Soaring in glider planes

I am a trained glider pilot BBB

Yeah, me too, I've flown in them a few times, but have not done a solo takeoff or landing.

One thing to say is, it's not usually so smooth and stately in the air as it seems from the ground. Weather conditions in Britain usually mean that the pilot is constantly on the move, trimming the plane to level. Lumpy air moves one wing up, then the other. But sometimes it's very smooth.

Gautam and McTag, talk to me about soaring PLEASE!
Gautam and McTag, WOW! Talk to me about gliding---PLEASE!

BBB

Gautam's done more than me. I've only been on gliding holidays, where you spend more time retreiving the aircraft on the ground than flying them. Near where I live, you can do slope soaring, where the glider is catapulted off the top of a long hill, then you can soar on the updraught afforded by the hill, and try to find thermals which will take you higher. But, you've got to land back on the hill again, or it's a long job getting the plane back.

If you're rich, you can get more flying time in, and also get a tow up to a good height. I've never been towed up by another aircraft, only had catapult launches. But it's great fun!

I would like to learn to fly a microlight, and I considered doing that last summer. Haven't done it yet, though.

McTag's Microlight glider

http://www.kiss400.com/Basicfaq.asp

For the brave at heart who don't need to be sheltered inside a cockpit glider plane.

BBB

BBB, I took up gliding asa hobby when I was a student back in India - and it slowly turned into an obsession !!!

My longest flight lasted for abt 90 minutes and reached heights of upto 3000 feet, soaring was pretty easy in India as we frequently could catch thermals due to the hot weather - and reaching 1500-2000 feet was pretty common and flights lasting for abt 30 minutes !! Have done the works, stalls, spins, emergency landings....it is thrilling beyond words.

Have you read A Gift of Wings by Richard Bach ? If you love flying, then this is the best book you can ever read !

Gautam
Gautam, thanks for the book lead, I will check it out.

What were your emotions while you were soaring?
What sensory memories do you have?
What scary events did you endure?
How much trust did you have in your tow pilots?
Did you fly in an open or closed cockpit?
Did you take passengers in your glider?
Did you own your own glider or rent one?
Are you still gliding or have you given it up?

BBB

BBB, it is an experience beyond words !!! Imagine soaring like a bird in the sky. There is no noise, no vibration, just you and the sky beyond. I always got a sense of "freedom" when I took off - as if nothing is holding me back to this world, I have no worries, and up there, my existance is pure, uncomplicated.

Luckily for me, did not have any scary events, except when the cable broke while we were being winched, but we had enuff height to turn right arnd and land. The scariest part wa slanding with a sideslip - my orientation with the runway used to go for a toss during that.

I was not licensed to take passengers before I gave up (when I moved to UK and real life caught up) - and given the weather here, I am not sure much soaring can be done. Also, it is much much more expensive here than it wasin India.

I used the glider from the gliding club -I was a student, and was not able to afford one, and my dad wasnt gonna buy me one either

Oh, and I flew in closed cockpits always...

Gautam
Tautam, WOW! Thanks. I so wish I could have found a pilot willing to endure me upchucking all over him in the back seat so I could have experienced what you describe.

Sigh

BBB

Sideslip, that's a funny thing to get used to.

When you're in a car, the road comes straight at you. (Unless you're in big trouble!)
But in a glider, with a wind blowing along the ground at at different angle to the way your glider's pointing, you "crab" across the ground at a vector which is the sum of the velocity thingies. That takes a bit of getting used to. I don't know how these eagles and hawks ever manage to catch anything

McTag and Gautam
Glider slide slipping

http://www.gliding.co.nz/Operations/Instruct/p4.pdf

I am a trained hang glider and this past summer I took up paragliding off the mountains. I don't have a fear of heights nor motion sickness so for me it is an exhilarating experience. Just make sure your health insurance is paid up ; ).

NickFun
NickFun, you must think the risk is worth the high.

