All pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/wcleveland/GlidingWeek
On Sunday we left the VKI at noon and began the drive to the middle of Germany, with Michaelangelo driving and Rosario navigating. Destination: Laucha
As soon as we crossed into German borders, the weather became very pretty. The countryside was filled with wind turbines. Also, it was very common to look up and spot one or two gliders in the air. I later asked about this, and was told that gliding is a very popular sport in Germany. Similar to the popularity of golf in the U.S.
We got there Sunday night (after ~7 hours of driving), just in time to watch the Eurocup final game: Germany vs. Spain. Spain went on to win the match.
The next morning we woke up and headed to the hanger, to discover it was completely packed with gliders. They had a LOT!
They didn't crash in there, that's just how they pack them in so that they can store so many. (The picture is actually after we've taken one or two out).
It wasn't long before we began flying. When I fly in the US, it's always done with aerotow: an airplane carries the glider up to ~1500-4000 feet and you can begin gliding. However, this is more expensive (aviation gasoline). The very common way in Germany is a tow using a winch.
It is an incredible ride up. It lasts for 10-15 seconds and you disconnect at ~250-400m.
In the ASK13 glider, getting ready for departure:
Most of my flights were in the ASK21, which is very similar to the PW-6 that I fly in Starkville.
The winch cable is 800-1200 m long, so it's quite the operation to launch. There is a vehicle which two cables get attached to and are driven to the flight line.
One cable is set to the side, the other attached to the plane. After the launch, another plane is made ready and launched with the second cable. They also had cars for ground towing of the planes from the landing site to the flight line. It was all very fast and efficient, when things worked.
Unfortunately, because of various circumstances (winch broken, too hot, wind awkward, etc), the number of flights was less than ideal. Even still, I had a lot of fun and managed to take a total of 15 flights. I began flying at MSU in October and had 18 flights before the week. It was very nice to nearly double my number of flights in one week. I am now able to control the plane nicely during all aspects of flight: take-off, turns, thermal-ing (using natural thermals of the hot air rising to stay up longer), and landing.
On Thursday we woke up at 4am in order to have sunrise flights at 5am. It was a lot of fun! The afternoon was too hot so we went kayaking on a nearby river.
Wednesday afternoon I took an aerobatic demo with the aerobatic flight instructor. As soon as we came off the winch, he dove to gain speed and started doing aerobatics: loops, rolls, clover leafs, humpties, and everything else that I could imagine.
My last and longest flight (on Sunday) was one hour and thirteen minutes and we reached a peak altitude of 1100m. My instructor helped with the thermal-ing. Also, after we had reached the peak altitude, I asked the instructor if I could try flying a loop. I had the aerobatic instructor with me again and he is a fantastic pilot. He said the loop was the simplest pattern to fly and let me do it: you push forward, gain speed to 200km/h and then just pull back. The trick is you have to commit to it and keep pulling back so you don't get stuck part of the way through. It was really easy and very cool. The rest of the flight was spent with us discussing aerobatics and him demoing them for me. (We had to tighten our seat belts super tight in the air because of the maneuvers). We did one, a negative loop, that was quite painful. Normaly for a loop, you dive and then pull back. I asked him if we could dive first into the loop. He said it was painful but he would show me. We dove down and you are pulled out of your seat, with all of the blood going up to your head. I could feel it for the next hour or so. During this flight, everytime we went in and got ready to land (around 250m), we ran into another thermal and went back up into the air. It was incredible.
All pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/wcleveland/GlidingWeek
1 comment:
Holy crap, William... Pictures! Lots of them! I'm shocked. I didn't think you had it in you. (that's what she said)
haha, your gliding week post was awesome and I really enjoyed reading it. Plus, I think gliding is totally a better recreational sport than golf. Time to move to Germany...
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