Soaring – Chess in the Air

Over the last two days I received my checkout in our club’s Discus CS.  It’s a nice plane with strong performance characteristics and easy to fly.  I am particularly impressed with the quick roll rate: you can go from a 45 degree bank angle in one direction to a 45 degree bank angle in the other direction in just about three seconds – very responsive! I also like how quick the plane picks up speed and how efficiently it reconverts it into height when pulling up into a thermal.  I look forward to flying it for longer distances when the weather permits.

The only real downside is that the plane is always stored disassembled in its trailer. That means I always have to have someone help me rig it before a flight and derig it afterwards. I was at first a bit intimidated by the 85-point rigging checklist but once I had done it a couple of times I realized that it actually goes pretty fast. It reminded me a bit of the process involved in rigging a sailboat – like the Hobie Cat that I sailed as a kid. The automatic hook-ups of the control surfaces are a big plus so there really isn’t all that much that can go wrong. Obviously, it’s still well worth double checking everything – after all, unlike with a sailboat where mistakes are usually pretty benign, the pilot’s life is on the line when you mess up the rigging of a plane…

The weather hasn’t been all that great for soaring. We’ve had about 10 cold days with clouds and rain,and the ground is still pretty wet (very unusual for Colorado). Temps were back around 20 degrees Celsius today but the air was stable and we stayed well short of the projected trigger temperature of 25 degrees.  There were a few weak thermals above the city of Boulder and the nearby plains but no lift at all over the foothills despite some decent looking cumuli. The cumuli had tempted me into a high tow to about 12,000 feet but 20 minutes later I was already back over town at about 8,000 feet.  There I stayed for more than an hour until I was done flying in circles that didn’t really lead anywhere.

The air was fairly clear so I still got some nice views of the Continental Divide, glistening white in its first fresh snow cover of the season.  The trees around Boulder have also started to take on nice color.  My other satisfaction was watching other gliders take off and land while I was able to hang on. Credit to the Discus, which thermals very nicely at a relatively low speed. I’m still hoping that we’ll get a few good thermal days before it’s winter wave or nothing.

 

Last Sunday didn’t look like a good day for soaring so I decided to use the time for a road trip along the Northern Front Range to research potential land-out fields – private airstrips, farmer’s fields, and other places where I might be able to land a glider safely if it became necessary. Knowing where such fields are allows me to safely venture beyond gliding distance of the main public airports and gives me more confidence to go on cross-country flights.

In preparation of my “field trip”, I created a set of criteria (see below) that would help me evaluate each landing area.  I also researched a number of potential fields upfront using satellite images on Google Maps.

In addition, I queried the Internet to see if other people had done such work before so I would have a good starting point to work from.  (In Europe, there are reasonably decent open-source databases of land-out fields available, e.g. as part of XC Soar.) Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find anything comparable for Colorado. Also, my prior experience with such databases in Austria demonstrated that they cannot be relied upon as fields can subsequently become unusable (e.g. new construction, fencing, other obstacles, etc.).  In addition, I have found that just because someone else marked a field as useable, does not necessarily mean that I would be comfortable landing there myself.

My drive covered the area between Boulder, CO and Laramie, WY along the Northern Front Range. You can click here to view the complete results of my research. Please remember that I did this for my own purposes only and you must read this disclaimer before you use any of this information.

Please contact me if you are aware of similar efforts to research land-out fields for this or other areas in the Rocky Mountains.

In addition to learning about specific fields, I also gained a much better understanding of the topography along the Northern Front Range. And, as another side benefit, I saw some beautiful country side.

Finally, a note for non-glider pilots who may be unfamiliar with the concept of “landing out”: when soaring, a good principle is to always stay within glide range of an airport. However, airports aren’t everywhere so pilots try to stay at least within glide range of a field where they can land without breaking the plane, and, more importantly, themselves. Landing in a field is what’s called “landing out”.  It is certainly inconvenient (because someone will have to jump into a car to come get you and your glider (which will have to be disassembled and put into a trailer), but it is not unexpected. If done properly, it is definitely not a “crash” or even an “emergency.” Especially in gliding competitions where glider pilots cover long distances, often in marginal conditions, it happens all the time and is par for the course.

