Extending new pilot comfort zone?

Hi everyone, I've been reading "Advanced Soaring Made Easy" by Bernard
Eckey, and this is a fantastic book for a new pilot. It does discuss
learning to get out of the comfort zone of flying safely within glide
range of the airport. This is something I am just venturing into
myself and I was curious how some of you went about this when you were
learning?

When and how did you cut the strings for the first time? Was it with
an instructor? Did you do it in small steps, or did you just plan a
cross country flight? Or did you land out by accident once and get
thrown over that initial fear?

Since I am still renting a glider, it can be a bit of a problem if I
land out, but I would like to start flying a bit further outside my
comfort zone.

I was considering asking a more experienced pilot if I could "ride
along" with them on a cross country flight to help me get over the
butterflies.

Any advice appreciated,
Tom

On Jan 7, 9:19*am, tstock wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been reading "Advanced Soaring Made Easy" by Bernard
Eckey, and this is a fantastic book for a new pilot. *It does discuss
learning to get out of the comfort zone of flying safely within glide
range of the airport. *This is something I am just venturing into
myself and I was curious how some of you went about this when you were
learning?

When and how did you cut the strings for the first time? Was it with
an instructor? Did you do it in small steps, or did you just plan a
cross country flight? *Or did you land out by accident once and get
thrown over that initial fear?

Since I am still renting a glider, it can be a bit of a problem if I
land out, but I would like to start flying a bit further outside my
comfort zone.

I was considering asking a more experienced pilot if I could "ride
along" with them on a cross country flight to help me get over the
butterflies.

Any advice appreciated,
Tom

Tom,

I did my first two XC flights with my instructor in his Lark. We
landed out both times. It was a great experience and I'm glad I had it
before I started flying cross country in my Cherokee. Now I land out
with some regularity. I think that if you can find a two seater and
an experienced pilot to fly with there is no better way to get
comfortable with getting away from the airport.

But before you venture out in your rental or club glider make sure the
owner/club is OK with it and the trailer is roadworthy and will fit to
your vehicle and you know how to rig and derig the glider.

Just once - Get someone who knows a little about this in the back seat
of a two seater and head off.
If the person in the back seat knows what they are doing as per point
one - they will not only make sure the necessary arrangements are in
place for eventualities like outlandings, but will involve you in making
them so you start to learn the ropes.

Gliding clubs are great in that it doesn't matter whether you made
explicit arrangements in advance - the other chaps will generally come
and fetch you on the assumption/principle of "there but for the grace of
God, go I..."

My first attempt XC was pre solo - in a L13 Blanik - we did 32km out and
return. Started at 11,000" - I took an hour and got us back at 10,000".
Now that's caution. My experienced someone in the backseat was happy to
dispose of the excess height with 11 or so consecutive loops and a
couple of chandelles.

These days I could easily do the out and return from the same starting
height as a final glide in my Kestrel. But then it was a nail biting
experience being out of glide range of the airfield.

Next attempt was - get in a single seater, get 3,000" AGL and just go.
It is liberating to do it the first time on your own, you realise that
if you can stay airborne for a couple of hours, you could and should be
covering ground.

One good exercise is to practice final glides. Fly away from the
airfield staying high. Once you are 10km or so away glide back, but do
not stop to thermal. When you get back to the field climb up again and
repeat. A couple of good things happen.

You will probably be pleasantly surprised to discover that you can go a
lot further than you thought.
You get practice at climbing away from a lower height - which is
invaluable at avoiding those outlanding adventures...
You learn the performance of your glider.
You eventually stop worrying whether the airfield is in range and start
flying to go somewhere else.

Cheers
Bruce

On 2011/01/07 5:19 PM, tstock wrote:

Hi everyone, I've been reading "Advanced Soaring Made Easy" by Bernard
Eckey, and this is a fantastic book for a new pilot. It does discuss
learning to get out of the comfort zone of flying safely within glide
range of the airport. This is something I am just venturing into
myself and I was curious how some of you went about this when you were
learning?

