Towlines
The Newsletter of the
From the President By Bob Hudson
Happy
Thanksgiving
We hosted
an informal fly-in that involved pilots (and planes) from
To
celebrate the capture of the second On-Line Contest, we held a steak fry in the
soaring museum hangar and were able to also be a part of the awarding of the
FAAs Master Aviator Award to Al Santilli.
Our own JD Huss spearheaded the effort, to see Al receive this award,
and it was all accomplished clandestinely (a complete surprise to Al). I can’t think of any one more deserving of
the award than Al. Those of us who have
had our lives and aviation endeavors touched by Al are better for it.
Additionally,
we recognized three pilots who made significant contributions to our on-line
efforts: Chip Garner, Mark Mocho and Billy Hill. The accomplishments of these three not only
brought honor on to them but helped to spread the word that the Albuquerque
Soaring Club is the “Gunfighter” all the rest are shooting at. The club decided
to honor these guys with shirts that reflect their achievements.
Lastly, we
don’t want to forget the long list of aviators who reached a personal goal or
milestone in their aviation careers during the last year. Pilots like Geoff Aiken and Bryan Wilson,
both who soloed during the last couple of months. Guys, like Brian Morrison,
who just received his instructor’s rating and will be a great addition to our
training staff.
So you see
there is a lot of things to be thankful for.
Two thousand and five was a rewarding year and that just means two
thousand and six will even be better.
And speaking of 2006, we have a couple of things in the works. One, any member who gets an article printed
in the SSA Magazine will receive a $35 credit towards their club bill, so all
you Hemingway’s hit the keyboards.
Second, we are attempting to expand our OLC participation. We will have, soon, a club Data Logger so
that more members can contribute to the effort.
(The down side is that prior to using the data logger we will have to
arrange some training on how to use the equipment.) By the way Al is making arrangements to equip
Alpha Sierra with a data logger so expect to see Al’s flights showing up this
spring. Lastly we have an Operations
training program that will be rolled out soon, so we will be able to better
serve our flyers.
In closing
the year is drawing to a close and that means it is time to posture for the
future. We will have a club wide meeting
on the 10th of December (9:30 am) at the airport, to select your
Board and Appointed Officers for the upcoming year. All of you who wish to contribute, continue,
or whatever please show and offer your support for 2006. Like I said it has been a great and
interesting year, let’s continue that momentum into the next year.
Fly high,
fly long, fly safe. Bob
“To fly a kite is to hold God’s
hand.” Daniel C. Hawkins
ASC Annual Awards
Banquet
It will be
held on Saturday January 21st at the Marriott Pyramid Hotel in the
Kokopelli Ballroom.
The
arrangements will be pretty much as last year.
There will be a cash bar from 6.30 pm with dinner slated to start at
about 7.45 pm. Two main dishes will be
offered: a garlic and herb crusted prime rib (with the difference this year
being that it will be properly cooked to
medium rare), and a maple lacquered salmon. A vegetarian alternative will also be
available. Dinner will include a
spinach salad and a wicked chocolate desert.
Cost: $30 a
person.
Dinner will
be followed by a speaker (details later), a presentation by Chip Garner on the
first world’s F1 sailplane races in
Reservations
to a board member or to Howard Banks (tel: 505-821 2651 or email:
HBSoar@Comcast.net).
Badges do count By Jimmy Wier
“We don’t
need no stinking badges” is a fairly common cry around gliding – though mostly
it comes from those without badges or those who have failed in the
attempt. This negative attitude also
misses a key point: badges mark a pilot’s progress, step-by-step – and
especially for new pilots they also act as encouragement for ever greater
endeavour.
The
stepping stones that are the most likely for new pilots at Moriarty are the
C-badge (which requires a flight of more than one hour) and the Silver C, which
involves a cross-country flight of 50 km (31.25 miles), a flight of over 5
hours duration and a height gain of around 3,300 ft. All three elements can be combined in one flight.
Once a
pilot is truly cross-country capable, waiting are the Gold and Diamond badges,
and the new 750 km diploma. The full
SSA/FAI requirements for badges are on the club web site.
The fact
is, however, that the club has been pretty lax about encouraging new pilots to
claim their badges, and so mark their progress, and that our newer pilots have
been making badge-worthy flights that have not been acknowledged.
The club’s
instructors plan to organize to get greater participation in the early badge programs. But Ops also have a part to play, too. When they see that new pilots have stayed up
for well over an hour, they should ask if they have already claimed their C
badge. And then direct them to study the rules on the web site, get and fill in
the forms and get them signed.
Silver C
requires carrying a barograph or a logger.
The club now has a stand-alone logger that can be used, though there is
bound to be heavy competition for its use.
The club also has Winter barographs, though these are designed to test a
pilot’s fortitude, requiring smoking a foil that records the flight and then
spraying it afterwards to seal it and so prevent smearing the flight into
oblivion. It is, however, worth getting
into the habit of using one because you never know just how wonderful a day may
prove to be.
In short,
badges are important stepping stones in a new pilot’s flying career, they have
their own excitement, the pilot gets a pin to show they have joined the ranks
of real glider pilots, and they get to see their name in Soaring.