Yesterday, Captain Joe (not his real name) invited me to join him on a flight in the club’s ASK 21. It was supposed to be a strong thermal day, although overdevelopment, rain showers, and a potential for thunderstorms were also part of the forecast. As I left home on the way to the airport, I spotted what looked like a small lenticular cloud. That surprised me as the National Weather Service had predicted “poor” wave conditions.  Driving south along the foothills I noticed wind blowing from the West. Maybe there was wave after all? (I should have paid more attention to the wind speed aloft.) Westerly conditions at Boulder are notoriously challenging with the potential of strong downdrafts in the lee of the Rocky Mountains as well as turbulent rotors beneath any wave(s), and at this point I wasn’t so sure if we would go flying at all.

When I arrived at the airfield, three miles away from the foothills, the wind was only light and its direction variable. I ran into one of Boulder’s most experienced flight instructors and cross country pilots who confirmed that the winter wave season was indeed beginning and that we should be prepared for some rotor turbulence on tow.  He seemed confident, however, that our takeoff would not pose a problem. So Joe and I decided to go.

Takeoff was indeed uneventful and our tow pilot did a nice job staying out of the invisible rotors. Nevertheless, the air was clearly more turbulent than during my previous flights from Boulder, and soaring conditions seemed at first difficult: for long stretches of time we followed the tow plane in sink strong enough to have us lose altitude, and we did not hit our first real thermal until we reached almost 5,000 feet AGL (10,300 MSL) over the foothills.

Once off tow, the first climbs were a bit rough, the thermals narrow and ill defined. But only about 30 minutes later, cumulus clouds developed rapidly and the lift quickly became stronger and smoother.  Soon it was effortless to reach cloud base at just under 15,000 feet MSL. Not much later, the first sheets of rain began to fall. Dark clouds popped up and dissipated in what seemed to be no time at all. One minute we would fly in strong lift along a cloud street, and a few minutes later we found ourselves in heavy sink and surrounded by virga.

The rain curtains were very picturesque, and, since Joe did most of the flying, I had plenty of time to take pictures.

Two and a half hours into our flight back and forth along the foothills, a group of tall cumuli southwest of the flatirons drifted towards Boulder and appeared as if they might develop into cumulonimbi.  It was time to return to the airfield.

As we approached the airport on a straight glide from about ten miles to the south we encountered numerous patches of strong lift and heavy sink in quick succession.  About three miles south of the airport was another spot of strong lift.  Joe, obviously concerned that we might be arriving too high in the pattern, pulled out the spoilers until he had us back down at 6,300 feet (1,000 ft AGL) – the normal pattern entry altitude. I remember thinking that I would have kept the spoilers closed at this point because its much easier to lose height in the pattern than to gain it back. However, maybe out of respect for Joe, I did not say anything. We were, after all, still at the normal pattern altitude.

A glace down at the lakes and windsocks indicated calm winds on the ground. Even at our altitude we could not detect a noticeable wind drift in any direction. Joe said he would fly a normal approach to Glider Runway 8 (facing East).  I had no objection but suggested that he might want to add some extra airspeed, maybe fly at 65 kts instead of 55 kts, because we had just been through some significant turbulence.

We should have been prepared for what came next but it still took us by surprise. Just before we crossed the runway to enter the traffic pattern (see map above), we encountered by far the heaviest downdraft of our entire flight. The variometer needle hit the maximum sink indication (i.e., more than 1000 feet per minute), and the ground was visibly coming closer second by second. By the time we were across the runway we had already lost a few hundred feet and were now below 6,000 feet MSL (700 feet AGL).

I remember regretting at this point that I had not spoken up earlier about keeping the spoilers in. But I must say that Joe, the experienced airline captain, did everything right. He stayed (at least outwardly) calm, announced that he was going to fly a close abbreviated pattern, and began the downwind leg in close proximity to our runway. All the while the variometer needle remained stuck on maximum sink and it felt as if we dropped out of the sky. We were only a few seconds into our downwind leg when we had already lost so much altitude that Joe had to initiate our final turn. The club shed was directly under our left wing as we turned onto final. Joe kept the speed up throughout the turn, lined the plane up with the runway, and seconds later we were safely back on the ground. The map below shows our abbreviated pattern. Well done, Captain Joe!

