Thanks! The instrument rating definitely widens your flying opportunities. I especially like taking off in dreary weather only to break out on top to see the sun.
Interesting but I needed to know who the voices are. Was one man flying it and another a passenger? Why does one want to fly a glider? (Is there some particular joy with such?) Also, it would seem to me (since I know nothing about it), there would be no room for error as in approaching the airfield for touchdown because you can't goose the speed if need. Am I right in that? How doe gliders stay aloft for so long (is it just controlling wind vectors and by 'just,' I don't mean to minimize?)
Hello Colleen, thanks for your interest! The voices were myself and another pilot. We took turns flying on this day. Pilots like to fly gliders for the same reason that sailors like to sail sailboats. We could fly or go boating with an engine, but we go without the engine for the extra challenge. The challenge in both soaring and sailing is in interpreting weather conditions and figuring out just how best to utilize the forces of nature that are always present. For sailors, it's the wind. For glider pilots, it's rising air. Rising air can come from the sun heating the ground, which in turn heats the air above it, which then rises. Rising air can also come from air being forced up mountain slopes, or even waves that happen higher in the atmosphere near big mountain ranges. Where I fly, we look for "thermals" (warm, rising air). Most often, we only need to look for cumulus clouds... those puffy white ones on a nice day that look like cauliflower. They mark where the rising air (thermals) are. So, we know that if such a cloud is in its building stage, there will be rising air below it. As long as the air is rising faster than the glider is sinking (it very commonly is), we can gain altitude. The more altitude we have, the longer and further we can fly. Pilots of powered aircraft look at their fuel guage to know when they need to think about landing. Glider pilots look at the altimeter. That's our fuel guage. Gliders are also designed with long, efficient wings that allow the glider to glide for much longer distances than an airplane could without an engine, even when there is no rising air to be found. Approaching an airfield with no engine is not difficult, as gliders have spoilers for glidepath control. Spoilers are like boards that pop up out of the wings to make the wing less efficient so that we can land. So... we can, in fact, "goose the speed" if we need to, by retracting the spoilers. I hope this explains some of it! Also, the Soaring Society of America has great information about the sport of Soaring on their website. Check them out at www.ssa.org Cheers! AirFoiled
Thank you so much for your interesting tutorial. Now, next time have someone shoot your casual chatty photo aside plane...on cockpit...on plane. You know, my husb was pilot/owner of his own plane..took me back and forth to Block Island (tricky with vectors) til I thought "My God, he could have a heart attack. Then what would I do?" You know what? He did end up having heart attack. Just not in plane..
