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Soaring solo...


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G'day all,

Now that I'm allowed to fly solo, I thought I'd use that new toy of mine to get some aerial footage... Purely for reasons of comparison with Jarrad's wonderful YCUN freeware of course :P

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B9ihgg6ibg

Let me know what you think of my newbie video attempt, or critique my flight! You can read more on my blog here... http://cloudbase-wa....flyin-solo.html

Cheers,

Derek

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Congratulations! Your video is fantastic! When I saw your video I was feeling like more than 50 years ago when I was soaring in a Grunau Baby at the Spitzerberg airfield close to the River Danube at my first and second solo flight. I wish I could fly again and make such a perfect video! At my time a friend made only some short 8mm film-scenes from the ground not to compare with your video. I really envy you!

Cheers,

Fritz

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I really enjoyed that Derek. I tried Gliding in FSX last year, and wasn't doing too bad with it. I've book marked your blog page to read later, and hopefully I'll pick up some pointers. I'll look forward to reading it, and hopefully seeing some more videos.

Thanks for sharing, looking forward to the summer now :)

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Congratulations! Your video is fantastic! When I saw your video I was feeling like more than 50 years ago when I was soaring in a Grunau Baby at the Spitzerberg airfield close to the River Danube at my first and second solo flight. I wish I could fly again and make such a perfect video! At my time a friend made only some short 8mm film-scenes from the ground not to compare with your video. I really envy you!

G'day Fritz, I love the old classic gliders, and the Grunau was a perfect example of the simplicity of the design ethos of the time. A beautiful bird indeed, although I don't envy the glide ratios of the older gliders - the modern birds just glide forever. There's some great bits of footage of old classics ridge soaring after bungee launching to be found around the place...

Brilliant Derek, but tell me, is it normal for gliders to use tarmac runways? I have always associated sailplanes with grass strips...

Perfectly normal Howard, you make use of whatever runway is available to you! At GCWA Cunderdin we have two wonderfully huge tarmac strips available to us (load up the ORBX Cunderdin to check it out!) so that's what we use. Other clubs in the area have other airstrips... Beverley has a gravel strip and Narrogin has both a tarmac strip and a gravel strip. Nice lush grass airfields don't exist in most of Western Australia, it's either dirt, gravel or tarmac. One advantage of taking off from a good tarmac strip - the ground roll on launch is that much shorter; the disadvantage of course is that a wheels up landing causes more damage.

I really enjoyed that Derek. I tried Gliding in FSX last year, and wasn't doing too bad with it.

Get out and give it a go for real Tony!! There are heaps of gliding clubs in the UK, far more than we have access to here in Oz.

Cheers,

Derek

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Mate awesome Video! Thanks for sharing. I'm always curious about gliding, it seems like it would be quite hard to master staying in the air and getting on the ground at the right place at the right time. It looked like an awesome flight.

What is that small strip on the front of your cockpit windscreen? Is that built on to the glider. or a strip of material taped on? I'm assuming it's for seeing wind or air turbulence or something is it?

Thanks for taking the time to record and share this, it's a really great video.

Cheers,

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Mate awesome Video! Thanks for sharing. I'm always curious about gliding, it seems like it would be quite hard to master staying in the air and getting on the ground at the right place at the right time. It looked like an awesome flight.

Easy to learn, hard to master... and I make no pretence that I'm still learning and far far far from mastering! Have a read of my blog entries if you're interested in the process.

What is that small strip on the front of your cockpit windscreen? Is that built on to the glider. or a strip of material taped on? I'm assuming it's for seeing wind or air turbulence or something is it?

The piece of red wool? It's called the yaw-string, and it shows how much the aircraft is yawing relative to the airstream moving over it. It performs a similar function to the ball in a turn and bank coordinator, but around the other way. You "step on the ball" with the rudder pedals to coordinate a turn, or you "step away from the string." When I'm up next I might make a video showing some of the features in the cockpit and the flight characteristics... I've been getting a lot of questions from friends about the gauges and "what's that bloody beeping noise?!?"

Cheers,

Derek

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Fantastic Derek. It always worries me what happens if you misjudge your approach and come in too early (powered aircraft you can push/pull the throttles) - you seem to come in at quite a steep angle, is this to aleviate that risk? I couldn't quite make out your IAS but I imagine the air brakes are pretty good. Keep them coming please :)

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Well done Derek, There is NOTHING like soaring , it is just so spiritual in a way. I am going to head out to the local Soaring field again shortly.

Thanks Mozz! You've got some great clubs in your neck of the woods, so enjoy yourself. It's worth noting that it has just been announced that the Gliding club of Victoria at Benalla will be hosting the Gliding World Championships for the 15m, 18m and Open classes in January 2017, that'll be a massive event!