As we climbed out of the cockpit, relieved and wondering what had just happened, we noticed that the wind was now blowing firmly from the West. It wasn’t obvious, at least to me, what had caused the massive downdraft and the rapid change in conditions on the ground. The nearest rain clouds were still far behind the flatirons, at least 10-15 miles to the southwest, and only approaching slowly. (Rain did not reach the airport until we had stowed the aircraft and packed everything away, more than 30 minutes after our landing.) The winds aloft had calmed during the day, so rotor turbulence, though possible, also seemed somewhat unlikely.  Two other gliders came in to land 10-15 minutes after us and neither seemed to have any troubles in the pattern (one landed to the East just like we did, the other one to the West).

Now, a day later, I am still questioning what caused the dramatic sink in the pattern. The only thing I’m sure about is that the air had been very unstable throughout the afternoon. This was evident by the short cycle time of the clouds, the frequent updrafts and downdrafts that only strengthened throughout the day, reaching lower and lower altitudes, and the many rain showers and lines of virga (albeit no thunderstorms) throughout the area. I also still consider rotor turbulence a possibility.

The truth is that I will never know for sure. Nevertheless, there were several key lessons to be learned:

1. Be prepared for the worst. Unless the air is stable and the wind is calm (i.e., conditions completely useless for soaring), massive downdrafts in the pattern are always a possibility. So don’t be taken by surprise.
2. Altitude is your friend. If there is any risk of strong downdrafts in the pattern, start higher than normal. At our rate of sink, 500 extra feet of altitude would have bought us 20-30 seconds of additional flying time in the pattern. That may not seem like a lot, but it would have made a big difference.
3. Don’t destroy excess altitude until you are in or at least very close to the pattern, especially if you don’t know what the conditions are likely to be.  In our case we approached on a straight glide from the south and had no idea what the conditions in the pattern would be until we got there and hit the big sink.
4. Always speak up when safety is concerned. It doesn’t help that I thought “I would keep the spoilers closed”, I should have said so.  The final approach would have been safer and less stressful and Captain Joe would have thanked me for it.
5. Just like altitude, speed is your friend, too.  Flying faster turned out to be important as well.  On our final turn we clearly turned into a tailwind and the extra knots helped ensure a safe flying speed as well as maintain control authority.

That brings me to the question in the title of this post: What’s a Safe Pattern Altitude?  The answer is: it depends, but the clear lesson is that higher is better.  Bob Whelan, an experienced Boulder pilot, wrote an article in the November 2007 edition of Soaring Magazine, entitled “Paranoia as a Virtue,” in which he eloquently addresses this subject. He details three close encounters, at least two of them in Boulder, where extra altitude was critical to his safe arrival back on earth. Yesterday’s experience was clearly nowhere near as dramatic as the examples he references. However, I’m glad I learned my own lesson. It will help me to always keep Bob’s advice in mind.

 

When I got to the airport just before 12pm yesterday, the ASK 21 I had reserved for the afternoon was just about to land. One of the local flight instructors used it to give an introductory ride to a gentleman who had earned his glider rating many decades ago but had not flown a sailplane since, and was now interested in getting back into gliding.

As they climbed out of the cockpit, the flight instructor asked me if I would mind taking his student, let’s call him Joe (not his real name) on a ride with me. I was happy to agree as it’s always fun to share a flight with someone else, discuss weather conditions, potential sources of lift, and perhaps share some of the workload. Also, the plane’s cruising performance is noticeably better with the additional weight of a second person on board.

Joe and I didn’t know much of each other until we were up in the air climbing behind the towplane.  That’s when I learned that he was a retired airplane captain who had flown Boing 747s for United for more than 35 years.

Prior to flying for United, Joe was a pilot in the US Air Force, mostly flying B52 bombers.  And yet, there he was, eager to be a passenger in a comparatively flimsy sailplane, and to learn about flying gliders from me!

Before we climbed through 12,000 feet I instructed Joe in the operations of the oxygen system, something he apparently never had to use during his career in pressurized cabins. He said he had still a lot to learn with respect to gliding. His instincts, honed over many decades of flying the largest multi-engine jets in the world, were to avoid any maneuver that would be noticeable to passengers.  I responded that I very much appreciated this on my hundreds (or thousands?) of commercial flights as a passenger where I either worked or tried  to get some sleep.  But it doesn’t quite work in a sailplane. After observing me pulling back on the stick and banking steeply when entering a thermal (something glider pilots have to do to avoid flying right through the area of lift) he told me that he had to overcome his instincts and become a lot more aggressive with the controls himself.

