Beautiful winter day here in Southern California...so time to go thermal flying!
After years of living in Michigan, where I had to travel thousands of miles to go flying any time of year, it sure makes a change to jump in the car, drive an hour along the freeway, arrive at arguably the biggest custom built free flight landing field in the world, get a shuttle to a huge launch, and fly for nearly two hours.
Leonardo Tracklog
Last week in Michigan it was -15 Fahrenheit. At Marshall it was 70 degrees on launch at 1300m!
After flying very low hours every year for nearly fourteen years, 2014 should see my flying improve dramatically!
Here is my list of flying skills to improve with all these flying hours I'll be clocking up...
Thermalling. Analysis of my recent tracklogs shows my thermalling is kind of sloppy. My circles are not that tight, consistent, and look too fast and loose.
Improvement opportunity: concentrate more on creating nice constant radius turns once in the core
Here's how the tracklog looked. You can see the left turn entering the thermal, then a right turn to find the best lift.
Speed Bar and Rear Riser Control on Glide: After years of free-flying and unhurried XC, I was in the habit of not using speedbar that much. Most of that was due to my very slow learning curve on gliders (Arcus DHV 1 and Pulsar DHV 1-2) that only rewarded speedbar use with the feeling of huge sink. Since 2013 I'm flying an Ozone Delta that is a dream on speedbar. Light and progressive, and the glider stiffens up and give you loads of confidence to stay on bar. I'm not sure what the polar curve is, but I think it's the same as many modern gilders, which mean speed bar doesn't really degrade the glide.
Improvement Opportunity:
After years of living in Michigan, where I had to travel thousands of miles to go flying any time of year, it sure makes a change to jump in the car, drive an hour along the freeway, arrive at arguably the biggest custom built free flight landing field in the world, get a shuttle to a huge launch, and fly for nearly two hours.
Leonardo Tracklog
Last week in Michigan it was -15 Fahrenheit. At Marshall it was 70 degrees on launch at 1300m!
After flying very low hours every year for nearly fourteen years, 2014 should see my flying improve dramatically!
Here is my list of flying skills to improve with all these flying hours I'll be clocking up...
Thermalling. Analysis of my recent tracklogs shows my thermalling is kind of sloppy. My circles are not that tight, consistent, and look too fast and loose.
Improvement opportunity: concentrate more on creating nice constant radius turns once in the core
- At Marshall on Saturday I was very pleased with one thermal - from 748m (200m above the landing field) all the way up to over take off height (1300m) in very light conditions, with just one turn where I fell out (short blue section on the tracklog). The key thing was that I was relaxed, and wasn't attached to the outcome. I'd already had a great 90 minute flight but was up for more
- For first time I used the Turn Reversal technique for entering thermals. It seemed to be quite successful and less complicated than my previous technique.
Here's how the tracklog looked. You can see the left turn entering the thermal, then a right turn to find the best lift.
Improvement Opportunity:
- Pitch control using the speedbar to ensure smoother glide. I need to look up at the wing on glide in order to associate pitch movements with speedbar pressure. This is not yet instinctive and still quite a new concept.
- Rear riser control. Delta doesn't have loops, balls or handles so need to grab the risers at the mallions for best control. This picture has handles - must be a different Ozone wing.
Straight Transitions and Increasing Overall speed: For flying competitions my average speed needs to go up.
- On Saturday my average speed was 29km/h which is actually quite good given that there were no big downwind legs or transitions and the max thermal was only 2.5m/s. The 49km/h max speed giving gives indication of the 11km/hr wind that was blowing into the hill.
- In comparison, my best ever competition task in the Rat Race Sprint task where I was third in goal averaged 33.5km/h, with 4.5m/s max thermal and max speed of 56km/hr. That was definitely the most I've ever pushed speedbar on any flight, as I got really high at the first turnpoint and never got low again.
- Strong tailwinds means distorted increases in average speed. My personal best in Piedrahita, down the famous Avila convergence for 87km, was 39km/h average, with 8m/s max thermal and 71km/h top speed on a EN-B glider from 2004.
- As a comparison of a comp pilot on a similar glider to me, pilot David Wheeler flying in mid-summer in the Bright Open in Australia with max thermal of 6.1m/s on a Delta 2, had an average was 27km/h with a top speed of 54 km/h. He was 13th out of field of 54.
- At legendary out and back distance soaring site Kerio View in Kenya, Markus Elder on an Icepeak 6 averaged 33.5 km/hr with pumping 6.3 m/s max thermal and max speed of 64 km/h.
Improvement Opportunity
Concentrate on three modes of flying from Chrigel Maurer. Thermalling, planning, and gliding. Make glides as fast as possible. Target 33 km/hr average as a benchmark 'racing' speed. Use the Bruce Goldsmith speed to fly rules and assume that speedbar is going to used on all glides except for tailwind glides.