BBB

Soaring Museum To House Gliders in New Mexico
Saturday, November 29, 2003
New Mexico Soaring Museum To House Gliders
By Penne Usher
Mountain View Telegraph

MORIARTY?- The new Southwest Soaring Museum under construction in Moriarty may be the biggest museum of its type in the world.
When the new 38,400 square-foot building on Old Route 66 is complete, it will house about 50 gliders, said George Applebay, museum president.
"The oldest glider that will be on display was built in the 1930s; it's over 70 years old," he said.
Applebay said some of the gliders will be displayed on the floor of the building, and others will hang from the 36- to 40-foot ceiling.
Donations from glider enthusiasts and supporters nationwide paid the way for the museum, he said.
A total of $1.29 million was raised over five years. That money paid for temporary facilities for the museum at the Moriarty Airport, the new building and the land for the museum, Applebay said.
"All the money we need to enclose the building has been raised," he said.
Applebay is trying to raise money to complete the interior of the new building and to add an education facility. The total cost, including that final phase of the project, will be about $1.8 million, he said.
The immediate goal is to raise $150,000 to finish the interior of the museum.
"We need to add restrooms, walls and do all the finish work," Applebay said.
A portion of the land where the museum is being built was also donated. Mike and Toney Anaya donated two-thirds of the 5-acre parcel, a value of $337,500, Applebay said.
He said the proposed completion date for the building's shell is Dec. 15. The interior work will be done by March 1, which is the projected occupation date provided the money is raised to finish it.
Additionally, plans are in the works to complete a 265-foot-by-40-foot, three-story education building adjacent to the museum. Applebay said it will include computers with age-appropriate aeronautical and engineering programs.
Applebay, who has been involved with gliding since he was 12, would like to share his enthusiasm for gliders with others.
"I want to impress upon children the importance of technology, science and mathematics in their education," he said.
The vintage gliders were state-of-the-art for their time, considering the technology available, Applebay said. As scientists gained knowledge, gliders became more sophisticated.
"The people that design these gliders are some of the best engineers there are," Applebay said.
Once the museum is 100 percent complete and ready to open, Applebay said, it will be operated by volunteers.

Paraglider Starts Ride From Hot-Air Balloon
URL: http://www.abqjournal.com/go/117585go12-04-03.htm
Thursday, December 4, 2003
Paraglider Starts Ride From Hot-Air Balloon
By Jane Mahoney
For the Albuquerque Journal

Two thousand feet above the desert, Dave Prentice perches on the edge of the gondola, his foot tapping slightly as the hot-air balloon billows above us.

"OK?" asks pilot Jonathan Wolfe as his tie-dyed Gloria Caeli balloon ascends above the scrub brush and sand of the West Mesa. He glances at the variometer. "Twenty-two hundred feet ... twenty-three," he calls out. "It's time."

"OK?" he repeats.

"Just PDA," says Prentice, his eyes focused, his demeanor utterly calm. "That's pre-drop anxiety," he explains, for my benefit.

If I was experiencing a slight case of nerves on my infrequent hot-air balloon flight, I couldn't help but ponder Prentice's emotions.

After all, the 32-year-old paraglider pilot was about to climb out of the balloon basket, dangle in a harness 3,000 feet above the desert floor, and then drop with his paraglider in free-fall flight until his ripstop nylon wing unfolded and inflated to send him soaring like a bird.

Complex maneuver

Paragliding, a fast-growing sport of nonmotorized human flight, is normally a foot-launched endeavor. Pilots carefully unfurl their 30-foot inflatable wing on hillsides or mountaintops, double-checking lines and fixing tangles before running to catch the thermal winds that lift them skyward.

Prentice, however, is one of fewer than five pilots in the world willing to perform the complex paraglider deployment from a hot-air balloon. And his friend, Wolfe, is one of the rare balloon pilots willing to launch a paraglider from the sky.

