On 6/3/2019 7:58 AM, Charles Ethridge wrote:

Snip...

In powered planes, one can use the engine to stay in place, but with a
glider, assuming that you do not have a hammer and a "claw" ground tie-down
to tie down the nose of the glider, wouldn't the strong wind move you
backwards, perhaps breaking the tail assembly?

And if you get lifted off by a gust, couldn't that technique prove deadly?

But then if that technique is inherently dangerous, what is a less
dangerous technique? Quartering the glider into the wind and sitting on
the upwind wing? I don't remember reading that one either in any of my
glidering books. For that matter, I don't remember reading about ANY
approaching thunderstorm landout techniques in any of my glidering books.

What have you done in this situation that has worked out well...and not?
Lotta good questions, lotta sortsa winds/sailplanes, & lotta useful techniques...

I distinguish between strong *shifty* (in a directional sense) winds, and
'merely' strong, directionally-steady, winds. In the absence of being tied
down, the latter are less problematic in my experience.

The short-form answer is: "What's best to do depends on the (ship) details."
(The devil is ALWAYS in the details!) F'r'example, 15-meter tail-dragging
glass is quite different from (say) a 1-26, or a 2-33, or a nose-dragging G-103.

In the inter-mountain west, shifty/gusty ground winds are common...as are
wingtips banging against the ground of unaccompanied, untied-down ships, at
every gliderport from which I've flown. In every case I've watched or known
the details of, the wingtip banging has been of ships whose upwind wing was
"held down" by a parachute or old tire. The early advice given to me was to
*always* weight the upwind wing. Well, when the upwind wing belongs to a 2-33
that decides to change wingtips, it's an attention-getting,
seriously-alarming, proposition! Less so for ships with higher wingloadings
and lower spars...but stil (IMO) ugly to watch/listen-to.

Having hopped into another club's 'tire-held-down' 2-33 and ground-flown-it
(for ~20 minutes) just before a gust front arrived, it proved no big
deal...though 'genuinely interesting' as the nose rotated against the skid
through an arc exceeding 30-degrees. Without someone in it, it would've almost
surely been transformed into the proverbial 'ball,' but I never felt there was
any risk of it ever being lifted into the air with me inside; I didn't use
spoilers continuously...tired arm muscles.

Eventually I came to believe it was better - for 15 meter glass, anyway - to
place the DOWNwind wingtip on the ground those times I opted to walk away from
my unattended ship, because - in a wingtip-rocking sense - the ship was more
stable. For the record I've never seen a ship in that configuration alter its
'baseline resting configuration.'

In any event, I put my thinking to the acid test for several hours after a
landout in straightline winds from a steady direction, varying from (maybe) 10
knots to (estimated) 35+ knots...strong enough to cause dust blizzards and a
fatal chain-reaction accident on a nearby interstate while I waited for my
crew. How strong were the winds? It was the only time I actually imagined it
might be possible to die from hypothermia in 90+ degree temperatures!

I'd landed (far from a phone in a pre-cell world) at a people-free airport.
Eventually deciding my choices were likely either to wait all night for the
winds to subside, or to attempt to initiate a retrieve before sunset, hunger
(and the fact it was Sunday afternoon and the home field was likely 'moving
toward desertion!') won out so I spent quality cockpit time planning my
cockpit exit and subsequent walk-away, the task spiced somewhat by the ship's
6-foot-long removable canopy. Exit-mission soon-enough accomplished without
unwanted excitement). I then turned the ship 90-degrees to the wind with the
upwind wing UP, flaps negative, left everything in the cockpit, found a nifty,
thru-wall-on-a-rotating-dealybob phone, called home and happily crawled into
the cab of a fuel truck to get out of the wind while awaiting rescue.

Subsequently, the hardest part of the derig wasn't the auto-tow the quarter
mile or so into the lee of some hangars, but the swirling gusts in said 'lee.'
The ship in the winds? Never budged, while I was comforted by fuel truck cab
and the Alfred E. Neuman philosophy of life ("What, me worry?").

Bob W.

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