QQ Panel Upgrade

 During the COVID-19 shutdown in March through April 2020, I spent a lot of time and money to upgrade the instrument panel for my glider. 

When I first bought the glider, QQ was equipped with an ILEC SN-10B.  The ILEC SN-10B is quite old as far as flight computers go, but it's still quite capable for doing many navigational and contest tasks.  However, when I got the flight computer, there was a small problem with it.  One of the pins in that flight computer's serial cable had broken, which made it impossible to upload information into the SN-10.  I replaced the SN-10 with an LXNav 8080. 

I installed the LX8080 a few days before my first contest at Mifflin, and quite frankly had no idea how to operate it on the first day of the contest. By the end of the contest, I had figured out most of the things I needed to do to make it useful.  Over the next 3 years, I grew to master its function, and actually got to like it.  It was much better than the old SN-10 that it replaced. 

Around September of 2019, I started realizing that this flight computer, although capable, was rather small for my aging eyes.  It is only the size of a standard 80mm diameter flight instrument.  While this size is quite convenient for making it a drop-in replacement for most other instruments, it's really not a good size for many of the new features that are in the later models of the flight computers from the same manufacturer. 

I had ordered brand new blank instrument panels from the glider's manufacturer in August of 2019. By December 2019, I had ordered all of the equipment for the replacement panel.  Items started showing up in January and February. I had a friend do most of the work in cutting out the holes in the panel with a laser cutter, a router, some drills, some files and sandpaper. 

I spent many evenings wiring up the back of the panel. I sent a nightly email to the certified aircraft inspector who decided to mentor me through this whole thing.  

By June, I was flying with the new instrument panel. The whole task of doing the panel upgrade was a huge effort and deserves a page of its own. 

Functionality test to ensure all components got power
(and nothing caught on fire)

After everything was installed, we performed a weight and balance. I created a Google Sheets document to simplify the task of handling all the data for weight and balance (W&B): pilot mass, parachutes, wing water, tail water.  There are many things that have to be verified when handling the weight and balance.  If there are any items out of the required parameters, the checklist shows a warning or an error bar.  All of the numbers show up on steam gauges on the spreadsheet. 

Weight and balance for two heavy pilots, still flyable!

Final installation, front seat

Final installation, rear seat

Winch Training at Eastern Soaring Center

Recently, a commercial gliding operation has opened up within a [relatively] short driving distance from home.

Eastern Soaring Center has opened for business.  They offer a dedicated environment to help students work on all of the fundamentals of soaring, except for aerotowing.

This operation is run by Brian Collins. Brian is retired Air Force. He has been flying gliders since his days at the Air Force Academy. He has been giving glider instruction at many different glider clubs across the US, including the Civil Air Patrol encampments in Mattoon Illinois. In 2013, Brian was also the first or second US citizen to get the 1250 kilometer distance flight badge.

I made an appointment to get my winch launch certification.  I've never done a winch launch before, and I've never seen a winch operation in action before.  Back in the old days, most glider pilots had the words "Glider - Aero Tow Only" printed on their pilots certificate.  In 1997 this certification was obsoleted.  Since 1997, all you need is a logbook endorsement for any of the launch methods: Aero-tow, winch, or self-launch.

For all of the 1800 glider flights I've done in the past, it's been on the end of a 200 foot rope connected to an airplane with a strong enough engine.  The acceleration on takeoff is slower than the acceleration you'd experience in a car merging into traffic on a freeway.  Once the glider has enough airspeed, the glider gets airborne usually just before the tow plane starts to climb. The tow plane and glider climb to release altitude, where the glider pulls a release knob, and lets the tow plane go. This usually takes about 6 minutes to climb to 3000 feet.

In contrast, a winch is a power plant that stays on the ground.  Hook up a 300 horsepower engine to a spool of 5000 feet of cable on one end.  Hook up the glider on the other end.  When the glider is ready, gun the engine. The majority of that 300 horsepower is dedicated to the glider's acceleration.  Within 1 to 2 seconds, the glider is off the ground.  Within 40 seconds, the glider has climbed to its highest point, and released to start its free-flight.