We had a great flight together.  Cloud base over the mountains was above 16,000 feet so we got a great view of the Continental Divide and the valley beyond.   When I told Joe that we had Granby airport (on the other side of the Divide) within glide range he said he had never imagined being able to get there in a sailplane.

We circled under dark clouds above 15,000 feet over Allenspark when light rain, and then light snow began to fall with some small graupel mixed in.  Joe, safety conscious by profession, was the first to notice that some of the water droplets froze to the wings and we quickly left that particular area.  It only took a few minutes of gliding under clear skies when Joe pointed out that the ice build up had already sublimated.

The area to the northwest of Boulder overdeveloped so we headed further south.  We found ourselves in sink over Golden Gate Canyon when we noticed rain showers moving towards Boulder. The automatic weather system reported winds from the West with gusts of 16 kts. I parked the glider in a weak thermal over the flatirons until the rain had moved through and the winds at the airfield had calmed down again.

We landed safely in light crosswind from the North after just over three hours in the air.  It was a great experience flying with a true veteran of the skies and I gained a better appreciation just how different gliding is from flying big aircraft. Thank you, Joe!

Boulder is still new to me.  In fact, whenever I fly at a new location there are usually a lot of things that are new and different. There are local weather and wind patterns to consider, as well as different procedures at the airfield I’m flying from, ranging from unfamiliar radio protocols to different landing pattern procedures.  I might also be flying unfamiliar equipment, in this case an ASK 21 with somewhat worse performance than the LS4b that I last flew in Austria.

One thing that’s always different in a new location is the terrain. Unfamiliarity can contribute to disorientation, not a great thing if you’re in a glider and hitting big sink.  So, where exactly was the wind coming from? And where is the nearest landable field?  These are not questions you want to be asking yourself if you don’t know where you are and you find yourself down low…

So I made it a rule for myself to to stay local during the first few flights at a new location, i.e., within glide range of the airport I’m flying from.  But how do I know that I’m still within glide range? It’s always a good idea to carry a map in the plane, but full-size maps tend to be big and cumbersome to work with, especially if you are already in a bit of a pinch.  And, most importantly, they actually don’t tell you whether or not you’re within glide range, especially in the particular glider you’re flying with.

So one thing I do as part of my preparations at a new location is to create my own one-page map with custom-drawn glide range circles.  To do this, I take a local flight map, in the case of Boulder that’s the sectional charts of Denver and Cheyenne (Boulder just happens to be on the edge of both of these), I put a transparent plastic sheet over the map and draw various distance rings that show the altitude above sea level (MSL) that I need to get back to the airport at pattern altitude (i.e. usually 1,000 ft AGL).

To be safe, I use a safety factor, essentially a degraded flight ratio, to account for less than perfect “still air” conditions.  I actually use two different safety factors to indicate a range of required altitudes for each of the distance rings: a “realistic” one that assumes no head or tail wind and a glider performance that’s about 30% degraded from the best L/D ratio.  And a “pessimistic” one that assumes a headwind of 10 kts and a glider performance that’s 50% degraded from best L/D.

I then take a picture of the map with the circle overlays and print it out on photo paper.  Actually, I make two printouts, one that covers the immediate vicinity of the airfield about 25-35 miles out and is easier to read (Fig 2), and one that covers a somewhat larger area and also shows when I get within glide range of various nearby airfields (Fig 1). I put these two sheets back to back into a plastic cover and take it with me into the glider. As long as I don’t leave the area shown on these print-outs I won’t even need to take my paper maps.

I also create a handy-dandy spreadsheet that shows how far I can glide from any given altitude in different wind conditions.  I print the spreadsheet on laminated paper (in a size that fits within my logbook) so I can take it with me and always have it available as a handy reference (see Fig 3).

I’d like to hear about some of the steps you take to familiarize yourself when flying in a new area.

 

Over the last month I added a US glider rating to my Austrian glider pilot’s license.  I was a bit surprised by the things I had to study, which, while important for power pilots to know, have little to do with flying sailplanes. E.g., I now know the meaning of airport signage and runway markings I have only ever seen on commercial flights and will probably never get to see from a glider cockpit. I also learned how to navigate with instruments that no glider is equipped with. On the other hand, the questions that pertained to soaring were rather basic and the required “correct” answers to some of them were actually wrong. I was also surprised that there are no medical checks whatsoever necessary to fly gliders in the US.  Anyway, it is curious that something like gliding, the natural conditions and physical laws of which are truly universal, is regulated so differently in various countries.

