Flying the airplane

[nibot]

Spring/summer is here and the hills aren't nearly so green as they were a few months ago! No longer do we need down jackets on the flight line, and cold gatorade is now on my checklist.

Adventures in glider-flying [last] weekend:

* Aborted take-off when the airbrakes popped up (we guess?). Pulled the tow release and landed straight-ahead on the runway. Lessons learned: pull the tow-release when something wacky happens early on takeoff, fly the airplane.

* Instructor's canopy popped ajar. I just kept doing what I was doing while he fiddled with it. Lesson learned: don't get distracted during pre-flight checks, fly the airplane. (Afterwards the instructor joked, "Good thing we had a guy in front who knew how to fly the airplane!" I took it as a compliment and it seemed like his confidence in me increased measurably.)

* Landing #2 behind an L-39 Czech military fighter-jet trainer ... yes, the Bitcoin Jet! No incident, but a reminder: remember wake turbulence procedures even when flying a glider.

* New prospective club member, Mark, came out yesterday for a demo ride with an instructor. Turns out he's a 747 pilot for United Airlines, who learned to fly in gliders in his native Illinois, 25 years ago. The instructor was happy to enter the first new entry in Mark's glider logbook in 22 years. (Also turns out that Mark spends a lot of time in Hannover, Germany, so we talked about Linden, List, Faust, the Hannover glider clubs, etc...)

Byron C83 has the most eclectic mix of traffic. Gliders, the skydiving drop plane King Air taking off in the wrong direction, visiting Cessnas doing touch-and-gos, a biplane, a helicopter, an L-39, ...

Up to around 15 glider flights this year and hoping to solo soon.

* * *

A weather front is coming through tonight. The sky this afternoon in the East Bay was full of lennies. Rain is forecast overnight, and the glider pilots are optimistic about good post-frontal conditions in the morning.

Comments

[vortexshedding.livejournal.com]

I was about ask you if gliders experience a lot of turbulence because I have serious issues with air turbulence while riding in planes (doesn't matter the size; small planes or large jumbo jets). No problems at all with water turbulence (claim to fame as the only person who didn't get sea sick on a very rough and choppy 3-4 hour boat ride in the North Sea mid-winter).

Anyway, this Youtube video was the hit first in my search and I didn't even blink at the turbulence shown here. Is this honestly considered "bad turbulence?" Or is this a joke? This sort of turbulence wouldn't bother me at all.

"Glider flying in heavy turbulence over Utah mountains"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYJufTZg3pQ

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Glider pilots are attracted to turbulence while power-plane pilots avoid it - turbulence means that there is motion in the atmosphere, which means that somewhere the air is going up, which the gliders can use for lift. There's nothing otherwise specifically different about how gliders would experience turbulence compared to power-planes.

Turbulence can be stressful for a pilot because you have to work harder to control the airplane (and if you have passengers maybe you worry about them being afraid), and it's physically stressful on the airplane. There are structural limits and extreme turbulence could damage the airplane (unlikely).

In that video, I think the severity of the turbulence is not really apparent because the camera is fixed to the glider, so you don't have any good reference to judge the acceleration. But at one point some objects fly "upwards" in the cockpit, indicating the cockpit is accelerating downwards at more than 1g. That would be pretty exciting.

I haven't (yet) experienced anything like this. Just "bumpy" flight over the hills east of Oakland.

In the glider, we strap ourselves into the cockpit really tightly to avoid getting tossed around by potential turbulence. Hitting your head on the top of the canopy could be bad. So we are firmly strapped in with four-point belts.

There is a single release for all of the belts in case we need to bail out. We wear parachutes.

[vortexshedding.livejournal.com]

Oh, you don't have to tell me about turbulence as I've had about a half-dozen graduate level courses at MIT on turbulence. I always wondered if the expert air turbulence folks got together with the expert water turbulence folks, maybe we could really get somewhere -- because my dissertation on boundary layers is still as relevant in my field today as it was when I wrote it 10-years ago. In other words, we still don't know crap in my field!

My problems with airplane turbulence are irrational; I know that. I flew a LOT before my airplane turbulence issue popped up in my mid-twenties. I studied abroad and trans-ocean flights didn't bother me in the least. But it was one awful flight in my mid-twenties that started all of this nonsense! I was flying home from Wyoming to NYC (commercial flight for work) and we hit the worst turbulence ever felt by the pilots and crew (their words) over the mountains and people were yelling, screaming, etc. It was just a horrible experience in general and I don't think it bothered me much until I landed. It was long enough ago that I don't think much about it; I just accept what it is now and dose up with Xanax to take the edge off.

I've never been in a glider, but I forced an early landing in a 2-seater tiny plane in NOLA -- it was a work trip down to the mouth of the MS River and it was just horrible. I was helping the pilot hold the map and together, we couldn't even keep anything steady. Everything was flying around inside the cabin; the pilot opened his window to vomit. In that video link I sent you, the objects flying around were nothing compared to what we experienced. After an hour in the air, I demanded we turn around and land as it wasn't getting better as we hoped. The rest of the flights after mine were cancelled due to high winds (mine was already delayed by hours and sketchy conditions should have been a red flag for me). We could only go up one person at a time with the pilot due to weight limit restrictions -- which I never thought about before, but I guess it makes sense. I should also mention that I foolishly did NOT have any Xanax with me -- I lived in NOLA at the time and figured a small plane and a local trip for just a few hours would be easy-peasy, hah.

Along one of our coastal driving tours in LA, we stopped a privately-owned helicopter launch pad to see if we could arrange something on-the-spot as we had guests from all over the US and Europe with us (and we -- as in my agency -- weren't footing the bill). I remember they we had to weigh each of us individually right out there in the open and I was with just one other women in a large group of men. We didn't exactly want our weights public, but what choice did we have? Are helicopters that sensitive?!? My husband has been on many helicopter rides over NOLA for work and I don't think he was ever weighed beforehand.

I would probably try a glider now that you've explained it a bit and being strapped in tightly might give me a sense of security.