Eastern Soaring Center's Winch. The pickup truck is a mass anchor that helps keep the winch in position.

When launching with the winch, the acceleration is really hard to describe.  The closest thing I can use to describe the acceleration is when sitting in a Tesla that is accelerating in ludicrous speed mode. After the slack is taken out, the winch's engine RPM is gunned to maximum. The glider has accelerated to flying speed within 1 to 2 seconds.

Eastern Soaring Center's Twin Lark climbs out on a winch launch

The next 2 to 5 seconds, the glider increases its climb angle.  Not too quickly, and not too slowly. Too quick of a increase in pitch, and the glider risks having an acceleration stall and crashing into the ground.  Too slow of an increase in pitch and the glider doesn't climb as well.
This critical phase of the launch is also when a break of the rope could be disastrous. If the rope breaks, the pilot must immediately recognize it and immediately lower the nose well below the horizon.  We practiced this emergency release several times at varying altitudes.  Here's a video of one such break, from the Netherlands.

In the United States, a winch launch is a relatively rare procedure. This is much more common launch method in Europe. The British Gliding Association recently had a safety initiative to improve the safety record of winch launching. After their initiative (Safe Winch Launching at the BGA's website) the accident rate dropped significantly. The safety record of winch launching has improved to a lower accident rate than what is seen with the aerotow launch method.

One of the best advantages of the winch is the lower operating cost. With an aerotow, all of the glider pilots who use the tow plane for launches are sharing the creeping costs of the tow plane.  Every hour the tow plane flies, it is ticking ever closer to the eventual overhaul.  Every airplane that has an engine needs to have its engine removed, and essentially is totally rebuilt every thousand or 1500 hours.   Also adding to the cost of an aerotow is the training required for a tow pilot.  The cost is mitigated by using a volunteer work force in a club environment. At a commercial establishment, the tow pilot is going to expect to be paid. The cost of fueling the tow plane is rather unpredictable. Fuel that is suitable and certified for an airplane is much more expensive than the fuel you use in your car.

The advantage I'm most interested in is availability.  Sometimes I see the weather forecast and know that it is going to be one of the best flying days of the year.  Unfortunately, that day is a Tuesday. One of the disadvantages of being a weekend-only flyer is that there is a poor chance that the good flying day is going to end up on a weekend. About 28% chance, that is.
Sometimes the really good flying days mean exciting takeoff and landings for the tow pilot. While I only have to endure one take off and one landing on the really good flying days, our tow pilot must subject himself to as many takeoffs and landings as there are brave pilots willing to fly that day.  Sometimes when I come in for a landing on those days, I'm just happy I made one landing.  To think that the tow pilot has to do this a dozen times on these days is commendable. Many times, the tow pilot will cry "uncle" after a few launches, when conditions are too sporty for him.  While there are times the winch operator is going to call it quits because of sporty flying conditions, I don't think the number will be as high.

Eastern Soaring Center's Twin Lark is ready for
launch (yes, without a wing runner)

There were only three people involved in this operation. The winch operator, the instructor, and me. For all winch launches you need to have a wing runner. If the glider's wingtip ever drags into the ground, the glider violently cartwheels and is destroyed.  These sorts of accidents are often fatal. The only solution is an immediate release of the rope.
To do this operation without having a wing runner, Brian created these cool wing skids.  They are the right height, covered with soft carpet, and steady the wings better than a wing runner can.

