On Feb 23, 9:19 am, John Smith wrote:
Bill Daniels wrote:
If you get more than 15 - 20 degrees off a south heading, the trick
no longer works so turbulence is a real problem.

That's what I call theoretically perfect but unusable in real life.

The emergency procedure to escape a cloud without a gyro is to trim the
glider for slow straight flight, pull the airbrakes fully open, let go
of the stick and wait until you drop out of that cloud *somehow*. That's
why JAR requires the dive brakes to keep the dive speed under Vne for
dive angles up to 45 degrees.

That assumes the glider is stable in a benign spiral, not all are.
There is no requirement for the glider to be so. Try it out in
whatever particular glider(s) you fly before assuming it will work. I
happen to fly an ASH-26E and I can tell you my glider will not benign
spiral, other pilots have also come to the same conclusion with their
ASH-26E.

Darryl