When and how did you cut the strings for the first time? Was it with
an instructor? Did you do it in small steps, or did you just plan a
cross country flight? Or did you land out by accident once and get
thrown over that initial fear?

Since I am still renting a glider, it can be a bit of a problem if I
land out, but I would like to start flying a bit further outside my
comfort zone.

I was considering asking a more experienced pilot if I could "ride
along" with them on a cross country flight to help me get over the
butterflies.

Any advice appreciated,
Tom


--
Bruce Greeff
T59D #1771 & Std Cirrus #57

On Jan 7, 10:19*am, tstock wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been reading "Advanced Soaring Made Easy" by Bernard
Eckey, and this is a fantastic book for a new pilot. *It does discuss
learning to get out of the comfort zone of flying safely within glide
range of the airport. *This is something I am just venturing into
myself and I was curious how some of you went about this when you were
learning?

When and how did you cut the strings for the first time? Was it with
an instructor? Did you do it in small steps, or did you just plan a
cross country flight? *Or did you land out by accident once and get
thrown over that initial fear?

Since I am still renting a glider, it can be a bit of a problem if I
land out, but I would like to start flying a bit further outside my
comfort zone.

I was considering asking a more experienced pilot if I could "ride
along" with them on a cross country flight to help me get over the
butterflies.

Any advice appreciated,
Tom

Tom,

Get a copy of the Condor soaring simulator and do some cross-country
flights in it. Find an experienced Condor pilot and fly with them
online. You'll be surprised at how much of Condor skills transfer to
real life (and vice versa). Read my Condor Corner articles in U.S.
SSA's Soaring magazine

Frank (TA).

On Jan 7, 1:52*pm, Frank Paynter wrote:
On Jan 7, 10:19*am, tstock wrote:





Hi everyone, I've been reading "Advanced Soaring Made Easy" by Bernard
Eckey, and this is a fantastic book for a new pilot. *It does discuss
learning to get out of the comfort zone of flying safely within glide
range of the airport. *This is something I am just venturing into
myself and I was curious how some of you went about this when you were
learning?

When and how did you cut the strings for the first time? Was it with
an instructor? Did you do it in small steps, or did you just plan a
cross country flight? *Or did you land out by accident once and get
thrown over that initial fear?

Since I am still renting a glider, it can be a bit of a problem if I
land out, but I would like to start flying a bit further outside my
comfort zone.

I was considering asking a more experienced pilot if I could "ride
along" with them on a cross country flight to help me get over the
butterflies.

Any advice appreciated,
Tom

Tom,

Get a copy of the Condor soaring simulator and do some cross-country
flights in it. *Find an experienced Condor pilot and fly with them
online. *You'll be surprised at how much of Condor skills transfer to
real life (and vice versa). *Read my Condor Corner articles in U.S.
SSA's Soaring magazine

Frank (TA).

Hi Frank, I have been flying in Condor since I first started
flying ... it helped me a lot with learning to fly.. my instructor had
me land on my 2nd and 3rd lesson! But for venturing out cross country
on the simulator, I have done this, and I even have the map for my
local area. While the motions are the same, the consequences are not,
so the fear remains. The only problem with Condor is that you can
land out just about anywhere (even on top of a mountain).

I do still often practice CC flying in Condor though.

-tom

On Fri, 07 Jan 2011 07:19:44 -0800, tstock wrote:

Hi everyone, I've been reading "Advanced Soaring Made Easy" by Bernard
Eckey, and this is a fantastic book for a new pilot. It does discuss
learning to get out of the comfort zone of flying safely within glide
range of the airport. This is something I am just venturing into myself
and I was curious how some of you went about this when you were
learning?

In the UK we require pilots to complete the bronze badge and the Bronze
Cross Country Endorsement before going xc.

Bronze: 50 solos including at least two 30 minute soaring flights plus
flying and written tests.

XC endorsement: involves a 1 hour and a 2 hour soaring flight and spot
landings on an unfamiliar part of the airfield. In addition there are
three items that are usually flown in a motor glider: field selection,
field landing practise and a navigation exercise.