After 9 flights with Brian, training me to do a winch launch, he was ready to solo me.  We had covered all of the emergency procedures. We practiced most of these, varying from 20 feet of altitude to 400 feet of altitude.  Depending on the point of release, we would do S turns, a 360, or a straight ahead landing after the rope break.  Brian let me go for a solo flight, and I was excited as I was when I had my first solo at age 15, back in 1988.
On the second day, Brian and his son Marshall worked to get me 5 solo flights in the Twin Lark. The airfield at Petersburg is long enough to stage the glider at 2/3rds down the runway.  I launch to a satisfactory altitude of 1700 feet above the ground. I circled around, landed, and stopped within 10 feet of the previous launch.  Brian hooked me up, and I was off again.  I've never done 5 takeoffs and landings so quickly before!
My next challenge is to do a winch launch on a good ridge day, and then go out and do a diamond altitude climb ( 5000 meters of altitude climb, 16,404 feet), or a 500 kilometer diamond distance course.  Now that I'm checked out, I'm looking forward to the challenge.
I'm going to recommend that some of my students come visit Brian. Especially the students who can't figure out that last few moments of flying phase.  If you need landing practice, doing the winch launch is a great way to pound out some flights really quickly.

SSA Convention Second Day

I missed the earliest morning session because I slept in a bit. I managed to make it to the second session to hear a very technically intense presentation about the design and building of Schempp-Hirth's newest racing glider, the Ventus 3.

The Ventus 3 had its first flight a few months ago.  The flight testing hasn't been going very well, simply because the weather hasn't been very good for flight testing in Germany.
http://www.schempp-hirth.com/en/company/latest-updates/latest-updates-details/news/detail/News/the-new-ventus-flies-102.html

I got into the presentation rather late, and didn't get a good seat at the front of the audience. The presentation included many graphs that described many of the design decisions they made.

Later in the afternoon, I really enjoyed the "Concordia Lessons Learned" presentation by Dick Butler. The Concordia was designed as a one-of-a-kind racing glider with the most outrageous wingspan that could ever be built.

When you design a glider that has a 55 to 1 aspect ratio (that means the wing span is 55 times as long as the chord length), you're going to have wiggly wimbly-bimbly bouncy wings, unless you do some serious engineering to solve that problem.  So they had to consider how to resist the twisting, find a way to keep the wings from bouncing around so much that they flutter in high-speed flight.  They had a really neat solution.  They sacrificed a small bit of slow speed performance to maintain the high speed performance by doing a special type of lay-up that resisted stretching on the skin of the wing.

They still have to have water ballast, in order to get the wing loading they needed to make the racing glider fast, so they had to make water ballast tanks in front of and behind the main spar.  They needed extra wing strength, so instead of using Styrofoam in their composite, they used balsa wood.  But it couldn't be any kind of balsa wood, it had to be balsa wood with a very specific mass.

They had to consider the size of the horizontal stabilizer: It couldn't be too big, because that would reduce the performance of the glider by making extra drag.  They started with a Schleicher ASW-27 horizontal stabilizer, shrunk it by 10 centimeters on each side, and ended up with a what seems to be "way too small" horizontal stabilizer.  The advantage of this is to make the empennage more efficient.  The downside of this, however, is that there is a lot more sensitivity to the center of gravity.  The center of gravity range is only 2.5 centimeters.  Everything is OK, so long as the pilot (with parachute) is exactly 85 kilograms.

The results of this amazing achievement in aeronautical engineering is a glider that can cruise with unbelievable performance.  It has a maximum glide ratio somewhere around 70 to 1.  That means for every thousand feet of altitude lost, the glider is going to go about 13.3 statute miles. My Duo Discus usually sits around 7 miles per thousand feet.

To make things even more amazing, the glider has a 50:1 glide ratio at 115 knots.  It has a better glide ratio at 115 knots than most high performance gliders have at 50 knots.   What an amazing bird!

I attended a Luncheon "SSA Focus on the Clubs".  I sat next to Mark Wilson.  The name seemed familiar.  He's the guy I bought my old LS-4 from back in 2002. After eating, Frank Whiteley hosted the discussion.  Subjects covered were things like "How does a club schedule flying operations, tow pilot, instructor availability, and glider usage?"  One club in Canada uses "Click'nGlide", a utility very popular in France.   Another discussion was how the SSA saves money by having clubs all register at the same time with their club. There was a smaller discussion about how clubs are now sharing notes on a Google Groups discussion group called "Chapters-SSA." It's an invitation-only group that shares notes similar to the discussions that were held during this meeting.

