Grounded by a stupid mistake

Today was forecast to be a moderate day, soaring index about 440. Early flights indicated 400-600 was happening. I got set to take off in the PW5 about 1:30. Two guys were up in the Grob, the instructor and a student were up in the Blanik for quite a while... A new student helped me push out and I got set to go. In the ship, on the runway, tow plane parked in front... I went to adjust the rudder pedals and pulled the canopy emergency release instead! Since it was in the open position (the PW5 canopy is hinged at the front), it fell immediately, landing on the runway and putting a nice 1.5" chip in the rear rim (the white part, not the transparent part).

We looked at it for a moment and realized it was not obvious how to put it back on. So we pushed the glider off to the side and looked some more... still not easy. Hmmm... all the experienced club members are in the air... Aha! Look at the manual! No, it talks about lots of things but not how to put the canopy back on its hinge. I know, wait for the instructor to get back! "No, I've never even flown that model..." After messing around for a while, I got it figured out. By then it was 3:00, the weather was so-so, and I was not in a mood to try again.

Other members tell me I'm not the first to do that. One pilot pulled it in flight, but fortunately in the closed position the two rear latches hold it on. Others have done it on the ground but I'm probably the first to have it drop and cause damage.

What contributed to the mistake? (Not making excuses, just examining the situation to see how to improve.)

• Inexperience: I've only flown the PW5 3 times. But the canopy release is bright red, and the pedal handle is dull red and down low. Should have been obvious.
• Distractions: Answering a student's questions while preparing for flight. I don't think this was a big part of it.
• Rushing: The tow pilot had started her engine as soon as the previous glider took off, and I had already given her the "kill" signal once. I knew I had several steps to go to be ready: belts, pedals, positioning my GPS, water tube, radio mic. The belts were all twisted up... I know it's up to me to do all my steps regardless of the tow pilot - no one was behind me waiting - but it still annoys me when they're ready to go and I'm not.

Next time...

Two passengers

Saturday I took two friends for rides in the Grob 103, M and his son K.

K is a 13-year-old who goes to my church and is somewhat interested in aviation. He'd been waiting all summer for our schedules to coincide. The day was hazy and about 75-80 degrees, a cold front having just gone through. Wind was about 12-14 kts at 45 degrees to the runway, and I decided it was OK. (Later I checked and that works out to a 9-10 kt crosswind component. I was comfortable with the wind, and it did not cause any problems on takeoff or tow.) Lift was forecast at 250, and it that's about all we got. We took a 3800' tow, nearly to the top of the haze layer and a bit below the few clouds that were around. About 5 minutes into the flight, I noticed I had no yaw string! K was OK with the flying and turning, so I went ahead and worked some of the weak lift and zero sink, and we got a 31-minute flight out of it. The crosswind was still present at landing but not a problem - I even got a compliment from someone on the ground about my nice straight landing.

I had tried to take M before in the Blanik L13, but since he's 6' 7" he was too tall. But he fit in the back seat of the Grob just fine. He gets motion sick but has been soaring once before and wanted to go again. I promised to take it easy. The wind was still about the same, brisk but not too strong. (This time I added a yaw string! I think we should put that on the daily inspection checklist.) We again went to 3800' and let off in light lift which promptly disappeared. We flew around a while and found less lift than last time. I think the haze/smog was inhibiting the heating of the ground, and the wind was blowing out the thermals. M had a good time looking at the nearby lakes and finding the route we had driven in on. There wasn't much lift to work with and M started to feel slightly ill after about 20 minutes so we came down, making it a 26-minute flight.

I was high on late downwind and base leg, so I used a turning slip to bring us down, which worked quite well. Landing in the crosswind was again OK - I seem to naturally find the correct slip angle for a straight approach. But I let my speed get low at the very end and probably stalled at about 3" to 6" above the ground - a bump but not too hard. So that's on my things-to-practice list... I have never done that in the Blanik or PW5, so maybe it has something to with the apparent attitude from the cockpit, or the effectiveness of the spoilers... I need to watch the speed more closely after the flare.

Another thing to remember with the Grob: an instructor pointed it out and I have noticed it too. The Grob rolls into a turn rather slowly, so you need to start the turn from base to final just a bit earlier than you might think, or you overshoot the approach and have to make a more-than-90-degree turn to final, which is NOT a good thing.

I'm up to about 39 hours of logged time.