Fantastic Derek. It always worries me what happens if you misjudge your approach and come in too early (powered aircraft you can push/pull the throttles) - you seem to come in at quite a steep angle, is this to aleviate that risk? I couldn't quite make out your IAS but I imagine the air brakes are pretty good. Keep them coming please :)

Graeme, the approach in a glider is very steep, much more so than in a powered aircraft. The reason is that you do only have one go at it, so you need to establish early on in the circuit what your glideslope is going to look like, and then stay a bit above that. You essentially visualise a ramp down the downwind leg, into base and then final leading down to your aiming point (usually the threshold or the piano keys. Approach speed is set and trimmed during downwind: 1.5x the Vs of the glider, + 1/2 the windspeed... my chosen speed was 55kt, but I usually carry a few extra knots in just to be safe... so it was about 58kts in the video. The "airbrakes" are actually spoilers, although we usually refer to them just as "brakes," and their purpose is to reduce the amount of lift over the wing... to further steepen the approach in other words, and not to slow the aircraft down as such. Once you're on final, you watch your aiming point over the nose and once you establish that you are indeed going to overshoot your aiming point, you use the spoilers to control the descent rate until flare height. I came into final well high and it was immediately obvious that I would need spoilers to get down, you can see me crack them as soon as I'm on final, then rip them right out. Ideally you should be on half spoilers all the way down so you have a margin either side to increase or decrease sink rate as necessary to stay on target. I had to use full spoiler all the way down, the downside of which is that it causes the nose to pitch up and slow you down as well, so you have to be ready for that and apply a bit of forward stick, and glance occasionally at the ASI to ensure you're maintaining approach speed. Slowing down on final is incredibly dangerous - if you are near stall speed, then the drop in wind speed near the ground due to wind gradient can induce a low-altitude stall and hence cause a crash. It's also important to push in the spoilers to half or less before flaring, otherwise the glider won't round out properly and will thump down hard - I know this from experience :unsure: You can see me push the spoilers in as I flare... done correctly, flaring is as close to the ground as you can safely manage and the glider then hovers a foot or so off the runway bleeding speed before settling itself down onto the tarmac. So, after all that, to answer your question - carrying enough speed into landing is what alleviates risk, the steep approach is to enable you to carry that speed and to allow you to use only the spoilers to adjust the glideslope, and not the attitude of the glider. Watch the last minute of the video a few times and you'll see the process that has been endlessly drilled into me during training :)

Cheers,

Derek

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Wow what a great video!

And you nailed the landing.....

I was right there with you for the entire flight...

Thank you Derek!

Hope you have many more safe and wonderful filghts!

RIck

Tanpa, Fl

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Thanks Mozz! You've got some great clubs in your neck of the woods, so enjoy yourself. It's worth noting that it has just been announced that the Gliding club of Victoria at Benalla will be hosting the Gliding World Championships for the 15m, 18m and Open classes in January 2017, that'll be a massive event!

Graeme, the approach in a glider is very steep, much more so than in a powered aircraft. The reason is that you do only have one go at it, so you need to establish early on in the circuit what your glideslope is going to look like, and then stay a bit above that. You essentially visualise a ramp down the downwind leg, into base and then final leading down to your aiming point (usually the threshold or the piano keys. Approach speed is set and trimmed during downwind: 1.5x the Vs of the glider, + 1/2 the windspeed... my chosen speed was 55kt, but I usually carry a few extra knots in just to be safe... so it was about 58kts in the video. The "airbrakes" are actually spoilers, although we usually refer to them just as "brakes," and their purpose is to reduce the amount of lift over the wing... to further steepen the approach in other words, and not to slow the aircraft down as such. Once you're on final, you watch your aiming point over the nose and once you establish that you are indeed going to overshoot your aiming point, you use the spoilers to control the descent rate until flare height. I came into final well high and it was immediately obvious that I would need spoilers to get down, you can see me crack them as soon as I'm on final, then rip them right out. Ideally you should be on half spoilers all the way down so you have a margin either side to increase or decrease sink rate as necessary to stay on target. I had to use full spoiler all the way down, the downside of which is that it causes the nose to pitch up and slow you down as well, so you have to be ready for that and apply a bit of forward stick, and glance occasionally at the ASI to ensure you're maintaining approach speed. Slowing down on final is incredibly dangerous - if you are near stall speed, then the drop in wind speed near the ground due to wind gradient can induce a low-altitude stall and hence cause a crash. It's also important to push in the spoilers to half or less before flaring, otherwise the glider won't round out properly and will thump down hard - I know this from experience :unsure: You can see me push the spoilers in as I flare... done correctly, flaring is as close to the ground as you can safely manage and the glider then hovers a foot or so off the runway bleeding speed before settling itself down onto the tarmac. So, after all that, to answer your question - carrying enough speed into landing is what alleviates risk, the steep approach is to enable you to carry that speed and to allow you to use only the spoilers to adjust the glideslope, and not the attitude of the glider. Watch the last minute of the video a few times and you'll see the process that has been endlessly drilled into me during training :)

Cheers,

Derek

Thanks so much Derek. I learnt a fair bit. Will have to try the sim glider again (if I can put up with that bloody beeping :))
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Nice work Derek, never tried it myself in real life, enjoy the hell out of in FSX though.