I passed my knowledge test and checkride without a hitch and got all the requisite checkouts to fly solo at my new club: the Soaring Society of Boulder. I’m impressed by their modern equipment (e.g., all planes have mode C transponders and oxygen), which stands in stark contrast to the airfield itself, which is rather basic (no hangar, no services, not even running water). The people at the club are friendly, smart, and eccentric – so at least that aspect appears to be globally consistent.

Yesterday, I finally took my first real soaring flight over the Colorado foothills in the club’s four-year old ASK 21. Dark clouds indicated and delivered strong thermal lift (with climb rates of more than 10kts = 5m/s) up to cloud base at 14,000 feet).

My first orientation to the foothills ended up being relatively short lived.  After an hour and a half the clouds started to get closer to the airport.  When the wind direction on the ground shifted from East to West this was a sure sign that it was time to descend and land.  I extended the spoilers and put the ASK 21 into a slip. Just three or four minutes later I had lost almost 8,000 feet and was down to pattern altitude and landed on Runway 26 into the now westerly wind.

Flying has fascinated me for as long as I remember.

I must have been about seven or eight years old when I took a piece of string to strap an old ironing board onto the back of a kid’s tricycle. With this contraption I raced down a small hill in our neighborhood in an attempt to take to the air. Today, I am thankful that this endeavor didn’t work; but also, that I wasn’t discouraged.

I recall folding paper gliders, experimenting with different designs to suit different purposes: gliders that could fly the fastest, gliders that could do aerobatics, gliders that would fly slowly and and stay up the longest. I even remember organizing a paper glider competition in school: our classroom was on the top floor and it was winter.  In a break we would run down the stairs and open the windows in the classrooms below.  Then we would run back up and launch our paper gliders out the window and see whose gliders could soar the longest. And it worked: the warm air, escaping the classrooms below, rose in the winter chill, and with it the gliders that we had carefully designed to fly in circles.  I remember our excitement when several paper gliders rose high above the school building and eventually disappeared over the roof. Although we could not identify a winner of the competition, the experiment itself was a huge success.

I must have been eleven or twelve when I began to build radio controlled gliders.  There was a nice steep ridge not too far from where I lived.  My friend and I strapped our gliders onto our bicycles and pushed up the hill to reach our slope.  The ridge faced in a westerly direction – perfectly suited for the prevailing winds.  We had many long flights on that slope – sometimes several hours until our fingers would get stiff from the cold wind.  We also learned some important lessons: about the difference between air speed and ground speed when the winds were so strong that a glider heading away from the ridge could actually move backwards towards it; about the dangers of ridge flying when one of our gliders was pushed into the trees in heavy turbulence; or about excessive load factors when a glider broke apart in midair during an overly aggressive aerobatic maneuver.

And then, in 1983, just a few days after I turned sixteen, I began my flight training to become a “real” glider pilot.

Well, there aren’t that many around. I encourage you to look at the blog roll and see what else is out there.  And if you find another interesting blog or vlog (video blog), please go to the contacts page and let me know about it.

Anyway, here are three key reasons why I decided to give it a go:

1. To learn: the basics of gliding aren’t that difficult. If you can drive a car or ride a bicycle, you can also learn to pilot an airplane. However, when it comes to soaring I can’t think of any sport that is more difficult to truly master. I want to document what I learned so I will remember it for the future. And maybe it will help you too.
2. To be safe: I’ll be honest: soaring is a relatively dangerous sport. Perhaps on par with riding motorcycles. But the risks can be managed and controlled by being aware of them and always staying one step ahead of potential disaster.
3. To inspire: Who has never dreamed of flying like a bird? Who has not stared in fascination at hawks, eagles, or condors rising high up into the sky without ever flapping their wings? Soaring is not just chess in the air. Soaring is also poetry. Don’t you want to write yours?

Whether you currently are a glider pilot or are just fascinated by the idea of flight without an engine, I hope you will find something of interest.  I also appreciate your thoughts, feedback, and ideas.  There is always more we can learn, more we can do to be safe, and more to be inspired.

Glück ab, gut land!