Today at Moriarty

zaitcev

zaitcev

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Pete Zaitcev
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Moriarty is seriously busy today. All 3 towplanes are out and I saw 2 working in the same time. Poorly visible on the left of the picture is a little table where I presume judges sit.

Also in the picture is a strange glider. It's the one that's parked head-on and has red wings. When I arrived and joined at downwind, they were coming over the field. Here I screwed up: because it's a high wing with struts, looking head-on I didn't realize it was a glider and so I went ahead of them and proceeded on the downwind. A bit before I was abeam the numbers they came on the radio and asked me to expedite... Even then I didn't realize it was a glider! I did expedite the landing though and took the glider parking exit. When I exited, I looked over and saw them turning final, so there was enough space.

I think I must've held the nose down and the airplane started to oscillate like it does when porpoising, only much quicker. I pulled the yoke just a bit and it immediately killed the oscillations, so I rolled and braked normally as I wrote above. Something in the "expedited" landing made me do it. On the final I slipped a bit, then hit flaps 40, but possibly touched down before the speed decayed below 60 knots.

If I realized that I was followed by a glider, I could easily extend my downwind and then land without any drama.
 

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Did the idiot with "sex" on the vertical stabilizer make an appearance?
 
I can't tell. There was a large number of private gliders parked on the north side of the taxiway, presumably competitors, but not necessarily. I noticed that most carried 2-letter designators on their tails. No idea what it was about. Since I'm not familiar with mores and there was a large variety, there could be a 3-letter tail somewhere. Someone was in the overflow parking at the side of the pilot's lounge. I barely found a place to park myself.
 
The letters are contest ids. Sort of like the number on your race car. I heard they were getting over 17K today at Moriarty
 
Seanaldinho said:
Looks like a schweizer 2-33.
Click to expand...
It is, and nothing strange about it. If you look in the back of Soaring magazine, where they announce first solos and check rides with pictures of the pilots, most of the gliders in the background are 2-33s.
Schweizer produced them between 1967 and 1981, and the USAF used them as primary trainers until 2002. Not sure how many were made, but there's about 300 of them still flying. They are very good sailplanes, although too slow to race with the newer jobs. Great trainers, and very crashworthy. I think I'd rather crash in a 2-33 than any other aircraft I've flown.

But it is certainly a lot different from the newer plastic fantastic jobs: welded steel tube fuselage and horizontal stab covered in fabric, with aluminum spar-and-rib wings and vertical stab. The struts are aluminum, made like any high-wing power plane with single struts. The nose fairing is fiberglass, and the seats are wood (except for the back of the front seat, which is aluminum).

What's strange to me is that they call the all-glass ships "composite" construction, not something made of aluminum, steel, wood, and fiberglass. :D
 
Just FYI, the Region 9 contest will be starting at Moriarty next week. Practice days are Sat & Sun, 1st and 2nd. Contest 3rd-8th. I'll be flying there with "K", my Std. Cirrus. There are 50 pilots signed up so it should be fairly busy. The airport will be NOTAM'd close during the launch each day which should take about an hour.
 
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