thermal and passed a few feet over my canopy..eventually got into weak wave over Barnard Castle as the thermals died out with the approaching front..should have stayed with it longer..long glide to final turn point of Ripon cathedral. Running out of fields but spot one on the other side of the city between bypass and the river..round the cathedral on down wind and set up over the sewage works on base leg to get into the field which was full of straw bales but had had a narrow swath cleared..about 30m wide.side slip with brakes along the tree line of the river and hit turbulence as I foolishly get into the Lee of the trees. Worried about entering an incipient spin after closing everything and glider not turning..momentarily consider ditching in the river under control but not sure if wide enough so pull and she starts turning. Get into the updraft in front of the trees - wind has increased substantially..brakes and full side slip..turn to land between the straw bales..take off side slip..flare ..touch down then go back into the air as slope in field..land again with side slip ..wheel brakes and stop with a hundred yards or so.
Within ten minutes two police cars and an ambulance arrive..several reports that an aircraft had crashed into the sewage works..police set up a photo as though they are towing the aircraft with one of their landrovers for the local dealership but not before one of their nosey coppers looks around the cockpit and picks up my orange rubber horn bulb which has a hole in the side and connected with plastic tube to the cockpit floor..asks what’s it for..pissing…drops it and asks have I used it..mates roar with laughter.
Came third ..national coach only one to get back.
Next morning in the shower ..congratulations from the guy in the next cubicle..exaggerate that I could read the Priest’s prayer book as I rounded the turn point.
After the briefing I’m asked by the comp director to stay behind - start to get a rollocking for breaking the 500ft rule in front of his gofor who is smerking..ex army grunt with a class chip on his shoulder. I point out that the 500ft rule excludes take off and landing but accept his advice.
Son comes to me later having heard a conversation amongst the junior pilot group when gofor is boasting that he had heard my shower conversation, downloaded my logger to shop me. Heard he became a pilot for sleezy jet. Last gliding comp I did as too dangerous and concentrated on flying in the French alps and off the beaches in Kerry.

Snow what snow?
 

[QUOTE=longer ron;8570901]We touched on some gliding stories in a recent thread - anybody got any interesting/funny gliding stories/events.

I've posted some of this story before in the Air Cadet pre glass forum but it bears re telling, if only to highlight how attitudes to risk have changed since 1964.
643 Gliding School situated on the only 'hill' in Lincolnshire. Deepest darkest February and the gliding programme in freefall due to the continuous lousy weather. We three 138 Nottingham Squadron ATC cadets have endured a stop start sort of training spending equal time in Mk3 and T21 cockpits.

Log book and 3822 long lost in house moves but as far as I can remember its the last weekend in Feb and the C.O is getting fed up with seeing our ugly mugs. Brian soloed first, going on to eventually become national gliding champion. With broken snow on the ground and more threatening I'd flown 2 of the required 3 circuits for my wings. Cue nothing doing for 45 mins strapped into a MK3 cockpit whilst a stow shower blew through.

Suddenly hear the C.O. call for wings level. He leans into the cockpit advising. Don't go into cloud laddie, if the base looks as if its getting too close dump the cable and carryout the correct recovery for the altitude . reached. Manage 950 on the altimeter, Dump cable over the winch for crosswind leg just as a layer of cloud scrapes underneath me leaving YT in a clear air sandwich. Oh bugger. Cant see a damn thing below me. I 'estiguess' the crosswind leg distance and turn 'downwind' in clear air as I level up the first grey tendrils of cloud are brushing past my face. Not wanting to attempt any turns in cloud due to the lack of any suitable instruments I watch the string attached to the pitot tube like a hawk eyeing up a sparrow. It confirms I've not developed any side slip. Resolve to hold the'downwind' until I regain contact with terra firma.

Pop out of cloud at about 350 feet and gulp. Nothing is as it should be. I should be downwind parallel to the launch point red and white caravan. Believe me nothing camouflages an airfield better than broken snow. Before panic could set in however, I don't know to this day whence came the order look behind your right shoulder dolt.. On so doing I caught the merest hint of red chequers out of the corner of my eye. It was as if a switch had been thrown as when I looked forard again everything clicked into place. Especially No 3 hangar which I was cheerfully flying towards.