"Danger Dave is dangling," Wolfe radios a photographer standing ready in a nearby balloon to record the scene. "Three, two, one," he counts down, peering over the edge to check on his soon-to-be-gone passenger. "And GO!"

With a quick flick of the release line, Prentice is gone. Within seconds and several hundred feet below us, the 30-foot wingspan of the glider unfurls and the sky explodes in yellow and red fabric. Joyful whoops and shouts drift on the cold morning breeze.

"Some people make their own mountains," says balloon pilot Joe Hale, owner of the Hale-ucinations balloon transporting the photographer. "We had a beautiful 9,000-foot peak this morning."

Pro paraglider

Prentice, an Albuquerque native whose love of on-the-edge sports has taken him from bike racing to rock climbing over the years, discovered paragliding and hang gliding about 15 years ago?- and promptly set his sights on the sky.

Currently sponsored by the French paragliding manufacturer Ozone, Prentice is one of about 30 professional paraglider pilots traveling a competitive world circuit and chasing world records in both distance flying and aerobatics. His goals include becoming a member of the U.S.A. Nationals team and attending the world championships in Brazil in 2005.

Already, Prentice has broken a world open-distance record, staying aloft on a summer day in 2002 from Zapata to Ozona, Texas, a distance of 240 miles entailing 81/2 hours in the air. And just this fall, Prentice placed second in the paraglider nationals championships in Telluride, Colo.

Although Ozone pays for Prentice's gear, trips and competitions, the former medic supplements his income by training other fliers.

"I flew 350 days last year," he says. "Now, it's kind of enjoyable to take a day off."

Combining sports

Prentice made his first paraglider drop from a hot-air balloon about four years ago after searching nearly six years for a pilot willing to take him up. Wolfe, a paraglider pilot himself (although he's never launched from a balloon), had long thought the sports of paragliding and ballooning might mesh.

The two men were introduced by a mutual friend on a Thursday; by Sunday they were in the sky for the first nerve-wracking drop. In the three days between, Prentice sewed his first D-Bag, or deployment bag, designing a packing system he hoped would enable his wing to pop free and unfurl without entanglement while the 140-pound pilot free-fell through the sky at a rate of about 40 miles per hour.

"A mix of emotions" is how Prentice describes the first jump. "Fear of the unknown. Elation."

Wolfe has never gotten over "the weirdness" of watching his balloon passenger climb down the side of the wicker basket to dangle several thousand feet above the ground. Nonetheless, the pair has performed more than 20 drops since that first time.

After four years of revisions to his bag and packing system?- which he likens to the folds of an accordion?- Prentice says his successful balloon drops have climbed to nearly 90 percent. He figures his self-designed bag and packing system might prove marketable in the future.

Tricky business

It's still scary business, however. As Prentice says, it's "pretty tricky and not for everybody."

"The big trick here is that the wing must come out of the bag and inflate cleanly," Prentice explains. "You can't lay it out, inflate it, and check the lines as you normally would when taking off from the side of a hill."

Prentice's PDA?- or "pre-drop anxiety"?- doesn't subside until the wing is open and he's soaring, searching out the thermals to take him from one cloud street to the next. After the initial drop, the skillful spins, stalls and maneuvers that can create 5 Gs pounding his body become pure fun and the stuff of championship titles. But until that moment when the wing inflates, each balloon drop is preceded by a day or two of fitful sleep and the mental resolution of imagined, complicated scenarios.

"The first three times, I couldn't even open my eyes," Prentice says, who admits to a few lengthy free falls when the glider wing or lines tangled. "Now I enjoy the actual drop and can look up to see the wing."

In case of complications, Prentice carries a reserve parachute on his shoulder.

"I was a medic for many years," he says. "I certainly live life knowing that death is a possibility?- in fact, it creates an energy in me to live life to the fullest. I can accept the possibility of death?- it's always lurking in my mind.

"But I try not to dwell on it."

Helios, the solar-power flying wing
Helios, the solar-power flying wing

http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/Helios/Small/index.html