At my club we are also encouraged to do the Silver C height gain and 5
hour duration legs as part of getting the Bronze. As a result, once a
pilot has the Bronze XC Endorsement they are ready to do the Silver C
distance leg as their first solo xc flight. This is briefed and
authorised by an instructor, so the conditions should be suitable.

In my case I did the C height as part of the Bronze, followed by the
field selection. field landing and navigation exercises. Then, I did the
5 hours during a Regionals, launching after the pack and landing after
they were all back. I also was taken xc in our club's Grob Acro on one of
the tasks (Mike Young was P1 and won the day on handicap) and was P2 in a
Duo for two other tasks, both land-outs. I was also on the Grob's
retrieval crew: its usual for the Grob to be entered in the Gransden
Regionals to give near-xc pilots a first taste of xc flying. In return
they are expected to be part of the Grob retrieval crew. Its very good
experience and lots of fun.

The day after the Regionals was a great, though blue, soaring day. I took
an SZD Junior to Rattlesden (68 km) off the winch and landed there after
a mere 3.5 hours to get my Silver C. I carried an EW logger and GPS to
feed it, but did the navigation with a paper 1:500,000 map.

We like people to fly away from Gransden Lodge and land at a target
airfield when they do Silver distance on the grounds that landing at a
strange airfield is good practise for future field landings.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

On Jan 7, 7:19*am, tstock wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been reading "Advanced Soaring Made Easy" by Bernard
Eckey, and this is a fantastic book for a new pilot. *It does discuss
learning to get out of the comfort zone of flying safely within glide
range of the airport. *This is something I am just venturing into
myself and I was curious how some of you went about this when you were
learning?

When and how did you cut the strings for the first time? Was it with
an instructor? Did you do it in small steps, or did you just plan a
cross country flight? *Or did you land out by accident once and get
thrown over that initial fear?

Since I am still renting a glider, it can be a bit of a problem if I
land out, but I would like to start flying a bit further outside my
comfort zone.

I was considering asking a more experienced pilot if I could "ride
along" with them on a cross country flight to help me get over the
butterflies.

Any advice appreciated,
Tom

Reflecting on my own experience I'd say:

1) Find a way to simulate an outlanding. I know part of my pre-solo
training involved landing at an unfamiliar airport, followed by an
aerotow back home. In that case the other airport was a few miles away
so there was no real risk in getting there. If that doesn't work for
you it helps a lot just doing landings at your own field where you
cover up the altimeter and mark off on the runway where you "clear the
trees at the threshold" versus "need to stop before the cattle fence".

2) Do your Silver distance. If you can manage it do it on a day where
you can get high enough that you always have either the home airfield
or the destination airfield well within gliding distance. Letting go
of the home airport is a big psychological step. Even though I lived
on the east coast at the time I did my Sliver distance in Arizona
where even in a 1-26 you could more or less have the destination
dialed in before you left home.

3) Start setting tasks that allow you to fly "airport to airport"
where you always have a runway within gliding distance. With today's
flight computers this is pretty easy to do, but you can also use a
tool like GlidePlan to make custom charts that tell you how high you
need to be to get to an airport from wherever you are
(www.glideplan.com). Practice picking out landable fields as you fly
around (even today I do this - from my glider and from my car).

4) Offer to go on retrieves at a contest. Getting to see for real what
an outlanding looks like takes some of the mystery out of it.

5) Fly XC with an experienced pilot. I never did this myself until I
had a lot of experience already, but with modern 2-seaters this is
much more doable and a great experience. If you can do it at a
contest so much the better. Some top competition pilots raise funds
for the US team by selling back seats in Duos at contests.

6) Start to submit flights to OLC. You need a logger for this, so by
now you'll be pretty serious about getting away from the field.
Tracking your XC miles is great positive feedback.

7) Buy a share in a glider and enter a contest in the sports class.
Okay, that's pretty far down the path...

Good luck.

