Landing with one spoiler

A good approach would be awareness, if one considers actual training too
risky. The Glider Flying Handbook from the FAA has a chapter on Abnormal and
Emergency Procedures. It contains suggested procedures for a wide variety of
system failures, including such things as asymmetric spoiler deployment.
Worth reading... and rereading now and then.

Incredible! Good thread. My faith in human nature is
starting to return. We
went from don’t practice anything to “ it might be
a good idea to try one”
Chuck

At 05:06 30 September 2005, Roger Worden wrote:
A good approach would be awareness, if one considers
actual training too
risky. The Glider Flying Handbook from the FAA has
a chapter on
Abnormal and Emergency Procedures. It contains suggested
procedures for
a wide variety of system failures, including such things
as asymmetric
spoiler deployment.
Worth reading... and rereading now and then.

Andreas Maurer wrote:


My decision for myself is clear: As soon as I'm not absolutely sure
anymore to have the glider under control, I bail out. I have no need
for control experiments at low altitudes where the slightest mistake
is definitely going to kill me - especially if the alternative is a
relatively safe bail-out out of a halfways controlled glider.


Yes, but deciding when that happens is the hard part, well was for me
anyway. I have had 2 partial primary control failures (in 4 years of
gliding), landed safely each time, but I still wonder if I made the
right decision. The first was in LS4, at about 7000 feet and at that
time I had about 120 hrs in about two years of gliding. It was a rented
ship away from my own club. The ship just had its manual, was test
flown by its owner and I have flown it for 4 days prior to this
incident. I do a pcc before each flight and did it then. The aileron
movement was not the smoothest but I was assured it was OK. Anyway at
about 7000 I needed a large aileron deflection to the right and about
half way there was a definite stop. Stupidly (if automatically) I
applied a fair force and powered through the obstruction. I remember
thinking at the same time something like "you idiot, what if it does not
come back". Well it did come back, I did some testing, the event did
not repeat in a pattern that I could discern, but as the obstruction
only occurred at about half travel so I have decided to land. I have
increased speed to about 70 kts, where only small deflections were
needed and landed normally. I have only recently found out that there
was a serious problem that was rectified.
The second incident happened in my club ship, a Hornet. Once again a
DI, including a PCC was done. I have flown for about 2 hours without an
incident when I went to pull up quite sharply into a thermal when the
elevator come to a full stop with what felt like a soft clunk. Anyway
once again I did some testing and found that with what was a full
elevator I could fly no slower then 55 kts and a bit more with
airbrakes. The controls felt perfectly normal in the remaining range.
Anyway, once again I decided to land. When I descended to about 2000 ft
AGL I put away the air brakes to set up a landing pattern. At stage I
found that I could not fly slower then about 65kts. Anyway, a bit of
adrenalin must have manifested itself at this point and a sharper tug on
the elevator freed the control. I have landed normally. When we
removed the elevator we have discovered a piece of lead ballast in the
tail. It was put in upside down and moved in flight wedging under a
flange on the elevator pushrod (hence the soft clunk).
Clearly a few safety issues here - the use of the ballast was not
universally known by club members, checking for it was not part of the
DI and apart from the control locking there could have been a C of G
problem for lighter pilots. Anyway, these issues have been addressed.

The second incident came about 3 month after the first one and I am sure
both had a significant impact on my flying confidence.

In any case, to this day I am not sure that I have done the right thing
by remaining with the glider. In both cases I had a stable platform to
depart and I have some 100 jumps to my name, admittedly some 30 years
earlier, so I think I would have been relatively comfortable jumping.


Paul

Paul wrote:

In any case, to this day I am not sure that I have done the right thing
by remaining with the glider. In both cases I had a stable platform to
depart and I have some 100 jumps to my name, admittedly some 30 years
earlier, so I think I would have been relatively comfortable jumping.

This is interesting, because some people recommend all gliders making at
least one practice jump, partly on the theory they won't be so reluctant
to jump when they need to. Maybe it's more wishful thinking than good
advice, but I don't know of any "post jump" interviews to see if the
jumpee agreed with the theory.


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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Eric Greenwell wrote:


This is interesting, because some people recommend all gliders making at
least one practice jump,

Make that "glider pilots".



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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Well, I've been making spoilerless landings for years. Of course, the
ships I've flown most don't have them... but I had my smart@$$ hat on
and just couldn't help myself...

Jack Womack

Jack wrote:

Well, I've been making spoilerless landings for years. Of course, the
ships I've flown most don't have them... but I had my smart@$$ hat on
and just couldn't help myself...

Well, then, how about landing with just one flap?


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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

In article , bumper
writes

"Bert Willing" wrote in
message ...
As long as the pedals are spring-loaded (which has been the case in any
glider I've flown so far), there is no reason that the rudder should stay
centered after the failure of one cable.
--
Bert Willing

ASW20 "TW"


Even if there were no springs involved, if a rudder cable parted, and unless
the rudder or cable were somehow jammed (probably unlikely), then I think
aerodynamic pressure would tend to return the rudder to near neutral - -
assuming the pilot removed pressure from the opposite pedal.

bumper


There was an incident in the UK a year or so back with an ASK13 in which
one rudder cable became detached.

Glider made a safe outlanding.
--
Mike Lindsay

Mike Lindsay wrote:
In article , bumper
writes

"Bert Willing" wrote in
message ...

As long as the pedals are spring-loaded (which has been the case in any
glider I've flown so far), there is no reason that the rudder should stay
centered after the failure of one cable.
--
Bert Willing

ASW20 "TW"


Even if there were no springs involved, if a rudder cable parted, and unless
the rudder or cable were somehow jammed (probably unlikely), then I think
aerodynamic pressure would tend to return the rudder to near neutral - -
assuming the pilot removed pressure from the opposite pedal.

bumper



There was an incident in the UK a year or so back with an ASK13 in which
one rudder cable became detached.

Glider made a safe outlanding.

In that incident, the rudder locked over to one side, so aerodynamic
pressure didn't centre it. The pilot wrote a piece for Sailplane &
Gliding explaining that he could only fly in large circles and
describing how he managed a safe landing.

From memory the K13 has springs on the rudder pedals, so that when one
cable snapped the springs pulled the other pedal to the floor and thus
the rudder to full-on in one direction. I suspect this is true for many
other gliders.

In article ,
Mike Lindsay wrote:

Even if there were no springs involved, if a rudder cable parted, and unless
the rudder or cable were somehow jammed (probably unlikely), then I think
aerodynamic pressure would tend to return the rudder to near neutral - -
assuming the pilot removed pressure from the opposite pedal.

bumper


There was an incident in the UK a year or so back with an ASK13 in which
one rudder cable became detached.

Glider made a safe outlanding.

It happened to the Puchacz at Piako gliding club (near Hamilton, NZ) a
few years ago. A safe outlanding was also made, thanks probably to the
very very experienced instructor on board.

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Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------