End of the week wrapup

Friday's sky was looking very promising and a simple "Land back at the field please" type task was handed out. In the classroom we talked about some issues that can come up with ridge and wave flying. One thing that stuck in my head was that if you trim the glider to say 70 knots and then open the airbrakes and take your hand off the stick the glider will level out and be stable. Then you can look at your compass and use your rudders to steer the thing. If you get stuck in a cloud for any reason just set this up and point yourself away from the ridge. I tested it out in VF and it works nicely.

The task for the day was a short one and we were all confident that we could make it. My one personal goal was to land back on the airfield. I didn't want to have 100% of my solo flights end in outlandings.

I launched and released into a great building cloud and was quickly up above everyone else even though I launched in the late middle of the pack. There were scrappy looking clouds out towards the turnpoint but at cloudbase I was the first one to start pushing out. Remember my goal of not outlanding today?

I managed to push downwind towards the turnpoint maybe 10kms from the field but I was presented with a huge blue hole with not even the slightest trace of cloud. I pushed into the blue to sus it out a bit but scampered back with my tail between my legs.

I hung around on the edge as everyone else started trying their luck but everyone came back. The Piako PW-6 landed out with Fin in the back so I decided that today would be a nice sight seeing tour of the area and I landed back on the field after a good couple hours. Mission accomplished.

After packing up all the bits that we brought we were back on the road to Auckland after an intense 5 days of gliding. I can now say that I have the confidence to make the proper decisions to outland if needed. I am not a master outlander but have the basic skills to feel safe progressing with pushing the boundaries of gliding.

Thanks to everyone at the Piako gliding club for their time and effort and to all the instructors that took a week off and came to teach us the skills. I must say that after 5 days of getting up at 6:30 in the mornings and finishing at 9:00 every night I am beat.

I did the course with about 40 solo hours under my belt so it is not only for high hour pilots. We should try to push members into the course every year as a goal in their training.