On Sun, 02 Aug 2015 21:37:36 +0100, Caecilius wrote:

I'm a nervous flyer who spends a lot of time as a commercial aircraft
passenger. My number one anxiety is that freefall feeling when the plane
drops, like you'd get on a rollercoster (I don't like those either).

As a bet with myself, I bought a trial lesson at my local gliding club
in SE England. It started out with an aerotow to 2000 ft, which had a
bit of the dreaded turbulance (the instructor said "it's been a bit
bumpy all day"). But the rest of the flight was fun and when we landed
I'd have gone back up again if I could.

The turbulence effect has a lot to do with speed. Think racing power
boats slamming into waves versus a sail boat travelling at a similar
speed to the waves: the first goes BAM BAM into the waves while the
sailboat rides over them. Same effect: an airliner at 250+ knots punches
through air movements while a glider at 50-80 knots is slow enough to let
you feel the air movement for what it is and use it to keep the glider in
the air and fly it where you want to go.

Does anyone know if it's possible for people to overcome the fear of
freefall through gliding?

As somebody who, as a schoolboy, went through French Pass (NZ) in a DC3
(Dakota) piston engined airliner below the hilltops and banging up and
down 500 feet in the turbulence while thinking "Ride 'em Cowboy!" while
every sudden drop caused a massed REECCHH to ring round the cabin and
drown out the engines, I couldn't possibly comment!

I'm keen to do some more flying, but I wonder
if my fear will be a barrier for me.

Only you can know that. All I can say is that
(1)at typical gliding speeds the turbulence smooths out and
(2) you'll quickly learn that sequence of sink, cobble stones, surge
upward says you've just found a thermal and now is the time to circle in
it and ride it upwards.

Another question is winch vs aerotow. My local club does both. I did
aerotow, but I saw someone else winch launch. The winch is much
cheaper, but it looked really scary as an observer: the glider must have
been at a 45 degree angle, and I wonder what the accelleration in the
cockpit would be. I'd like to try a winch launch, but I'm worried that
it may be too much for me.

I LOVE winch launching. At first you'll think Bloody Hell, that
ACCELERATES and WTF just happened? Five or six launches later your brain
catches up and you start to follow it through. Most people are flying the
top of the launch after 10-15 launches and are being given control
earlier and earlier until they're flying the whole launch. In my club
you're flying complete winch launches before you're considered good
enough to try landing.

Can anyone give any insight to what it feels
like in the glider?

for the first few, you notice the acceleration and everything seems to
happen too fast to follow, but this quickly passes. After this the
acceleration feels normal and you notice only its lack if the winch isn't
working properly (or your instructor has asked for a power fade).

A winch launch is fast: on our winch you do 0-60 in five seconds (Ferrari
territory) and are off at 1200ft plus after 35 seconds, so things can go
wrong correspondingly fast. However a large part of winch training is to
teach you how to recognise developing problems and deal with them. By the
time you go solo you'll be up to speed on this. And, at my club all
pilots do a winch launch refresher each year to make sure we remain
sharp. This isn't a simple "Can yer still remember how the fly after the
winter layoff" test, but "If I put you in this situation, can you handle
it?".

Side comment: gliding in the UK is a no-blame culture. By this I mean
that nobody is bollocked for owning up to doing something stupid or
damaging something: it is treated as a learning opportunity. The only
crime is to not own up.

There are plenty of youtube vids, but they can't
show what it feels like.

Agreed: you have to do it to understand the sheer YES! of flying a good
launch, contacting and slotting into a thermal and flying up and away.

Re aero tows: a personal view. Most UK training gliders are stable during
a winch launch, but all gliders must be flown very accurately to hold
position behind a tug. I, personally found staying in position behind a
tug much harder than flying a winch launch. In addition, a winch launch
to 1200 ft takes 35 secs, while an aero tow to 2000ft is more like 5
minutes plus of intense concentration. I didn't get an aerotow tow solo
sign-off until I had been solo off the winch for over a year and that
felt about right.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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