9B

Tom, you're reading a great book and the above posts contain a lot of
good advice. If you have access to experienced mentors with a decent
performing dual ship, definitely take advantage of that. It may not
help with the butterflies much, but you'll probably learn a lot.
There is no substitute for taking that step away from the safety net
on your own. I own a Duo and take less experienced pilots up any
time I can and I've done a lot of coaching from the back seat since
buying it. 300+km flights often end with big smiles and amazing
stories for them, but the first time that they get out of glide from
the airport and make it back on their own, it is a whole different
world of ear-to-ear grins, even if it was only 10 or 15 miles away.

Planning and preparation will probably help with the fear more than
anything. Confidence in your ability to land the glider exactly where
you want at minimum energy without using the altimeter is critical in
my mind. If you have very solid thermalling skills, make sure that
you are launching early and landing late or flying on weak days so
that you experience weaker lift. Being very good at finding and
working weak and broken lift will also boost your confidence since it
means you'll be less likely to need your landout skills. Plan your
route. Fly it with someone in a dual ship if possible so that they
can point out common places for lift or sink or the good landing
options. If they will let you, be responsible for as many of the
decisions as possible when you fly it. Drive the route, check out the
landing options on foot if possible. The fewer variables you have to
consider on your first flight, the more confident you will be.

Finally, apprehension and nerves are a good thing and we've all
experienced them at some point or even routinely. I find that as I
head out XC and I'm getting towards the edge of gliding range back to
home, my brain switches over when the glide computer (or your Mk I
eyeball) says we are out of reach. It's very liberating, since no
longer is the home airport a concern, because you can't just glide
back to it.

Hopefully you have access to good mentors and instructors that know
you, your skills and your desire to get into XC. Make sure you're
asking the same questions of them as you are here.

Morgan

On Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:58:35 -0800, Morgan wrote:

Planning and preparation will probably help with the fear more than
anything. Confidence in your ability to land the glider exactly where
you want at minimum energy without using the altimeter is critical in my
mind.

Yes, good points - especially the point about not using the altimeter,
which *will* be telling lies during a field landing since you won't know
how high the field is.

Along with that goes not getting reliant on ground features round the
home field.

It strikes me that a decent final glide computer might be a good pre-xc
confidence builder. I'm thinking of something cheap and portable like
XCSoar or LK8000 running on a Binatone B.350 satnav. Of course, that does
require a way to mount it in the glider you're using.

The advantages are two-fold:

(1) you can get familiar with this type of instrument before you use it on
xc flights
(2) if you set a cautious safety altitude[1], make sure the
glider's polar is selected and load a task with your home field as
the single turn point, the glide computer will continuously show you
where home is and how much you're above the glide path back to there.
In the right conditions you can extend the local soaring[2] quite
considerably.

I'll do this if I'm just local soaring on a non xc day. On one of those
flights I knew that I had reached the local soaring limit when I was 35
km away from home, but I was upwind of home and at 5300 ft at that point.
I'd also confirmed that the final glide computer was, if anything,
conservative in its calculations on previous, shorter flights.

Using such an instrument in the way I've described and gradually
extending your local soaring radius should give you confidence that your
instruments and (hopefully, steadily improving judgment) aren't
misleading you about your ability to spot your home field and get back to
it. You can also fly mini-triangles[3] round your field, which will
vastly improve your navigational skills and your ability to use lift to
fly along a predetermined course.

[1] The 'safety height' is the target arrival height AGL at the
turnpoint. The computer uses this along with wind speed, wind
direction and the glider's polar when deciding if you're above or
below the glide path.

[2] 'Local soaring' in the UK means being within gliding distance of
home, i.e. that you can get there without needing a climb. UK rules
also require you to have a map onboard if you're more than 5 miles
from the home airfield.

[3] Mini-triangles are small practise tasks that you mark on your map
and/or set as a task in the glide computer before take-off. You fly
them as though they are an xc task. They are quite short (15 - 20
miles) and with the turnpoints chosen so you're never more than 5-8
miles from home. In good conditions you might fly two or more laps
in the same flight.

--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

Many potentially-useful and helpful insights have come before...good stuff.

That said, here's a one-word attempt at additional context: KISS.

Ask yourself why it is *you* have your 'not done it yet' XC fears. If they're
rationally based, odds are they'll all more or less boil down to fear of
breaking something (ideally, the glider/your butt!).

