I worked early to organize some training materials and documentation for the Cessna 150 several of my new students just bought to train in. Then I flew it 20 minutes south to KFBL to become a student myself!
I added a glider rating a decade ago, but ran out of time during training so settled for glider private privileges on my commercial certificate, which has always bugged me. So I decided to knock out my commercial glider, then add the -G to my CFI.
So today it was time to get reacquainted with the Grob 103 glider which I'd flown several times years ago. It was good to be back in that sleek glass ship again. But the real treat came from the tow. I've only done aero tows, being yanked around the sky by a powered ship. But today I got introduced to winch launches.
Picture a machine with a huge spool of very thin, but very strong blue rope sitting a little over 4,000' away from you.....with Corvette engine hooked up to the spool!
I think this is the closest thing to a Navy catapult launch that a civilian can do. The acceleration is breathtaking, then you pitch up....WAAAY up and you're going up like a rocket! At one point the vario was just over the 10,000 fpm mark! Definitely an E Ticket ride.
Then you hear small a *click* and you're free. Pitch down to maintain airspeed and you're off soaring. It was a marginal soaring day, but we did find one 2-4 kt thermal in the pattern on a couple of flights.
I did four of those today. By the second landing I had it dialed back in and it felt like I'd never left. But we did get some excitement on the fourth pull: Somewhere around 300' things suddenly changed rapidly....the rope had broke. We had talked about rope-break scenarios (as all glider pilots train), but this was the first real deal for me. But it was truly a non-event. Pitched the nose over, pulled full spoilers (we still had half the runway ahead of us), and landed on the remaining runway....even reduced spoilers at the end to extend the glide to closer to the end of the runway to minimize ground handling.
It's a real hoot and if you've never experienced a winch tow I would highly recommend it!
Flew back to KFCM. Met my instrument student and abused him under the hood to KSGS. Then put him in a Apache Twin and helped him figure out how to fly a twin when it's half a twin. Then back to KSGS. He was then back under the hood from KSGS to KLVN where I jumped out and jumped into a RV-7A to help the new owner (a 757 captain) figure out his GRT EFIS. Turns out some things were mis-programmed on it so it wasn't behaving the way I knew it should. After 2.5 hours of tinkering we had it singing a new song, had the databases updated, had it chatting with the SL30 and had the owner smiling. We then went and test flew it. I love RVs. I want one.
Then he flew me back to KFCM where I called it a day.
I added a glider rating a decade ago, but ran out of time during training so settled for glider private privileges on my commercial certificate, which has always bugged me. So I decided to knock out my commercial glider, then add the -G to my CFI.
So today it was time to get reacquainted with the Grob 103 glider which I'd flown several times years ago. It was good to be back in that sleek glass ship again. But the real treat came from the tow. I've only done aero tows, being yanked around the sky by a powered ship. But today I got introduced to winch launches.
Picture a machine with a huge spool of very thin, but very strong blue rope sitting a little over 4,000' away from you.....with Corvette engine hooked up to the spool!
I think this is the closest thing to a Navy catapult launch that a civilian can do. The acceleration is breathtaking, then you pitch up....WAAAY up and you're going up like a rocket! At one point the vario was just over the 10,000 fpm mark! Definitely an E Ticket ride.
Then you hear small a *click* and you're free. Pitch down to maintain airspeed and you're off soaring. It was a marginal soaring day, but we did find one 2-4 kt thermal in the pattern on a couple of flights.
I did four of those today. By the second landing I had it dialed back in and it felt like I'd never left. But we did get some excitement on the fourth pull: Somewhere around 300' things suddenly changed rapidly....the rope had broke. We had talked about rope-break scenarios (as all glider pilots train), but this was the first real deal for me. But it was truly a non-event. Pitched the nose over, pulled full spoilers (we still had half the runway ahead of us), and landed on the remaining runway....even reduced spoilers at the end to extend the glide to closer to the end of the runway to minimize ground handling.
It's a real hoot and if you've never experienced a winch tow I would highly recommend it!
Flew back to KFCM. Met my instrument student and abused him under the hood to KSGS. Then put him in a Apache Twin and helped him figure out how to fly a twin when it's half a twin. Then back to KSGS. He was then back under the hood from KSGS to KLVN where I jumped out and jumped into a RV-7A to help the new owner (a 757 captain) figure out his GRT EFIS. Turns out some things were mis-programmed on it so it wasn't behaving the way I knew it should. After 2.5 hours of tinkering we had it singing a new song, had the databases updated, had it chatting with the SL30 and had the owner smiling. We then went and test flew it. I love RVs. I want one.
Then he flew me back to KFCM where I called it a day.
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