In article
,
a wrote:

I had one flight in a glider, decades ago. Not that I overcontrolled
or anything, but the instructor had bruises on his thighs from the
stick banging from side to side. Control pressures with a yoke vs a
stick were an adventure and keeping the piece of yarn pointing
straight back . . . well, it did that when passing from left to right
to left. . . The Mooney's controls are responsive, it's like
thinking the change in attitude and the airplane does it. That glider
however was a mind reader -- and it was hardly a high performance
machine.

Sounds like a pretty typical experience for a transition pilot. While
they might both qualify as "aircraft", the handling is really different
and takes some getting used to. I'm sure I would be plenty ham-fisted,
albeit differently, if you plopped me into your plane.

I'm not sure that performance and control sensitivity are too closely
related in gliders. Certainly the big open-class monsters (with 70+ft
wingspans) have fairly poor roll response, not sure about the rest. The
1-26 I flew for a while (best glide ratio of about 22:1, Vne around
110MPH) was light as a feather on the stick.

For now, it'll be point to point SEL, hoping for solid IMC, where I
use 9 gallons of lift an hour.

Interesting to think in terms of "per hour". If I stick around the low
end of my speed range, I need 9,000ft per hour. More if I want to go
faster.

I did get lots of the other kind of lift once, flew into an embedded
thunderstorm in CO: got to 22,000 feet with a pegged rate of climb.
Center assured me I had clearance for unrestricted climb when I told
them what happened, and later, unrestricted descent when the downdraft
took over. When it was all over the controller told me to resume
normal nav, and thanked me for not crashing because "there's so much
paperwork to fill out at this end. . .".

Sounds a little too exciting for my tastes. I think it was an article I
read in _Soaring_ a couple of months back, wherein they described how
the crazy people back in the 40s would actually go seek out and soar in
thunderstorms *on purpose*.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon