Relieving in flight

As a flight instructor with several young female students (Yeah! Some more women in soaring maybe!) I'd be a lot more interested in hearing any women pilots address this, because I think the problem for guys is simpler and better understood.

I fly a Discus B, and my solution for it is really simple: I carry an empty plastic Snapple ice-tea bottle, with cap. There's room between the control stick and me, angles work OK.

This doesn't work for me in every glider -- in particular it sure doesn't work in a friend's DG-101 with the parallel stick mechanism that leaves no room to my crotch.

I don't often get close to its usable capacity (which is about half the bottle volume) but the solution for that is either the foresight to carry a second bottle, or with some caution I have learned how to put it out the side vent and get enough fore-arm out so that I can stick the bottle far enough down so that the urine will go cleanly underneath the wing -- I acknowledge that this maneuver is tricky, and needs some practice (perhaps with clean water) before it is reliable, and may not work for everybody in every glider.

If you want to try this maneuver here's the method:

1. speed up to about 60 - 70 . (Slower than this is likely to have urine hitting the wing ... faster may generate enough turbulence in the bottle to extract droplets before you want to.)

I need to release my left shoulder strap to proceed:

2. stick the bottle out through the vent-window open mouth first and angled well forward and up about 60 degrees.

3. Lean so you can get your elbow close to the vent -- that you can do this is easy to test on the ground; if you can't do this, this dump technique won't work cleanly for you.

4. move your hand down as far as you can (so the urine will go under the wing), twist your wrist to point the mouth outboard and then down -- voila .... it's gone.

If the speed and technique are right nothing comes out until you want it to, and it doesn't hit you or the wing.