Back to the glider checklist

July 10, 2022

Emilie Phillips

After two weekends (June 5th, June 25th) dedicated to thermalling instruction, I was starting to enjoy myself. But on the 25th, it had become quite clear that I needed to work on flying the pattern and landing. So, this weekend, I brought out the big checklist again. To keep it fun, I decided one flight I would go thermalling.

The instructor for the day happened to also be the club safety officer. On one of my first visits in the RV-4, he had called me out for a nonstandard pattern. As an instructor, he turned out to be a nice guy with an endless supply of jokes. Since my goal today was to practice the pattern, he naturally ribbed me several times about needing instruction. We flew a first tow just to pattern altitude, ~1,000 feet above the field. The second flight we went thermalling. The instructor said I was doing better than I thought at feeling for the thermals. My patterns still need work, but I started to get the hang of a steadily decreasing altitude.

I ate lunch and waited for my turn again. I wasn’t sure if I would get another flight, until Bill joined the field. I have flown with Bill before. He talks a lot. I like a quiet instructor — one who lets me think through things rather than giving me the answer. If I waited for my turn again with the instructor on duty, it was doubtful I would get another flight. So I plunked my checklist down in front of Bill and said, let’s get some stuff checked off.

We boxed the wake on tow. Then we practiced slack line. Bill set up a modest slack line to the left. I let the tow plane slowly come up to meet us and pull the line straight again. Then Bill set up a big curve of slack line with us going right. I thought there was too much slack to just wait for the tow plane. The books say you need to slow down if you have a lot of slack in the line. You can slow down by extending the spoilers, or slipping. I decided to slip: left wing down, right rudder. Despite presenting the broad side of our fuselage to the onrushing air, our lift vector should send us towards the tow plane. We weren’t slowing. The curve of slack grew deeper. In fact, we were accelerating away from the tow plane. Bill’s instructional monologue abruptly ended with

“We need to release.”

Then before I could

“My airplane!”

He turned the glider back towards the tow plane to stop the slack from growing. Then, as he explained later, he banked right just before releasing to turn away from the flailing rope and to lift the left wing up away from where the rope might whip back and entangle the wing. From watching Bill’s response, I learned the limits where you should abort the tow rather than trying to fix it. My primary mistake was that I should have pointed towards the tow plane first, and then gradually eased into a slip. That way I could have controlled the relative rudder vs roll to ensure the glider trajectory followed the tow plane.

My checklist said I was missing a bunch of emergency procedures, so we did nonstandard patterns. On that first tow, I attempted a no-spoiler pattern. You have to slip to loose altitude. I did ok on crosswind leg and downwind, but by base leg things were getting away from me, so Bill said to use the spoilers and do a normal landing. We did a second quick tow where Bill pulled the rope on me at 800′. After having done the 200′ release with Phil, the 800′ release didn’t seem so hard.

Throughout the day, I also did a bunch of stalls, normal stalls, turning stalls, cross controlled stalls. We did a benign spiral. If you get stuck in clouds, neutralize the trim, extend the spoilers, and release the controls. The glider should go into a controlled spiral.

Over all, we made good progress on the checklist. My pattern is improving. I got half an hour of thermalling. And I learned a bunch from the eye opening slack rope.

Link to the rest of Emilie’s glider training posts.