Frank Whitley shows off the Google Group Chapters-SSA  (invite only)

The next presentation that I attended was by Sean Fidler, and the topic was
How to use SeeYou for post flight analysis.  Sean has a YouTube channel, where he takes the flight traces from the winners of soaring contests and compares them to his own flying. After watching a lot of replays with the 3-D viewing function of SeeYou, he has made many observations about the mistakes he made, the successes that the winners always make. Sean has a YouTube channel where he describes what competitors did during various sailplane races.

Sean Fidler shows SeeYou for a recent National competition

Karl Striedieck had a presentation describing the different birds that you may encounter while soaring. I didn't take very good notes about this, and was too far back to get any pictures.  

The final presentation I attended today was hosted by the Soaring Safety Foundation. The topic was "Using Scenario-Based Training" to enhance flight instruction.  Sure, flight instructors do a great job teaching a student how to monkey the controls effectively to do the maneuvers.  But in many organizations, the ideas of how a student could handle a certain situation comes up a little short. Airlines use the term LOFT, and the SSF uses the term PAVE. Consider the Pilot, Aircraft, enVironment, and External pressures when presenting a scenario.  FAA Advisory Circular 61-98C mentions that the instructor should use Scenario-Based Training for the ground portion of a 61.56 flight review.  After seeing this presentation, I realize that there are some improvements to be made.  I'm going to have to have with the instructors in my flying club. 

I spent very little time on the show room floor, but managed to take enough time out of my busy schedule to get some more pictures of the gliders. But still, not nearly enough time looking at the gliders.  This is a Pipistrel Taurus motorglider. I've been fascinated with this glider, and up until now, I've never seen one in person.

Pipistrel Taurus M

 And what would an SSA convention be without a beautifully restored SGS 1-26 on the showroom floor.

The shiniest 1-26 I've ever seen

I took a picture of Shane Neitzey's flight simulator rig, that somehow didn't make it into yesterday's blog post.  So here it is:

Shane and Valerie let visitors try out the "Illudium G-36 glider flight simulator"

Video along the Ridge

A few days before Christmas, I got to take some friends along the ridge for some flights in my Duo.  One of the passengers, Craig Sutherland -- documented the flight with his hand-held GoPro.

I also mounted my GoPro, but didn't look at the settings closely enough when I mounted it.  I have 5 pictures stored from my GoPro; each time a nice picture of me fiddling with my cell phone trying to get the video camera to start recording.  I guess I need to work on that technique a bit more.

Ridge Soaring the Massanutten 2015-12-15 from cu on Vimeo.

