When gliders fail in flight, but pilots manage to land
Someone told me once, that if I sailed a triangle with my boat without touching the tiller I would learn a ton about my boat. Very true. So only trimming sails, I sailed with only the sheets. Tacking without the tiller was very interesting. The boat was a 30ft etchells, monohull. I did, indeed, learn a ton.
So I thought I would try it in my glider. I flew a 50k triangle without touching the stick. Half with rudder and flaps, half with rudder alien. Learned a ton.
With flap, it was almost too easy. The flap is like having a low travel elevator.
Trimmed up slightly to allow a 360 turn I could manage wide thermal turns. Going straight with rudder alone I would need to kick rudder near the top of the phugoid oscillation in pitch, to damp it out. So it was a bit more zig zag than straight line.
But fun figuring it all out, and you will learn a lot about your aircraft.
They are all different in there dynamic stability. Mine at the time was a 304cz...
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