Sunday's Post-Flight Analysis

Dear Steve,

I get a lot of information about my flying by doing an intense post-flight analysis after every flight. 

I grab the IGC file from the PowerFLARM or the Nano, and upload it to OLC.  Our flight on Sunday was a really interesting flight with some low saves. When it's a really interesting flight, with some low saves, I'll convert it to a KMZ file to look around at the fields I was looking at in flight.  This builds a collection of off-field-landing insights that adds to my repertoire.  

Follow along with me.  

Install Google Earth

Download this KMZ file 

http://members.skylinesoaring.org/FLIGHTS/traces/2016-08-07T15:27:26Z-611.kmz

The OLC has an IGC to KMZ conversion program, but it's kind of ugly.  They don't include many points on the track, and there's no detail about the thermals. I made the above KMZ file with a program I wrote, that's hidden on the members-only section of the website.  I wrote it before OLC was a big thing.  I had grand visions for it, integrating into our instructional program, but those visions faded away. You can convert IGC to KMZ with the link:

http://members.skylinesoaring.org/TRACES/

Pull up the KMZ file in Google Earth. By default, the Google Earth shows everything in an absolute top-down view.  I find it more useful to look at the flight in a somewhat oblique angle.  View everything at an angle in Google Earth by holding down the Alt Key (Windows) or Command Key (Mac), while moving the mouse around on the screen with the left mouse button clicked.  Zoom in and out with the Mouse Wheel.  Once you get a feel for navigating around with Google Earth, go find our low point, which was next to the town of Tenth Legion, VA.  Each of those blobs are clickable, with the information that was recorded in the IGC file for that datapoint. 

During our Sunday flight, our low point 2178 feet MSL (!)

The field we were looking at -- the one that's at Tenth Legion -- looks like it definitely would have been long and flat enough for us to land in.  I wonder what the story is for this field. 

The field is at 1100 feet MSL, at 38º34'35.68"N 78º43'35.66"W. 

You can use the ruler tool in Google Earth to give you an idea about relative distances. Use it to draw a line on the ground, and it'll measure the distance over the terrain.  Let's see if that field sucked, or if it really was long enough for an outlanding. 

According to Google Earth's measurement tool, it's 1200 feet by 85 feet. 

It's a good thing that we found this thermal when we did! My "We gotta land if this doesn't work out" spider sense turned out to be right.  We were down to 1100 feet AGL over this field I was favoring. 

Let's take a look at the field you were looking at: 38º33'43.45"N 78º42'22.97"W

Hey! It doesn't look too bad!  It looked kind of lumpy to me from the air, but the altitude differences weren't that much around the field.

You can figure out the elevation of the terrain by moving your mouse around and looking at the readout for altitude on the bottom right of google earth.

The other low save wasn't nearly as low; even though we were in an interesting position. On the Eastern side of the Blue Ridge, near Syria, VA.  Low point of 3100 feet MSL. The mountains immediately underneath made it look lower than we actually were.  We had a lot of distance we could cover to find more lift or a landout field. 

While we were seeking that solid thermal to get us out of that mess, the field I had in mind looks pretty good. 1600 feet long, but complicated by trees on the approach.  The trees would reduce the usable length of the field, so that's a demerit. 

Landing it on the diagonal would have given us another 200 feet, which is what I probably would have done. 

There were many other options slightly to the north, between Peola Mills and Etlan, VA; just east of Old Rag. 

Here's the crummy photo I took from the iPhone when Romeo-Whiskey was turning too much for a good photo.  I couldn't get out the phone in time for us to fly with the Bald Eagle over Front Royal. 

Finally, there was a really really bright light that distracted us for a while.  What the heck was that light? We wondered if it could have been a helicopter with a landing light on it, pointing right toward us.  We flew toward it, I turned to the side, and there was no horizontal relative motion; then I turned back toward it.  The lack of horizontal movement means it was really far away. Shane quipped "It's a fishing lure", and Chuck suggested it might be that laser that they use to tell an aircraft that it's flying toward FRZ airspace. 

I found the part of the flight trace and projected the distance out.  

Projecting the distance out... it's pretty much right over the middle of the city.   I wonder if it was a building that was just pointed out the right way, reflecting all of its glass at us, or if it's really something more laser-y.  It's conceivable that it was a building in Rosslyn. Not likely to be Tyson's Corner. It could have been a glass building at Reston Town Center. 

I don't think it was the FRZ laser system.  That's supposed to flash red-green-red-green.  This was a solid bright yellow-ish white. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_DC_Metropolitan_Area_Special_Flight_Rules_Area#Laser_warning_system

I bet it was some perfectly aligned building. If I had some photos of the light, I could probably figure out which building it was with some triangulation, while using the GPS information. 

One of the cool functions of OLC is showing where you were flying with other gliders nearby.   Here, on our flight trace, you can see Romeo Whiskey following us along the blue ridge, and November Golf flying around us after we flew with that Bald Eagle over the town of Front Royal.

I hope you enjoyed the flight and found it to be educational and memorable. I hope it gave you some sort of idea why cross-country soaring is so much fun -- way more fun than grinding about, around the pattern all the time. 

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]

Ridge Soaring with Missy

Ah, it's that time of year. The time of year when the winds come briskly down from Canada, deflecting against the mountains in Virginia, and making for some excellent high speed soaring along the top of the mountain. 

I had a GoPro mounted on Sunday's flight, and made this short video. 

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!