On May 6, 7:45*pm, Nyal Williams wrote:
If the tail wheel is on the ground, how can back pressure make the glider
lift off? *The AoA can't be increased; I'd say it lifts off when a
certain speed is reached with no stick movement at all.

(The real answer to the question in the header is "Thumb and two
fingers.)

At 23:04 06 May 2009, TonyV wrote:

Mike the Strike wrote:

The correct answer therefore depends on the ship, its hook location,
method of tow and weather conditions.

Yes, once again, "it depends". I think that Russell's advice is
generally good and is what I do on most gliders - except for my LS-6. I
used to get the glider off of the tail wheel as soon as possible but
found I had much longer than expected ground rolls. About 3 years ago,
as an experiment, I set the trim, left the stick neutral and kept the
tail wheel on the ground until a gentle back pressure at flying speed
caused the glider to lift one foot off of the ground with no hint of
ballooning and no stick pressure at all. I've been doing that ever
since. YMMV.

Tony V



Apparently not if you are Karl Striedieck. See A fine weekend... Not
an option in my motorglider. Right hand on stick. Left hand closes and
locks spoiler, left hand on throttle, left hand changing flap setting,
left hand blocking unintended spoiler open, left hand back to
throttle, left hand scratching head, ...

---

So Michael - the real answer is stop trying to learn to fly by asking
for opinions/voting on ras. You won't know enough yet to judge the
advice, a lot of which will conflict (e.g. depending on type of ship,
pilot skill etc.). If your flight instructor(s) can't answer these
questions and/or do not cover them as a natural part of the flight
training then go find somewhere else to learn to fly. This is not idle
commentary, if the basics are not being covered and/or you don't have
a relationship with your instructor(s) where you can discuss things
then maybe somebody will be scraping parts of you off the ground when
something goes horribly wrong.

And while flying with different instructors is often a good thing as
you get to share different teaching skills, ideas and tips but at an
early stage it can be a problem. If you have instructor blur speak up
and see if you can get with one instructor for the early training.

At an early stage your instructor may well want to ignore a lot of
detail and help you focus on specific relatively simple tasks (simple
only once you pass the uh ha! moment). That may be why they are not
getting into some topics with you. Again talk to them about this. If
that is the case, you might want to talk with them about when these
things will get covered in the training (they hopefully provided you
with a written practical training syllabus) and don't sweat those
details now.

Darryl