Got worried when the camera fell over, phew.....

Thank you for sharing the video.

Few questions if you don't mind please.

1. What's that bloody beeping noise, nope don't answer that, only joking. Lol...

2. How high would a typical flight get?

3. Any particular reason for the gloves?

Never took any notice on videos before, no worries if its something we don't need to know.

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Nice work Derek, never tried it myself in real life, enjoy the hell out of in FSX though.

Got worried when the camera fell over, phew.....

Thanks Tom, you should give it a go! You think you got worried about the camera falling off? It hit me in the shoulder while I was absorbed in centring a thermal... lol I've learned my lesson now, the suction cup needs to be moistened before sticking it to the canopy!!

1. What's that bloody beeping noise, nope don't answer that, only joking. Lol...

Yeah, I'll let that one slide :wacko: Answered it more than a few times over the past couple of days!

2. How high would a typical flight get?

Highly dependent on the weather and the type of soaring. Around West Oz we predominantly fly in Thermal conditions... there's no ridge soaring to speak of although we do have one spot right down south where we get wave flying conditions in spring. The lowest peak altitude I've had while flying is about 4,500' and the highest I've hit is just under 9,000' but the conditions here in summer often have thermals to 14,000' or more.

3. Any particular reason for the gloves?

Mainly because it gets hot and sweaty hands are no good for holding the controls. It was 35°C on the ground on Sunday and hotter than that in the cockpit until some altitude is obtained. Usually fingertips on the stick are enough to control the glider, but if it gets rough you need some grip. Not everyone wears gloves, it's a habit of mine though as my other sports (cycling, sailing and fencing) all require them.

Great video mate - I've been having a good read over your blog, and am quite envious of your recent exploits!

Cheers,

Jarrad

Thanks Jarrad! Once I've gotten my passenger endorsement we'll have to sort something out so you can have a look at YCUN from the air 8)

Cheers,

Derek

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A real great video Derek!

And reading through Your Blog from time to time or Your posts here is always a great joy and very informative!

Keep Your enthusiasm vivid, have lots and lots and many more great flights with Your Glider and Thank You very much for sharing it all with us!

Cheers, Christoph

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Thanks Jarrad! Once I've gotten my passenger endorsement we'll have to sort something out so you can have a look at YCUN from the air 8)

That sounds very tempting indeed - been far too long since I've flown out there, and I've never had the view from a glider :)

Cheers,

Jarrad

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Hi Derek,

Thanks for taking me flying. You made it look easy and magical. I haven't been sim gliding for months and you made me eager to reload a favorite plane and go again. I'm always hunting thermals and have difficulty finding them but perhaps Accu-feel will do a good job with thermals. I'll see you up there soon.

good flights, Cal

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Great Video Derek! Looks nice a dry over in WA. We've had so much rain at Kingaroy the season is almost over with very little gliding.

Cheers

Nick

Thanks Nick! Yeah, pretty wet for you guys at the moment I must say, was over in Mackay last week and the rain was absolutely torrential. That's one of the good things about gliding over here, the weather is almost always good for soaring! Even in winter, there's plenty of fun to be had, if not of the long distance x-country kind.

Cheers,

Derek

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Hi Derek,

Thanks for taking me flying. You made it look easy and magical. I haven't been sim gliding for months and you made me eager to reload a favorite plane and go again. I'm always hunting thermals and have difficulty finding them but perhaps Accu-feel will do a good job with thermals. I'll see you up there soon.

good flights, Cal

Hi Cal. I was just looking at some of pilottj's screen shots and in his post he was talking about Cumulus X, which is a gliding addon for FSX. Apparently it does a way better job than default FSX of creating thermals and ridge lift, even adding appropriate clouds and birds.

Here is a link

http://www.luerkens.homepage.t-online.de/peter/

I'm hoping to do some gliding fairly soon also (In the sim that is) :)

Cheers,

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Great stuff man :) Yeah soaring is a whole nother dimension to flying. It really makes you appreciate the simple joys of flight. Like Scott, with Cumulus X, soaring in FSX becomes a more enjoyable experience.

