At 17:35 12 April 2015, waremark wrote:
Interesting that you all talk about 'what to do' based on being caught in
c=
loud on an unplanned basis. I fly with an A/H and am happy to thermal in
cl=
oud using that. However, I always worry about what to do if the A/H
fails.
=
My glider has no backup blind flying instrumentation (unlike most GA
aircra=
ft which have an electric turn coordinator as well as a vacuum horizon -
an=
d which are more speed stable than gliders).=20

My plan, tested in clear and admittedly smooth air, has been to open the
ai=
r brakes and take hands and feet off if either the A/H shows obvious
signs
=
of failing or the airspeed increases over a certain level (I plan on 75
kno=
ts). A misleading A/H would be far worse than an obviously failed one,
beca=
use you would be in worse shape before taking this action. However I
recent=
ly talked to someone who had the A/H in his LX computer fail while in
cloud=
.. He kept things steady while rebooting the LX and all was well. I think
I
=
would stick to the open the air brakes plan.



Sorry for the thread drift
One of my gliding club members in England was wave soaring over the
pennies when he lost lift ,and in to the cloud he went .
He switch his LX to horizon and made a safe decent ,but lost positional
awareness,he did not hit the hillside but at about 200ft it's fair to say
the
ground found him and a 6 month old asw31 would never be the same again .
He was not hurt but it took 3hours to walk off the hill and the retrieve is
was
a story all of its own and lasting over a week.
So the story is not over when you clear the bottom of cloud ,personally the

nearest I have been to a problem is descending through a closing hole only
to
find the canopy iced over ,but I managed to hang on until it melted and I
landed in a farmers field.As it was Christmas and my friends arrived with
the
trailer and bottles of wine he was very good with us and I put it down as I

learned from that and with the massive endorphin surge I had a great
Christmas.