Some good news

On Friday, October 23, 2015 at 7:19:58 AM UTC-7, Bob Whelan wrote:
On 10/23/2015 1:26 AM, Tango Whisky wrote:
Am Donnerstag, 22. Oktober 2015 17:27:40 UTC+2 schrieb Dan Marotta:
Rotor is the Boogie Man.

In the Air Force flight training they showed us movies of a B-52 whose
vertical tail had been torn off in an encounter with rotor. I feared
rotor, too, until encountering it for the first time in a glider with the
airspeed well within the green arc. Yes, it's bumpy, but maintaining
control is a non-event. Using rotor to climb into the wave is sometimes
the only way to get there. There's a terrific mix of up and down but, if
you stay on the upwind side of the rotor, the net is up. You climb in
rough air and then, all of a sudden, it becomes silky smooth and the rate
of climb increases rapidly. What a treat! Having said that, I still
have enough sense not to fly through rotor with the airspeed in the
yellow! Dan, 5J

I can assure you that there are rotors out there where you can't maintain
control in a glider *at all*, even if you are spiraling with 80 kts.

Bert Ventus cM TW


+1 on TW's observation (my own being from Boulder, CO), though I always
attempted to hold a mere ~60 knots to reduce personal/ship G loads, accepting
whatever "unusual attitude" came my way. Worked for me. Never been rolled
beyond 90-degrees/vertical (against full opposite controls) or pitched much
more than +/- 45-degrees, but when this - and you're sometimes enveloped in
utterly still air just after an impressive gust of some sort - happens
vertically close to the foothills, it's a real thrill. Apply your own versions
of understated humor to that last...

Bob W.

In my 1,600 hours and thirty plus years of gliding, I have had two relevant experiences - both in my Jantar-1 in South Africa. I was pitched forward beyond 90 degrees in mountain rotor and may have been inverted briefly. I deployed airbrakes and recovered quickly, but it was exciting!

On another occasion, I got trapped above a layer of stratus that formed ahead of a squall line but descended by flying straight and level with the assistance of an SZD turn-and bank until I was in the clear. The experience taught me never to get caught above cloud again!

Mike