Had my check ride today at Williams for my Private Pilot Glider. I
did most of my training with the fabulous instructors at Byron and
then had a final few lessons with Ed in the ASK 21 at Williams.
The weather for my check ride didn't look great. I had checked the
NWS weather forecast for Williams and there was a "red flag" fire
alert due to dry gusty winds from the north. I checked the local
conditions at Williams in the morning and there was a ~16kt wind from
the north with a gust of 24kts. For those of you who don't know
Williams, the runway runs 16/34 and the staging area is at the south
end. So takeoffs are to the north and landings are usually to the
south even if there's a slight tailwind. Landing to the north means
crossing above/between two houses near the end of the runway and
requires three landings with an instructor before they'll let you do
it as a student or renter. I had none such landings so that wind
favouring a landing to the north didn't look good!
At noon the winds were something like NNW 15kts gusting to 18. Still
too much for a normal downwind landing. Rex, the designated examiner
and guy-who-runs-the-place at Williams was thorough in the oral exam.
His style is a little instructional - he wants to see how much you
know but will help you understand the more advanced aspects. Like we
all know that a tow rope can have a breaking strength of no more than
200% of the max gross weight of the glider. Say you have a tow rope
rated for 4,000lbs and your glider weighs 1,320lbs. What happens when
you put a knot in the rope?
As an aside, I already saw the effects of knots on rope strengths the
previous lesson at Williams. When first practicing slack lines my
instructor was a little over eager in putting in a big loop and I was
a little under eager in taking it out. POW! It broke right at the
knot all the way at the end of the rope inside the tow plane! The
effect of an approximately ~150ft rope trailing off the nose of an
ASK21 is a moderately increased sink rate and slight wobbly feeling at
the nose. We did a normal pattern to the grass strip next to the
gravel runway and dropped the rope as we got low on the final. No big
deal, but if you were out further (say towing to the mountains) you
might want to consider the increased drag/sink and drop the rope
somewhere safe if you felt it would be an issue.
After the oral part of the exam. We decided to wait awhile for the
winds to drop down. At that point it was a smooth 9kts more or less
straight down (or hey, up!) the runway. Probably doable but part of
being a glider pilot is respecting the weather and making prudent
decisions! About two hours later the wind was down to 5kts (though
still the wrong way!)
The flight portion was fairly straightforward, though again Rex was
able to thoroughly school me on some finer points of airmanship. My
slack line recoveries were not so great but at least I didn't break
the rope (equals automatic fail). Rex showed me using a forward slip
off to the side of the towplane as a recovery technique. Kind of like
it... gets the glider's nose way out to the side without bringing the
glider itself further out and the timing isn't as critical as with the
"dive to match speed" technique.
For the downwind landing after I'd selected my approach speed (at the
recommended speed of ~50kts since landing downwind and the wind was
smooth on takeoff) Rex made the point that the speed in the pattern
doesn't have to be the same for all legs and I decided to go with a
"speed to fly" of 55kts for the upwind leg. With my brain somewhat
cooked from the few hours in 100+ degrees heat I descended down at the
initial point to 1,500' instead of 1,200' (usually you try to arrive
at the IP at Williams at 1,500' and then circle down to 1,200' before
entering the 45 for landing). I realized I was high, commented on it
and decided to bleed some off with the air brakes on downwind. You
can bet Rex didn't let me ignore that I had some more altitude to play
with before safely reaching the IP with some to spare.
I turned crosswind further from the runway than usual, to give me more
time on line up and stabilize on final while being blown towards the
runway (5kts windspeed on the ground). I had to crab away from the
runway to maintain my track, so the turn to final was more than 90
degrees. I'd made downwind landings before at Williams, but it'd been
awhile. While on final the "half airbrakes" glide slope was a little
more shallow than usual since the ground speed was higher. Took a few
quick cycles of "getting too high, full airbrakes! getting too low,
less airbrakes! ok, half!" to get on a decent slope to my approach
point but I got it good enough to stabilize before the flare.
After touchdown flying downwind you can quickly lose directional
control as the airflow on your control surfaces decreases but you
still have decent groundspeed! It's key to have everything lined up
before you touchdown and before you lose directional control. With
the 5 knot tailwind it wasn't too bad. I stopped the glider within
the 200' target area mandated by the test standards with just a touch
of yaw at the end.
Rex shook my hand and congratulated me, then continued to school me on
what to do better! Passing was both an accomplishment and
reinforcement that there's so much more to learn and refine! That's
part of what keeps it fun :) Next goal is to get checked out for
mountain flying and keep refining my techniques!
- mang
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