Saturday Soaring with Keith

With a brisk northwesterly wind in the forecast for the weekend, Saturday and Sunday were both shaping up to be a great weekend to be a glider pilot.  I wrote one of my former students, Keith, if he wanted to go ridge running with me in the Duo Discus. He quickly accepted the offer.
We arrived reasonably early, assembled the glider, and spent some time trying to figure out why the SN-10B still isn't talking to the NANO III flight computer.  Several things were pried open, checked out, and still no firm conclusions as to why the NMEA input isn't making it into the SN-10.  That's still on the things I need to get solved on my new glider.  The flight computer has limited functionality while there's no GPS feed, and I can use maps and the tiny visual display on the Nano for navigation.
Once airborne, I got the glider down the ridge.  We were the so-called "Ridge Dummies" -- the first glider up for the day, to test out the wind direction and strength on the ridge.  Once I confirmed that the ridge was working, I called back to home base, reporting that the ridge was working. We maintained 3000 feet at about 80 knots along the top of the Massanutten mountain range.  For a short while, we met up with 3 or 4 hang gliders, launching out of the Woodstock Hang Glider launch area.
The day was also shaping up to be good for thermal activity, too. I followed a street westbound, and crossed over the Virginia / West Virginia border.  We passed north of the Bryce ski resort, and I even got far enough west that I had the Grant County airport in sight. As we continued west, the thermals got more sparse, and had less strength. We descended from the comfortable 6500 feet down to about 4000 feet as we searched for lift.
Whenever I'm flying with somebody, I often ask them, "Still having fun?"  "How are you doing up there?".  Keith responded through the flight with enthusiastic rapid responses, "Doing great!" "Really enjoying myself!" As we approached our westernmost point, with ever decreasing altitude, I asked again:
"Still having fun?"
There were a few moments of nervous silence coming from the front seat.  "I'd really like to see the needles pointing upward" Keith was growing ever more uncomfortable with our situation. His comment indicated that he would rather we be in lift. The safety of flight was never in jeopardy: there were some magnificent, large fields 2 miles to the northwest, next to the town of Lost City, WV. If somehow the thermals abruptly stopped producing lift, that field next to the town center would have been longer and wider than the airport we took off from. We also still had plenty of altitude to make a downwind dash across the Shenandoah valley back to Short Mountain, next to Mount Jackson, VA.
I connected with the thermal that I was sure was located under a white puffy cloud, and climbed back up to a comfortable altitude.  Soon, we were headed west again, back to Short Mountain.
On the way toward Short Mountain, we hit a very minor small bit of turbulence. I heard a very loud noise. "CRACK!" It sounded like a lead weight had fallen off of a table, and slammed onto the bottom of the back of the fuselage.  Since I was in the back seat, it was especially loud.   I had a few moments of cautious discomfort, with images in my mind of the empennage suddenly disintegrating behind me; pieces of expensive fiberglass and carbon fiber departing the aircraft.   The controls still worked. Keith and I talked about it briefly, and got on with the flight, after determining that the aircraft was still apparently intact.
We did ridge soaring down to the southern end of the Massanutten mountain system, in close proximity to the Massanutten ski resort.  I stopped at a waypoint called "Laird's Knob", where Keith got out his camera to get some great pictures of the fresh fall foliage on the nearby mountain.

Just above the ridge top, where you can see the radio tower. Laird's Knob

Laird's Knob, and radio tower

Laird's Knob, radio tower, gravel rockslide; where there are no trees

After hanging out over Laird's Knob, I followed a cloud street eastbound, where the clouds looked best.  We connected with an incredibly strong thermal, and climbed at 900 feet per minute to as close to cloud base as I could legally get. We were so amazed about the 9.9 knots shown on the flight computer for average lift, that I had Keith take several pictures.  Unfortunately, the peak strength of the thermal was a few moments before this picture was taken.

The "8.9" in the upper-right corner of the flight computer indicates the upward velocity averaged over that last 30 seconds, in knots

The thermal was so strong, I asked Keith, "Hey, we could go down to Waynesboro!" The conditions were really that strong. Keith instead opted to go north, back to home base. We had been up for 2 hours, and I guess he was getting cold.

Along the way, we got some nice photos of Skyline Drive, along the Blue Ridge mountains.  It's near peak foliage, and Skyline Drive was packed with "LeafPeepers" -- tourists who wanted to see the National park in all its glory.

Looking North, towards Thornton Gap

That looks like an excellent thermal over there!

Looking East, towards Culpeper, VA

After a glorious flight along the Blue Ridge, where we just bopped along at altitude, without stopping to work lift, we did a final glide back to the airport.  By the time we landed, things were getting pretty overcast and grey.  The weather was much colder.

Final glide back to the airport, overhead at about 2400 feet MSL

Keith recorded my approach and landing.  We had a crosswind coming from the right on final, and I think I did a pretty good job practicing a side slip to attain runway centerline alignment.  I'm still trying to figure out how to land this new glider of mine. :)

Back on the ground, safe and sound!