Third flight in PW-5

The weather reports and the soaring forecast did not predict a good day today. A low pressure system was centered right on the local area, and the air was very stable. But since I had not flown for a while I went anyway. As expected, there were very few ships flying... one or two very experienced pilots staying up.

J took a 4000' tow and only got 22 minutes out of it, reporting one area of weak lift right near the Initial Point, at pattern altitude, therfore hard to exploit. I also took a 4000' tow. I should have let off at about 3700' because we went through some OK lift. After I released I went back to that spot but could not find anything.

This was only my third flight in the PW-5, as I've been flying the Grob 103 lately. My takeoff was fine but on tow it seemed a bit squirrely, and I had to make an effort to stay slightly above the towplane. Not too bad, but something to work on. Using a lighter touch on the stick seemed to help.

Off tow, I found it very comfortable to fly. My other flights in the PW-5 were on stronger, turbulent days and I got bounced around pretty well. Today was (unfortunately) quite smooth. I finally did find a bit of lift at about 1500' AGL but only worked it up about 300' before losing it all very quickly to the sink monster.

Pattern and landing were good. Light crosswind from the left. I got a little slow after the flare, but because I had stalled a landing some weeks before I was prepared. I adjusted well with elevator and spoilers and had a smooth, straight touchdown in the box and great rollout.

I had been hoping for a fairly relaxed, satisfying flight and I got it... but short, only 30 minutes since I couldn't find much lift.

Just before takeoff, my PDA/GPS combo got into some sub-screen of SeeYou Mobile that I could not get out of. I didn't want to delay takeoff, so I put it away and ignored it. So I still have not had an opportunity to try it out in flight.

More thoughts on landings

The last post was basically a description of the weekend's flights. But what did I learn? What do I think?

Out of my approximately 130 flights so far, only 7 or 8 landings have been on an asphalt runway, although we have one at my home field. I think our training should include runway landings, but it doesn't. That's partly because my local field's rules require students to land in the dirt, and only private pilots and the commercial pilots of the FBO may land on the runway. I think we should address this with our club board and the gliderport operator.

Thermal soaring at Tehachapi

The club took a field trip to Tehachapi over the holiday weekend, bringing along the PW5 and the Grob 103. I've flown there before with other pilots in a Blanik, and this time I was looking forward to flying solo over the mountains or maybe flying cross-country with another pilot. It didn't quite work out that way but I had a good time and learned quite a bit.

The winds were not favorable much of the weekend, south or north at 10-15 kt much of the time. At Tehachapi, a south or north wind (a) makes for crosswind landings, (b) blows out the thermals, and (c) does not favor shear line formation.

So I didn't fly Sat. - hardly anyone did. Sun. was better, so I did what I thought would be a checkout flight over the mountains with an instructor. (I have my cert, but club rules require an instructor checkout for new environments in club ships.) It turned out that the lift wasn't working over the mountains so we thermaled over the valley for about an hour. We spent quite a bit of time working on getting the most out of the best side of a thermal, and tighter control of speed and bank angle. We had up to 5 ships at a time in the same thermal, and unlike other gaggles I've been in, we were often at nearly the same altitude. So I got some good practice at spacing and speed control and lookout.

My landing was good but my rollout was terrible. Unlike Hemet, where we land in 800x300 feet of dirt, Mountain Valley Airport has two asphalt runways, one for power and one for gliders. I don't know how long the glider runway is - maybe 3000', but only about 8 feet wide! Think about that - an 8' wide runway to land a 50' wide aircraft! Last year I had landed there 3 times, and I think some of them were on the wider power runway, and in the Blanik, which has a swiveling tailwheel. The Grob has fixed wheels, so steering is harder. I was all over the place and, sincer there were gliders staged in the center of the runway for takeoff, I was concerned about running into them, so I braked too much and stopped way short. So... It wasn't unsafe, but it certainly wasn't pretty! After that, I knew I'd need some more flights with CFI before I'd get signed off to fly the Grob solo here. The wind came up again, so no one flew very late into the afternoon.

Monday morning was pretty calm. Several of us did pattern flights. I did two, and both were good landings and good rollouts, much straighter and rolled nicely back to the starting line, stopping perfectly level! So CFI signed me off for solo. Unfortunately the lift got a late start, and the crosswind returned - not strong, but definitely cross. A couple of us were going to fly again but with the late start and marginal lift and knowing we had to tear down both gliders and drive home, we gave up and stayed on the ground.