Next ask yourself why these fears exist.

Lastly, take the simplest actions designed to sensibly remove those fears'
underlying causes. (Hint: none of the simple actions have anything to do with
electricity, computers or technology, as evidenced by the fact that safe,
accident-free XC was being performed by newbies way back in the 1930's...or,
almost before real people existed. WARNING: Readers wishing not to be exposed
to dry humor should skip the sentence preceding this one!!!)

Anecdotal example of successful use of KISS Principle applied to 1st-XC follows...
- - - - - -

Context - newly licensed glider-only pilot, 23-years old, hugely ignorant
about 'this soaring thing' but definitely hooked. All prior experience
entirely in a 2-33 (~14.5 hrs) and a 1-26 (~ 31 hrs), all in Cumberland,
(mountainous, western) MD. Natural fear (plus native common sense and lack of
lift?!?) underlay the lots-of-'OFL-practice' shown in the logbook as part of
the above stick time, said OFL practice consisting mostly of practicing short
landings over imaginary approach obstacles onto different 'spots' of an
unfamiliar paved runway, trying to ignore the altimeter (and, in rain, being
forced to ignore the non-functioning airspeed indicator).

Then exactly one month after licensing, my fellow newbie glider-only-time
ship-partner(& decade older 'geezer') in the 1-26 built (and now 'suddenly'
but-one-third-owned by our former instructor), suggested the 3 of us go
out-of-state to another club's 3-day-weekend fun fall contest. ("Hey! It's in
the flatlands of Ohio; what could go wrong?!?" "Well, for two, I could bust
the ship and my butt...")

I resolved to at least get one thermal away from the home field (and try to
get back, ha ha) before contest weekend, then less than 2 weeks away, before
mentally committing to the idea of actually *intentionally* going XC, no
matter how many other maniacs populated my nearby airspace over the wilds of
Ohio. And a great plan it was...even though it also resulted in my first-ever
OFL when timing conspired to have me choose my 'one thermal away' on the
trailing edge of the thermic airmass adjoining one more worthy of useful
performance testing. How embarrassing. How alarming! How...do I manage to not
bust the glider/my butt when I am obviously not going to make it back to the
airport? (Hey, at least my test condition was validated!) The KISS-based input
of my instructor combined with my own fears worked just fine for the
entirely-unwanted situation and I wound up landing in the Potomac River
bottoms in the only field (pasture, ugh) around I deemed even remotely
acceptable (it was great, of course), about 3 air-miles from the airport.

Next weekend (in Ohio) I went out and placed 4th (of 12) on a 35-mile O&R 1-26
course, judged my final glide so well I easily remained aloft to bag my
5-hour, and averaged a whopping 12 mph. (Those ahead of me had obviously
cheated or lied, given their claimed speeds twice that of mine. Those behind
me had all landed out, the incompetent twits...wait!...one of those twits was
the then-reigning 1-26 National Champion. There might be more to this sport
than is first apparent...!)

The next day fellow newbie and I retrieved our former instructor from *his*
(first!) landout, that latter fact being divulged only after we were returning
to the airport, glider in tow. (No WONDER he'd seemed so genuinely happy when
they retrieved me the previous weekend!)

That was all it took for me to conquer my XC demons/fears/worries...beLIEVing
that what I'd been taught/gleaned about how to pick a field would work. The
bad news is that if you ever do break anything on an OFL (35+ years and ~20
OFL's later, I haven't yet), if you're honest with yourself, you'll have to
live with the conclusion that odds are it was *your* fault. (Human eyesight
isn't sufficiently good to completely eliminate the inherent terrain
micro-surface risks associated with OFLs, but those things tend 'merely' to
induce gear-related damage, not include life-threatening risks.)

For me, doing basic skills and field-assessment homework beforehand, and
scrupulously applying the proper lessons, proved a liberating, powerful
approach. Everything else is 'just' experience...which will come with
continued time and exposure, neither of which will invalidate those necessary
basics.
- - - - - -

Have fun!!!

Regards,
Bob W.