My 90 degree downwind turn had obviously more like 120 130 degrees so I was heading diagonally across Kirton in Lindsey. A carefully balanced turn brought be back on track and I landed about 3 glider lengths from where I'd taken off. Boss man is mighty pleased to see the prodigal safe returned to the bosom of mother earth. We discussed the 'circuit' and my decision making....I was too green and too raw to actually realise at the time just how much divine providence had intervened that day. Alas I couldn't take up the kind offer of a staff cadet place as O levels called. That was the end of my ATC flying career as I failed the apprentice medical. divine providence again for that medical saved my life for it uncovered a serious cardiac issue.

Parachute Woes
 

This is sort-of a gliding story...

Sometime in the mid-1980s I was at Lasham during a competition, I wasn't flying, just helping out. On this particular day the visibility was pretty poor especially at the rather low cloud base of around 3000'. In those days everyone launched (aero-tows) together and the competition start line opened 10 minutes after the last launch. To start you called the start line from a start area and they cleared you through. You were monitored by observers the ground who recorded your start time and checked your height was less than 1000m AGL. The rate that they could handle was obviously limited and it was first come, first served.

This day was obviously going to be marginal so everyone was keen to start as soon as possible.

What made the accident more likely was that there was a fumble on the grid as the last glider aborted quite late into their launch. This took a while to sort out which delayed opening the start line. So there was a large number of gliders milling around the start area jockeying for position at cloud base in poor visibility.
Inevitably two collided and we all watched as bits of glider floated down. Both pilots got out unharmed so we got to see the parachute display as well.

Later, it occurred to us instructors that, up until now, we had been a bit casual about teaching our students about using a parachute. Our instruction was basically "dive out, count to three and pull the rip-cord" but seeing the reality made us realise that we should do more.

At that time RAF Odiham very kindly used to re-pack our parachutes so we asked one of their parachute instructors to come and talk to us glider instructors so we could pass on their wisdom. What I remember most about the lecture was the string of parachuting disasters he related with great relish.

One sticks out:

There had been several cases of RAF pilots bailing out over water and they had been discovered drowned and tangled up in the parachute lines. So they changed the training with the idea that you should drop out of the parachute when close to the water, the parachute would presumably drift off and the pilot would bob up safely. They were using the old WWII parachutes where all the straps met at a central box on your lower chest, you released the chute by twisting a disk to unlock the box then punching it inwards.

Not long after this a pilot had to eject over the Bristol Channel, he remembered his training and watched the water approaching. At 50 feet above the water he twisted the disk to unlock the box then at 30 feet punched the box and fell out of the chute.

He dropped through that layer of cloud...

'Punching' the QRF was NOT a good idea. We were told to put thumbs behind the box and squeeze it.

Sigh. Writing for this thread does feel like flogging a dead horse. I'll get my coat.

Not really, but, I would suggest, there are plenty of gliding stories " it would not be prudent to post in the public domain"

As for parachutes, with, ahem, hindsight, even the GSA could be a shade cavalier at times....simply chucked on the bus, or, used in lieu of a tyre on the wingtip.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....3be27b962.jpeg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c872c47cc.jpeg
Inch strand
Annual Kerry safari for Dublin and Ulster gliding clubs; weeks after the schools return and subject to tide tables, fishing competitions, seaweed and stone in a string.
Normally we auto tow off inch strand on the south side but predicted wave favoured fermoyle.
Flying Phoebus C 17m.
Tow took me up to around 900ft..left turn after dropping the cable close to the waters edge and to slope soar the pimple.
Gain enough height to fall back onto a ridge which I work then press into wind to connect with wave climbing to 4000ft plus when lift peters out.
Get bored and mount Brandon, 3000ft plus, is in cloud with it down to 1,000ft at its northern end. Decide to have a look and see if I can get onto the windward side. Wind from the sea state out of the Lee is force 4 plus.
Looking at fallback if it doesn’t work Brandon village will be sheltered and will ditch the glider there. Fields far too small and strewn with boulders.
Dive under the cloud and low over the point to find masses of lift; in fact more than I needed so flew to windward at VNE - 200kph - and flew more than 3/4km from the shear cliffs just under the cloud base. Popped out the other end and soared the cliffs that bordered the two bays.
Getting bored again I headed back..around the northern headland, pulled up then climbed in a weak rotor to 4 grand.
Spotted our not so tame ex KLM ‘MONSIEUR’ in his motor glider so decided to show him the way..
Repeated the transit to come out the other side but no Bosch and no mountain..a storm had come in.
Tide was coming in, my Saab was parked on the beach, keys in my pocket - far too dangerous to try and do the transit with a turn and slip and ancient gps.
Considered landing somewhere near the Conor Pass which was in cloud or at Dingle and getting a taxi back.
Eventually I calmed down and decided to play the waiting game on the headlands surrounding the two small bays.
Reflected that post shower the wind might have decreased but should still be strong enough for the long transit which it was.