Planned soaring at
Taos
Thanks to
Angel Pala, the club is planning a soaring safari to Taos next year.
Dates: June
23, 24 and 25, which have been picked to avoid conflict with the region 9
contest slated to be held at Turf Soaring starting Memorial Day weekend.
There will
be limited space available. Make your
reservations to Angel, who will also be obtaining preferential rates at a local
motel. Angel is also working on group
dinners for the Friday and Saturday evening.
If the last
excursion to Taos in 2004 is anything to go by, this should be a blast – great
soaring from a prime location, great organization and fun socializing.
Wave worries By Billy Hill
By now you
may have heard of the ASH-26e which came from together in the wave some where
around Minden. The pilot was able to
bail out after having the wings separate from the fuselage. What caused the wings to come off the glider
was not turbulence as one might suspect, but spatial disorientation on the part
of the pilot from flying without visual reference to the ground.
The glider
was equipped for instrument flight, that is to say it could be flown in
clouds. In order to do that, the
sailplane had an electric turn and bank.
However, the pilot had it turned off in order to conserve his
battery. When he realized he had become
enveloped by the lennies, he turned the instrument on but because of the spool
up time, (that time required for the gyros to wind up and make the turn and
bank function), he entered a descending turn.
The life
span of a non-instrument rated pilot, or even an instrument-rated pilot without
functional instruments, is measured not in minutes, but is seconds. Let me say that again. If you find yourself in clouds and are not
trained and/or equipped to fly in them you will most likely die within a matter
of seconds.
Here is
what happens.
Your inner
ear will promptly lead you astray in that it will cause you to think, (because
you have no outside visual reference), that the aircraft/sailplane is doing
something other than what is actually happening. Next you notice the airspeed in increasing,
so you pull back on the stick. What is
actually happening to the glider is that it is in a descending spiral, but the
only reference you have is that of the airspeed indicator which shows the
increasing airspeed, so you do the natural thing; you pull back on the
stick. The airspeed continues to
accelerate at a greater rate so you pull back even harder. By now the adrenalin is flowing and your
pucker meter has just exceeded 103 percent, so you don’t notice the “G”s you
are pulling, but the glider does.
Next thing
you hear is a loud crack as the wings are peeled off the sailplane. In the
recent accident, the pilot (instrument rated) says he went IFR in an instant
and, with no strong stick forces, the wings came off with just a snap!
This all
may seem to happen very quickly as you don’t think you are actually going that
fast. Keep in mind true airspeed
increases at about two percent per thousand so at 17,000 feet, an indicated
airspeed of 100 knots equates to a true airspeed of 134 knots which is
certainly above the maneuvering speed and may be above the red line of your
sailplane. The indicated airspeed is a
reference for you, the pilot. It could
be ergs per eon, but that is not very timely so you get knots or miles per
hour. Your sailplane recognizes both
true airspeed and if you are high enough, Mach speed. Both the maneuvering speed and red line are
based on these values. On the other
hand, the glider may start to flutter as you go blasting through the red line
which in turn will give you perhaps a second or two of warning before the wings
are shed.
The other
scenario is that you pass out from the ‘G’ force before the wings come off. Unless you have the good fortune to bail out
of what is left of your sailplane, as the pilot in the Sierra wave did, you are
going to die!
Chip Garner
was witness to just such an accident during the World Championships in New
Zealand. He said that at first he
thought it was a mid-air collision, but as we now know, it turned out to be a
situation similar to the one mentioned above.
When
teaching new prospective instrument pilots unusual attitudes like increasing
airspeed, the first thing we have them do is to retard the throttle. Secondly, since the airspeed in increasing,
we have them level the wings and only then do we have them pull out of what is
now a dive. When airspeed in decreasing
we have them increase power, lower the nose and then level the wings. The idea here is to keep from stalling the
aircraft.
Since very
few of our sailplanes are equipped for instrument flight, we need to know how
to avoid getting into the above mentioned situation in the first place.
Carl Ekdahl
and I were once discussing wave flying and he told me of a flight in wave where
he was parked at the front of the lennies and all at once he found himself
being surrounded by the wave clouds.
Although
the lennies appear to be stationary, they are in fact very fluid in that they move
forward and aft within the structure of the wave system. Most likely this has something to do with the
moisture content of the air moving through each iteration of the wave cycle. I’m no meteorologist, (although I play one
off TV), but this is as good a guess as any.
The bottom line is that you need to know that when you are parked in the
wave and not moving, the wave is. Under
the right circumstances it will reach out and swallow you up in cloud. One way to avoid this problem is not to park
in the wave, but to fly parallel to the wave, (after factoring in the wind
correction angle.) This also increases
the likelihood of seeing fast movers and being seen by same.
There is a
good deal of information to be gleaned from text books on the subject of wave
flying and a reasonably sharp pilot can read up on the subject and then most
likely identify and fly in the wave without benefit of instruction from someone
who has experience in doing so. I’m not
suggesting that choosing to learn wave flying by trial and error is wrong, but
why would you want to do that when there are some very experienced pilots who
can assist you with this endeavor?
Thought for the day: There are very few absolutes in
life, but here is one of them. Don’t
land early on a good cross country day simply
because you think the next day will be better.
See you at
the airport.