A couple of questions

According to my wife and my work schedule, I'm now grounded until
Sunday, which has me climbing up the walls ...

That aside, this could be a daft newbie question ...

Does anybody know of any decent sites (or, at a push, books) that
illustrate the various different types/makes/models of glider that are
out there? Anything to help me recognise what I'm looking at, or picture
what people are discussing?

For that matter, can anybody recommend a good book for an absolute
rookie pilot? I appreciate that reading about it isn't going to replace
time in the cockpit, but it might keep me sane during the long days that
fall between weekends!


--
Bill Gribble

On Tue, 7 Oct 2003 11:57:17 +0100, Bill Gribble
wrote:

For that matter, can anybody recommend a good book for an absolute
rookie pilot? I appreciate that reading about it isn't going to replace
time in the cockpit, but it might keep me sane during the long days that
fall between weekends!

Derek Piggott: Beginning Gliding

and then, when you're near solo standard you probably need

Derek Piggott: Gliding
Tom Bradbury: Meteorology for Pilots

All these are available from the BGA and can be ordered online.
Finally, a recommendation for a weather website:

www.weatherjack.co.uk

The 'gliding' page is now in standby mode for the winter, but there's
lots of useful and interesting links on Jack's 'weather' page.



--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :

On Tue, 7 Oct 2003 11:57:17 +0100, Bill Gribble
wrote:

According to my wife and my work schedule, I'm now grounded until
Sunday, which has me climbing up the walls ...

That aside, this could be a daft newbie question ...

Does anybody know of any decent sites (or, at a push, books) that
illustrate the various different types/makes/models of glider that are
out there? Anything to help me recognise what I'm looking at, or picture
what people are discussing?

For that matter, can anybody recommend a good book for an absolute
rookie pilot? I appreciate that reading about it isn't going to replace
time in the cockpit, but it might keep me sane during the long days that
fall between weekends!


Try Helmut Reichmann's books. He has one for beginners and one for
cross country pilots.

Sounds like you've got it bad. Considered moving to Australia where
the weather is better?

Mike Borgelt

My 2c worth.

The BGA Manual is excellent if you are more technically minded. Ken
Stewarts books are also excellent.

Go to https://www.gliding.co.uk/bgashop/sh...se=&op=sc&ci=1

The more you read, the more you understand - works for me at any rate. I
keep on re-reading my little collection and as my flying progresses I
learn more from them.

Just to make you jealous - look at our weather...
http://www.weathersa.co.za/glider/Ci...mages/lf14.gif
http://www.weathersa.co.za/glider/images/-2727.gif

And I'm sitting at my desk not flying.

Bruce

Bruce Greeff writes
Just to make you jealous - look at our weather...
http://www.weathersa.co.za/glider/Ci...mages/lf14.gif
http://www.weathersa.co.za/glider/images/-2727.gif

And I'm sitting at my desk not flying.

Grrrr

Though, looking on the bright side, there are two advantages to our
English weather ...

First, even in the absence of soaring conditions, our club flies three
days a week through the winter as long as the weather is flyable. Being
an ex-MOD aerodrome, they have the advantage of a long runway which
means the winch gets us up to a respectable height.

It strikes me that this means that across the winter, the tendency for
the gliders to come down as soon as they've gone up means that I should
get lots of launches and lots of landings. As landing is the main thing
that currently freaks me out, it follows that it can only be a good
thing that I'll get a lot of practice at it!

Second is purely selfish. One of the three flying days is a Wednesday.
My office is about a mile from the airfield. One of the privileges of my
position means that I can steal off every once in a while if I want to,
so a Wednesday afternoon in the air isn't totally out of the question,
but as often as not the work schedule or other demands will mean that
the odds are most likely that I can't.

So, on a day like today when I'm desk-bound, the crappy weather means
that I don't have to stare out my office window in blatant jealousy,
watching the sailplanes thermalling overhead, thinking "It should be me
up there!"

Okay, so the second reason is more the justification of the desperate
than anything else. Maybe I should follow through on Mike's suggestion
and move to Oz. Can't pretend it isn't the first time I've considered it
g

Last thing. Thanks for all the suggestions and advice regarding my two
newbie questions. As it happens, got home last night to find that the
club's secretary had processed my membership application and my pilot's
logbook had arrived (I have a logbook! I'm almost embarrassed at how
pleased I am with that simple, trivial fact). With it came a load of
reading material, included amongst which was the BGA's Elementry Gliding
book.

So I spent the evening greedily digesting its contents. Odd thing.
Having grown up on computer games through the 80's and 90's and with a
sideline fascination with flight, I have a fairly intuitive grasp (in
theory, at least) of what the basic surface controls of an aircraft to
its attitude, what a stall entails, etc.

Aside from getting used to the weight of the stick and the effects of
motion, oh, and grappling with the co-ordination of airleons (which I
evidently cannot spell yet) and rudder, in practice the whole thing
seemed fairly simple.