I think I remember that day too (as I was flying a K21 in that comp with some students) but for different reasons. The vis really was dire, but the thermals strong and plentiful so no need to gaggle and off we went as soon as the gate had opened. No problem finding good lift and we popped out of the murk into clear skies somewhere near Pewsey if I recall so navigating to the turning point and getting the photo was straightforward. The return leg home was memorable in that after re-entering the murk at about the same place we left it (and getting into good lift again) the navigation was tricky, with little more than the sun position, time of day and compass to help. So being well clear of well clear of any restricted airspace we sailed on and soon picked up familiar landmarks around the Newbury and Basingstoke area and found ourselves comfortably on the final glide home. Only on arrival did I hear about the mid-air.

What really sticks in my mind is launching the following day and how gin-clear the air was - and how close all the other gliders were! There but for the grace of $DEITY...

UK Pilot sets new HG Out and Return Record.
 

I suppose this belongs here.

https://xcmag.com/news/new-out-and-r...-set-in-kenya/

Looks like this is the place I can tell a few mostly minor tales from when my dad (now 93) was a glider pilot & instructor at Ontario, Canada gliding fields in the 1960's and 1970's.
Not actually "there I was, thought I was gonna die" levels of excitement though.
(Mostly at Pioneer Soaring in Tottenham & Alliston, and York Soaring near Arthur.)

1. WHO HAS CONTROL?
A student and an instructor were flying a glider, must have been a Schweitzer trainer, with the instructor being something of a British gentleman in personality. Perhaps a little understated in clarity and directness of instruction. Final approach to the field was a little wobbly but heading for the runway, then the glider drifted unexpectedly low, damaged a wing by hitting the top branches of a tree, but did make it in to the field, landing heavily but not otherwise damaged. Turns out, nobody had control, both instructor and student thought the other pilot was in control! Some error in clearly handing over control had happened. They figure both still had a hand on the stick, nudging & correcting a little bit subconsciously, so the glider kept going to the grass runway, even if imperfectly.
The post-script was that when the wing was opened up for repairs, a bucking bar was found inside. Presumably from the Schweizer factory near Elmira, NY.

2. SHOWING OFF & TRYING TOO HARD TO BE HELPFUL
Finishing the last flight of the day, my dad decides to roll in after landing from the runway right up to a parking space, like the very skilled boss sometimes does, to make it easier to put the glider away. At which point, he finds out that the brake is really poor on this glider. He stuffs the stick full forward and still has enough speed to get the nose down, to scrub the Schweizer's skid against the ground and bleed off enough speed and arrive right in his parking spot, and not overshoot into another row of gliders. Phew.

3. RELEASE, WHAT RELEASE?
New to another gliding club, my dad gets an aero tow up, and when it is time to release in a particular glider (probably also a Schweizer)... there's no red knob. Tow pilot is patient while my dad looks around the cockpit. There must be a way to release?!. He eventually reaches under the instrument panel and finds that one can grab and pull the release cable from there. (Yeah, he should have noticed or checked before hand, but when a standard feature on a familiar type is missing and not properly fixed...)

4. GOOD TIMING (power & glider)
When my dad and his buddies started a small glider operation, they pooled their money, and bought equipment including a Schweitzer 2-22 trainer. No insurance yet. They test assembled it at the small Markham airport a north of Toronto and put it away in an old wooden hangar with a tin roof. My family have the slides of the proud owners putting it together the first time. The guys weren't going to operate out of that power plane strip, so they soon disassembled the glider again and towed it off on a trailer to their operating site. The next evening in May 1966, a wind storm blew through the area and collapsed the old hangar. So the glider operation was able to start up without everyone losing their investment.

