Session 3

WHEN     : Sunday 20th Feburary 2000
WHAT     : More exotic airwork in a Schweizer 2-33
WHO      : Dual instruction with Barry Dunning
HOW LONG : 39 minutes and 2 flights

  Once again, this Sunday was another orgy of aviation. In fact, the entire weekend was - I was priveliged to fly three different aircraft as PIC on Saturday, and a ride in a fourth (a Cessna 310). Sunday was once again balloon crewing followed by a trip to the glider club for more instruction!

  The weather was pretty nice. It was a bit windy during our ballooning session in the morning, making for a very exciting inflation and as a crewmember, I had my work cut out. After the balloon was packed up (and balloon owners buy breakfast for the crew, which is very good!) it was time to head out to the gliderport. When I got there, I found there were people actually staying up for quite a long time. So there was at least some lift! (Well, I could feel it whilst flying the 140 up to the club). However, it wasn't that strong, and it topped out at about 1900 feet. Not that it mattered, because we just had the subject of more airwork.

  So I started my third session and on the third instructor (in the glider club, you don't get one instructor - there's a CFI on duty each day they are operational who does all the students). This time, I was flying with Barry Dunning, who just happened to be the father of the instructor who I flew with last time. On the first flight, we got a tow up to 4,000 feet. It was the roughest tow I've had so far, and I had a real job keeping up with the tow pilot. We were also going to do slack line recoveries - so we'd deliberately induce some slack line then recover. The first tow exercise we did was boxing the wake. This was a bit more challenging than the previous week, but it worked out OK. Then the slack line. We did this a few times (and I also unintentionally got a slack line, just to keep it interesting). To recover from a slack tow line, you can either yaw the glider a bit to induce some drag to take up the slack, or use some airbrakes to add some drag. I did both methods. Barry demonstrated, then I repeated. I did take out the yaw/divebrakes out too early though - it's necessary to keep the drag a little bit after the line goes taut again since the line's elasticity will catapult the glider a little.

  Once off the tow at 4,000 ft. AGL, we did some straight ahead stalls, turning stalls, and an incipient spin recovery. The straight ahead and turning stalls were normal. We did one stall with the divebrakes out, as if in the pattern. Just like with powered aircraft, you shove everything forward (in this case, the spoiler control instead of the throttle!) The incipient spin recovery was interesting. Getting a 2-33 to spin is extremely difficult, it really doesn't want to do it. The only way it would start to spin was to pull the nose up quite agressively and put in hard left rudder. It didn't seem to want to spin to the right. Recovery was as for powered aircraft (except skip the throttle) - ailerons neutralised, rudder to stop the yaw, then release the backpressure to break the stall. The 2-33's spin characteristics were so benign it made the Cessna 150 Aerobat I did my initial spin training in a couple of years back look like a hot aerobatic ship. However, other gliders are a lot more prone to spinning, and the 2-33 is slightly unusual in being so difficult to spin. We only got as far as incipient spins, in fact, I'm not sure that the 2-33 would actually stay in a spin much past the incipient stage.

   We followed this up with a spiral dive recovery. The recovery from a spiral dive is just like recovering from this kind of unusual attitude in instrument training. First, level the wings, then bring the nose back up. Speed increases very quickly in a spiral dive (even in a 2-33), so you don't want to pull up too hard. Gliders have excellent visibility, so I got a real good view of the ground as Barry started the excercise!

  Then onto the steep turns - 60 degrees of bank. These were pretty uneventful. After this, we had used up quite a bit of altitude, so we returned to the IP. Landing to the north meant we would be crossing the big trees at the threshold. However, a surprise was in store. As we left the IP at the proper height, we hit some incredible sink. I sped up to penetrate the sink, but it was no good. We were down to 500' AGL by the time we got to downwind. I was a bit slow on the decision, not having been faced by this problem. Abbreviated pattern or land downwind? Barry told me to land downwind before I could make up my mind. This will just have to come with more experience. The landing was uneventful since the wind was mostly crosswind - we didn't really have much of a tailwind component.

  The second flight was not quite such a workout - we boxed the wake again, and the towplane was much steadier making it a lot easier. We released at 3,000' AGL and worked on turn precision - turning to specific headings - basically, getting more used to the handling characteristics of the 2-33 compared to a powered aircraft. We actually hit some lift this time, so I got to practise slowing down in lift, then speeding up between the thermals. We didn't circle since we didn't have very much time left. The second landing was normal - we didn't hit the area of sink again. Those trees seemed to have a bit of a psychological effect on me, because I was too high on base! At least I recognised it, and so we did a slip all the way from base to final, with a slipping turn base to final. I was a little concerned that the 2-33 might be sluggish on the kick-out during the flare, but it straightened up nicely, and I got a reasonable landing out of it.

  The photograph shows the single place Schweizer in its base to final turn. The FAA standard obstructions loom beneath the pilot. It has quite a psychological effect. Nearly everyone comes in just a little bit high then has to slip and/or use full spoilers to get down before running out of runway...