As fascinating as it is to grapple with the theoretical concepts of lift
and drag when explained in terms of the pure physics (pure to an
absolute layman, at least) as in the BGA's book, I found my whole
'intuitive' grasp of the flight thing suddenly getting very muddled. And
it still feels a little woolly this morning.

Nothing that won't get rattled back into shape and perspective with more
reading and even more practice ... But it's an odd change in
perspective. I had approached the whole learning to glide thing as a
means to an end, the end obviously being solo and whatever further
opportunities getting there opened.

I'd actually forgotten the thrill and rewards that come from the
challenge of learning something so absolutely new. The only thing I can
compare it to were the first half a dozen hours of leaning to ride a
motorbike, or perhaps, before that and to a lesser extent, drive a car.
I live a fairly interesting life, so most days I have something 'new' to
grapple with. But it strikes me that in the majority of cases, the
'learning something new' is actually just the transfer and
re-application of already existing skills and knowledge. This is proving
to be quite different.

Anyway, I talk too much. For which I apologise. Put it down to the
barely contained enthusiasm of an absolute beginner. I'm sure it'll wear
off. Or at least become a little more self-contained!

--
Bill Gribble

I'd actually forgotten the thrill and rewards that come from the
challenge of learning something so absolutely new. The only thing I can
compare it to were the first half a dozen hours of leaning to ride a
motorbike, or perhaps, before that and to a lesser extent, drive a car.
I live a fairly interesting life, so most days I have something 'new' to
grapple with. But it strikes me that in the majority of cases, the
'learning something new' is actually just the transfer and
re-application of already existing skills and knowledge.

It's probably a bit more complex than you make it sound.

A few decades ago I sailed a small sailboat from New Orleans to the
West Coast of Africa with my family & spent a year meandering down the
coast. I'd never done anything like that before, and those 18 months
included some of the most intensive studying I'd ever done (including
university). When it was all over & we were hitch hiking back to the
US on a British freighter, I discovered to my great surprise that I'd
learned pretty much everything the guys on the bridge knew. That led
eventually to my becoming a bridge officer on two of the Greenpeace
anti-whaling voyages.

Now I'm about two years into soaring and the learning curve feels
about the same. Sure, the basic skills of handing a glider might
compare in some way to learning an automobile or motorcycle, but
that's only the beginning. Judging what's safe and what's dangerous &
what to do about it is a whole nother chapter (you might read "Gliding
Accidents That Almost Happened" from SSA), and then there's Xcountry
-- a whole graduate course in itself. I can't even begin to see the
end of it, and that's just fine as far as I'm concerned. Sailing got a
bit boring after I'd spent a couple of decades doing it; soaring holds
at least as many challenges, maybe a whole lot more!

Hi Bill

This is like a disease - the enthusiasm presumably does wane (for some.
But I know many who have 20 and more years of soaring behind them and
still can't keep their eyes off the clouds.

Personally, can't wait for Saturday.

Bruce Greeff writes
Personally, can't wait for Saturday.

Ha. Don't tempt me. Saturday's forecast over here looks much better than
Sunday's. Wave should still be coming in off the Welsh mountains. Makes
no difference to me, but the boyish enthusiasm of the more experienced
pilots as they haggle for an aerotow up to catch it is infectious.

However, I'm told that I'm duty bound to go into town on Saturday to buy
a guitar for my eldest son's birthday. Not the sort of thing I can
delegate to my wife, unfortunately. I've tried advancing the argument
that we should delay his birthday by a week as the weather will probably
be lousy the following weekend, but they all think I'm joking. A joke in
apparently poor taste, but even so they refuse to take the suggestion
seriously ... Which, in terms of my continuing good health and state of
marital bliss, is probably for the best.

So Sunday it is. Forecast suggests it'll be "weak thermalling
conditions". Which doesn't phase me in the slightest, as every set of
conditions is a new experience at the moment g

--
Bill Gribble

On Thu, 9 Oct 2003 16:08:33 +0100, Bill Gribble
wrote:

....snippage....

So Sunday it is. Forecast suggests it'll be "weak thermalling
conditions". Which doesn't phase me in the slightest, as every set of
conditions is a new experience at the moment g

Any soaring you get between now and March will be a gift from the
gods. I've had my gift. I flew a club Discus last Sunday and reckon
that an unexpected treat because I figured the thermal factory had
shut down in mid-September. But - what a lovely day. Visibility from
3000 ft was about 46 miles. I could see the Wash quite clearly from
above Gransden Lodge. Lift was plentiful too. I had a couple of
thermals that put 5 kts on the averager and that was between 15:00 and
16:00. The only thing that could have improved it was if I was in the
Pegase instead.

Where do you fly? Assuming you're on a flatland airfield, if your club
makes an expedition to a ridge site during the winter you may want to
go for a few days. Talk to your instructors, of course, and go if they
think you're far enough along to benefit from a bit of ridge soaring.

I expect I'll pay my usual annual visit to Nympsfield between
Christmas and New Year.


--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :

Doesn't look too impressive till you realise that they're quoting thermal
strengths in Metres per second!

Ian