On Sun, 11 Oct 2015 09:09:00 -0600, Dan Marotta wrote:

I get stuck on the attitude of "giving up and heading for the pattern".
What works for me is to keep trying until I must lower the gear, turn
base, and land. There's no pattern (for me, at least) when flying that
low. Pick a a touchdown spot early, on airport or off, and work the
lift until you feel that your touchdown spot will soon become out of
reach. Maybe you'll drift to a location where there's another safe
landing spot, maybe not. The comfort comes from developing that feeling
for the glider and its response to your input.

Well said.

In addition, the 'several hundred' winch launches shouldn't be needed: a
good summer's local soaring should do the job for a signed-off solo
pilot. Realistically thats no more than 100 launches at the outside.

Don't forget that all the critical stuff, such as being able to fly
approaches from any point round the field onto any sensible run on the
field and getting rid of any fixation on using local landmarks when
judging circuits and landings, should have been covered pre-solo.
Similarly, dealing with cable breaks and winch failures at various
heights and stages in the launch should have been adequately covered
before getting the winch sign-off.

I did essentially all my training on the winch, soloing on my 80th flight
and being sent off in a Junior to complete Silver C with the distance
flight (off the winch) as my 207th launch as soon as I've been signed off
for the Bronze XC endorsement. A quick logbook scan says that, of those
207 flights, 11 were aero tows [1] and 4 were in an SF-25 TMG[2].

[1] That was for a spin demo in our Puchacz. Our summer instructor that
year knew how to spin an ASK-21 without any tail weights, etc. and so I
got my spin sign-offs in the ASK-21 with him off winch launches on good,
thermally days

[2] three of these SF-25 flights were normal take-offs. The remaining one
was a winch launch - I was visiting Nympsfield and got offered a ride
over to Aston Down (my first on type) in an SF-25, which was fitted with
a winch hook on its u/c strut. Its owner had it winched for the return
flight to show me what it could do. It felt very odd to be going up the
wire with the prop brake set to keep the prop clear of the cable and one
blade stationary in front of us (a 3-blader before you ask). Once
released at 1300, we glided around a bit before making an air start at
900 ft and flying back to NYM to soar the ridge a bit before landing.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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