Michael Ash wrote in
:

In rec.aviation.student Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Michael Ash wrote in
:

In rec.aviation.student Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
One of the problems is you need to do more than 180 degrees, of
course. This can be minimised by turning into wind if you have some
across and if your runway is wide you've saved a bit of turn that
way as well, but you're probably going to have a bit of 'essing' to
do on finals and that's going to cost. That's where my friend lost
it.

A good tow pilot will let the formation drift downwind (once
obstacles have been cleared, of course) so that in the event that
the glider behind him needs to do a 180 back to the runway, the turn
into the wind will get him more or less lined up.

Hmm, I used to tow ( a lot) and never heard this before. Good idea.

I probably should have qualified that a little more. "Some good tow
pilots", etc.

When I took my checkride there was a fair crosswind. On the second
takeoff, the tow pilot for whatever reason had us turned into the
wind instead of drifting with it. And of course this was the one
where the examiner pulled the rope on me at exactly 200ft AGL.

A quick 180 still left me quite far downwind, so it took a bit of
exciting maneuvering to get lined up, but there was still plenty of
room to spare. It would have been much simpler to start from the
downwind side, though.

Wel, you still probably would have been better off turning into wind
unless you were well upwind of the runway.

We were. It would have definitely been the wrong move there. If we
were a couple dozen feet off the centerline it's probably the better
move, but we had made a fairly significant turn by that point.

Of course even a medium-performance glider can do with ease at 200ft
what the average windmilling GA airplane will have difficulty with
at two or three times the altitude, so it's really a different
world. But when you don't want to change position too much, always
turn into the wind when you can.

Yeah, even a student in a 2-22 should be able to do it on th eworst
day.

One of our instructors has done it in an ASK-21 (glide ratio about
34:1) from 100ft. When you have that kind of performance, you end up
just bleeding off your extra speed in the 180 and come out of it at
the same altitude where you started. You'd probably meet an early
demise trying that in a 2-22 though.


100 feet? Yeah. It was regularly done at 200. I got used to manuevering
down low early on anyhow. It wasn't that uncommon to reach less than 500
off an auto tow, and the LK was no Libelle..


bertie