Cheers

TJ

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CumulusX is a great addon for soaring in FSX (I've been a paid up supporter since first coming over to FSX!) and does much to improve the thermal and ridge lift models. Unfortunately FSX is inherently flawed in its soaring flight model - it just makes it way too easy - and CumulusX can't cover for all of the flaws. I rarely fly gliders in FSX anymore, having gone back to Condor for proper gliding simulation. I do kick around in hang gliders in FSX though!

Cheers,

Derek

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Hey Derek can we get on TS at some point and get you to give me a hand I need to reset my entire Condor set up to get it functioning again.

No worries Mozz... I'm away from home at the moment but will sort something out when I'm back in Perth. Will drop you a line.

Cheers,

Derek

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Great video and great flight Derek. Congrats on the solo!

I had missed this thread before.

I was also surprised by the asphalt runway as here (Homestead - X51) we do it on a grass runway (with Super Blaniks).

When I get my PPL (still doing the course) I'll get a camera too.

Have fun!

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OK I am going to stick my neck out here and ask , how much interest there would be in having a Soaring competition in FSX with an instalation package made available with Cumulus X and Maps with GPS tasks etc and then we could get on TS etc for a 150 Km Task or even a 300 Km task weekends perhaps, none of this slope soaring rubbish but complete random Thermal generation and fly from Narromine for arguments sake or Waikerie, Benalla , known top real world soaring centres.

There are Many top notch Freeware Glider's available from Wolfgang Piper as well.

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I'd definitely be keen to take part, I've never had much luck with getting FSX multiplayer set up though so may need some help there. Any of the good soaring locations in Oz or NZ would be a good start - Lake Keepit, Benalla, Omarama, Cunderdin. 150km FAI triangle task under good thermal soaring conditions would be a good start to try it out, I have heaps of tasks in Condor that could be adapted. I've never looked into how thermal data can be shared online in FSX, are there ways to ensure we're all soaring under the same conditions?

Cheers,

Derek

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Derek, I have a little proggy somewhere that randomly generates a thermal.bgl file that is added to the scenery for a particular task area. The beauty is they CANNOT be seen like the FSX ones, and are much more realistic in that they are uneven and vary in strength. You must Look and sense the Aircraft wanting to turn left or right giving an indication of where the thermal is and then crank it round see if the vario starts to chirp well or keep tracking for the next turn point.

I'll did all the stuff I have out and we shall get on TS to discuss.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Another good day of practice out at Cunderdin on Sunday. Conditions were relatively weak and patchy, but after a checkflight I got two solo's in. I've now got my first five solo's out of the way and am eligible to sit for my first certificate, the FAI "A" Certificate. It was a great day really - no wind, nice and warm, reasonably quiet on the airfield - and I was joined by forum member Wombat and his wife for the day. He took HEAPS of photos out at the lineup and around the airfield, which I expect he'll share in due course :)

I also got about 1.5 hours of footage on the action cam, and will put together another short montage when I get back to Perth.

Cheers,

Derek

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The decent thread on soaring in FSX was enough for me to load up my Discus and have another go. The only problem is it would seem I'm no longer getting any thermal lift being generated by CumulusX, it appears to be working ok, the program dialogue shows thermals with a green for go, and the clouds and associated cloud shadows appear during flight, just no lift being generated. I never had any problems with it before but it has been many months since I used it and to be fair I have installed other addons since then. Accufeel & the latest version of Rex spring to mind. Ridge lift is working fine the problem appears to be limited to thermals. If anyone has any ideas or knows of a setting somewhere that I need to alter I would much appreciate your help. And sorry for taking this thread off-topic! :( Paul

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The decent thread on soaring in FSX was enough for me to load up my Discus and have another go. The only problem is it would seem I'm no longer getting any thermal lift being generated by CumulusX, it appears to be working ok, the program dialogue shows thermals with a green for go, and the clouds and associated cloud shadows appear during flight, just no lift being generated. I never had any problems with it before but it has been many months since I used it and to be fair I have installed other addons since then. Accufeel & the latest version of Rex spring to mind. Ridge lift is working fine the problem appears to be limited to thermals. If anyone has any ideas or knows of a setting somewhere that I need to alter I would much appreciate your help. And sorry for taking this thread off-topic! :( Paul

Check that you have deleted or renamed the thermaldescriptions.xml file so there's no conflict with CumulusX, load up a good thermal soaring area (Cunderdin, Omarama...) and set time to 2pm on a summer day and try it out. Make sure the weather is set to Fair Weather. Accufeel shouldn't have any effect on it, but live weather from REX will. Let us know how you get on :)

Cheers,

Derek

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