Power plane side-bar: Decades later I found out that a former aerobatic instructor of mine, now a retired Air Canada captain, was at that little airport at around the same time, as a newbie pilot. He was learning aerobatics, and teaching himself, on a rented Citabria. He falls out of some maneuver, gets into a screaming dive, is slow to respond, is over the red line and getting faster, hauls back with a ton of G's, and manages to pull out and fly back to the airport, the airplane seemingly OK. He wrestles with the question whether to tell anyone what he has done, what a big screwup he was. He puts the aircraft away for the night in an old wooden hangar with a tin roof and just heads home. ..... And you guessed it ... that night there's that storm that flattens the hangar and the Citabria inside.

Timing is everything!

5. PUDDLE
My dad is towing the first glider of the day, on takeoff roll finds there's a large puddle or pool of water hidden in the grass, unseen until closer. Not at flying speed yet, big splash and spray of water, the Stinson L-5 ends nosed up in the puddle, wooden prop broken at the ends. Glider was already airborne, released, and sailed over his head to a successful landing further down the runway. Quite an impressive performance, agreed the onlookers. Someone should have driven down the runways first thing in the morning to check their condition, but that seems to have been missed. With a spare prop on hand, they were back in business within a couple hours. (Let's not quibble about what the rules may or may not have said about crank inspections or whether a licenced mechanic was present.) At least I now have the big old broken Sensenich / Whirlwind prop on display in my rec room, with a story to tell.

6. WOULD BE A GOOD CARRIER PILOT?
An older pilot is being checked out on flying the tow plane, and is doing a solo flight with his instructor watching on the ground. Pilot comes in low, at the road before the field catches a power line with a gear leg, and lands heavily and short of the runway area in taller grass. The big heavy Stinson, with very solid gear, was actually fine, having broken the power line and ripped a couple hundred feet of it off poles. Instructor on the ground was literally hopping mad, swearing and jumping around.

7. SHORT FLIGHT / ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE
Motor glider but gliding related: I'm a young teen, visiting the famed Wasserkuppe with my mom & dad in the early 80's. After watching the gliding my dad buys me a motor glider ride; probably in a Schleicher side by side glider. The power plane runway is also up on the Wasserkuppe hill, with a slight downward slope off the hill. We start to takeoff, get airborne, engine sounds fine to me, but we don't really climb as the ground falls away, the pilot shouts "No power!" in German, chops the power and goes in to land off the end of the runway -- where the grass gets longer and longer, and the hill starts to slope more and more downward. A little exciting but it seems a reasonable landing, although bumpy in tall grass on a down slope. Not steep for walking, but steep compared to any regular runway slope. We land safely, definitely quite a ways down the hill, and various people rush down from the hilltop in cars. I look further down slope in the tall grass, and see that while there are no trees for quite a ways still, in the area beyond where we landed, big tree stumps started to appear in the grass. Hmm. Only later is it realized that the Schleicher had its spoilers out while waiting around on the ground, and the pilot hadn't retracted them before takeoff. As a passenger, I hadn't noticed either, eyes looking forward for the takeoff. I don't recall going for another flight there, and we called it a day.

I have never gotten around to getting a glider rating, although have a PPL, have done some paragliding and a lot of skydiving, which technically includes gliding flight... but that's all for a different time or place!
Well, one more tale:

8. About 15 years back I did get to do one of those "skydives off a Blanik wing". Seems to be a favorite aircraft for that sort of thing, based on the videos out there. A friend was the gliding club's Safety Officer at the time so had the pull to arrange things with the club and be the Blanik pilot. One of the takeoff paths from the glider field -- the one we used that day -- goes over the large African Lion Safari property, although not directly after takeoff. Hmm, not the usual sort of forced landing obstacle, especially with canopy off the glider. We stayed on tow until almost over the glider field. Plenty of drag with canopy off, so the climb was slow, behind a Citabria with a back seater taking photos. Not hard to climb out 6 ft out onto the wing, although a bit tight in the cockpit with the rig. With the low airspeed the biggest problem was to make sure I didn't slip off the front of the wing before I was ready. Pilot said it took about 1/3rd aileron to counter my weight. Good jump from 3200' over the glider field, and I could demonstrate to the glider folks what a fast landing looks like under a small ram-air parachute -- without touching the control toggles, my canopy at the time would normally fly at about 46 mph, 1750 fpm descent rate, and 2.1 glide ratio (being built with nose down angle to fly fast) -- and that's before doing a steep diving turn to pick up extra speed before landing. Every aircraft has its own speeds, angles, and timing to contend with for the flare!

pchapman,

I remember seeing you land almost at my feet.