 During the post-flight inspection, I determined the cause of the sudden bang in-flight. I don't normally seal the wing root with the fuselage on this glider.  The previous owner did a great job of sealing the joints with some foam.  This way, the air won't leak in between the fuselage and wing root, causing whistling noises in-flight.   One of the pieces of foam has come loose, and it causes the glider to squeak in some particular attitudes in flight.  So this flight, I taped up the wing root to prevent the noise from happening. The tape I used isn't much different than white electrical tape that you would find in a hardware store.
In flight, the conditions were cold enough, and the tape was stretched tight enough that the gap seal tape ruptured catastrophically.  The whole right wing had a rip up the seam in between the wing root and the wing.   I guess the next time I buy gap seal tape, I don't buy the cheap stuff.  Also, when I tape up the wings, I'll give a little room for the tape to stretch when the wings bounce around in turbulence.

While only flying for 3 hours, I managed to rack up 247 OLC points.  I'm pretty sure we could have made it to Waynesboro and back, without any stress about returning to Front Royal.

My flight [OLC]

My Duo Discus

It's been a long time coming.

Back in 2007, when I first visited Switzerland, I had occasion to visit the soaring club located in Bern.   There, I fell in love with their Duo Discus.  It's not the first time I fell in love with a Duo Discus.  I got a flight review in one when I was in California on a business trip.  I visited Williams Soaring Center, where Rex Mayes gave me a flight review in one.

SG Bern's Duo Discus, as seen in June 2007

I could not get over how a glider club could have so many fantastic gliders to choose from. Including a selection of Duo Discus gliders as well as ASK-21 gliders for training. It would not even occur to them to do primary training in a junky old SGS 2-33.

Fast forward to 2013.  

I saw that a used Duo Discus was suddenly up for sale, located in California. It was probably the same Duo Discus that I did my flight review with Rex Mayes of Williams Soaring Center. It appeared in the classified section of Wings and Wheels, and promptly disappeared from the market within a few weeks.  I might have said something like "If I see a Duo Discus come onto the market again, I'm going to seriously take advantage of that opportunity!" 

Fast forward to April 2015: 

Lima India, the Duo Discus featured in the movie "A Fine Week of Soaring" by Juan Mandelbaum, had gone up for sale. I discussed details about the glider with one of the four owners.  The glider was nearing 15 years old, with only 800+ hours.  The condition of the wings was rated 80% by the owner. 

Within a few weeks, the market for used Duo Discus gliders started to have more examples: A Duo Discus owned by Karl Striedieck, and a Duo Discus refinished by Rex Mayes, located in Minden Nevada came up for sale. A glut of Duo Discuses on the market!

A few weeks after that, the prices started dropping. Lima India lowered its price by a significant portion, followed by Karl Striedieck's Kilo Sierra.   The Duo Discus in Nevada hasn't changed its price. 

On Tuesday, 30 June 2015, I purchased Karl Striedieck's Duo Discus.  The following weekend, I had all the members come and help me assemble it, and gawk at its sheer beauty.  Of course, with all those members there, there were some people standing around long enough to take pictures of the first assembly! 

Getting Kilo Sierra's fuselage out of the trailer

The wings are still in the trailer

Left wing already mounted, right wing coming out of the trailer

Mounting the right wing

It was kind of stuck and not fitting into the slot without some force

Right wing almost mounted

Both wings fully secured, now to install the wingtips

OK, the wings are on, time to put on the wingtip extensions

Installing the left outer wing section

We tried to figure out how to inflate the rear tire

Fully assembled and ready to fly!

I got to sit in the front seat and see how it fit.  Seems to suit me just fine!

I got the whole gang to take a picture with the new glider

I had a flight instructor come along for the ride

I sure do look happy!

(All photos of the Duo KS were taken by Kaye Ebelt)

---

The last photo was taken while the glider was lined up on the runway for the next takeoff.  The tow pilot came back and reported that the low clouds that had plagued us all morning long had gotten lower.  So I waited for a good 30 minutes for the clouds to give us a good clearance to continue flying.
Unfortunately, the clouds soon turned into rain.  Since this is a brand new glider (to me, at least), I wasn't really keen on putting the glider back into the trailer while the wind and rain was covering all of us, so I elected to put the bird away early.  I didn't even get to fly my new glider yet!
I'll get to have my maiden flight in my glider eventually!