The “Competitive” Advantage of a Motor Glider – My Adventurous First Season with the V3M

Most recently I explained why I chose a V3M as my first self-launching motor glider. This article explores what it means to me to fly one.  Everyone can readily see that motor gliders bring independence from tow planes: pilots can take off when they want and from where they want.  But does the impact go further than that.  My initial experience shows that, yes, it does.

The Psychology of Flying a Motor Glider

Motorized gliders have stirred emotions since they became a thing more than 50 years ago.   Although some 90% of new gliders are now equipped with engines, some purists still seem to consider them cheating machines that help the feeble-minded obtain an unfair advantage.  In response, defensive motor glider pilots have suggested that the greater fixed ballast and the necessarily higher decision altitude for land-outs might actually slow them down.

In my mind this squabbling is not only fruitless but it largely misses the point.  There are many differences among gliders (e.g. wing profile, wing loading, winglets, instrumentation, fuselage design, etc…) that can give a pilot a competitive advantage without igniting a philosophical debate.  And with all other things (including wing-loading) being held equal, it is difficult to see how the mere presence of a motor could make one glider go faster than another.

Nevertheless, after my first season in a real motor glider (the turbo sustainer in my prior V2cxT was of limited practical use at the lofty altitudes of Colorado), I can say that having a capable motor does in fact make a big difference.

No, it does not affect how fast I can go, but still, it is of great relevance to me.  The effect is psychological. Think of it this way: what if you had a pre-paid, dedicated, and selfless ground crew automatically following you around on every flight? And what if that ground crew also possessed a magic wand to instantly fix any damage that your glider might incur during a potential landout?

Neither the crew nor its magic wand would make your glider go any faster. However, its constant presence would certainly make you more willing to conduct flights that you would not attempt otherwise.  That’s what the presence of an engine does.  The effect is in your brain.

I should add a caveat:  since engines are still not working as reliably as we’d wish them to, you have to allow for the possibility that on some random occasion your crew and its wand would simply fail to show up even though you expect them to come along every single time.  This caveat is important because it forces motor glider pilots to always keep a safely landable field in glide just like any pilot of a pure glider.

Also, lest anyone gets carried away by their imagination, even the most reliable motor is not a “bail-out device” when conditions go south.  Sometimes I see comments on accidents reports such as “why didn’t the pilot use the engine?”  Usually there is a good reason for that.  E.g., in my V3M, one of the best climbing motor-gliders, the best climb rate is between 400 and 500 fpm.  Now imagine flying into an area of heavy sink.  Downwind of mountain ridges, in a microburst event, or in the sink zone of mountain wave, downdrafts routinely exceed 1000 fpm and can be as severe as 3000 fpm or even more.   What good would the engine do in such heavy sink? Attempting to use it would only make a bad situation worse because it dramatically limits your speed range, effectively forcing you to stay in sink much longer than otherwise necessary.  In my V3M, the best climb rate is attained at 54 kt.  Try to go faster and the engine will overspeed and you will no longer climb.  Go faster still and it may shut off altogether, turning a 55:1 glider into a 15:1 flying brick. The best thing to do in heavy sink is to keep the propeller tugged away, put the nose down, and fly out of the sink as fast as you can, near redline if necessary.  But do not look to your engine for help!

So, why then does the mere presence of a capable engine make so much difference?  Let’s consider some real examples.

Flights that Would Not Have Happened Without An Engine

In my first season with the V3M I can identify numerous flights that almost certainly would not have happened the same way if I did not have a motor glider.

Roundtrip to Utah – 1154 km

On June 13, 2024 I became the first pilot to fly from Boulder to Utah and back in a single flight.  My declared turn point was Mount Peale, the highest peak in the La Sal Mountains, just east of Moab.

On the first 300 km or so having a motor made no difference.  I was flying over familiar terrain, there were reasonable clouds and I was confident of a viable return. Things changed after I had gotten low near Montrose and with another 100 km to go to my turn point.

The Uncompahgre Plateau ahead was overdeveloping and I had to find a line between virga shafts to get to my turn point and back.  There was no way of knowing whether this would work or not.  I decided that continuing would not be unsafe because the cells were scattered and there was (yet) too little vertical development to create a risk of thunderstorms.  However, it was also far from certain that the weather would hold up long enough to also permit a safe return.

Safety on the way out was assured by the proximity of Hopkins Field which I would be able to keep in glide at all times.  But I had to be mindful of the possibility that the weather would further deteriorate and force me to land.

What does this have to do with the engine?  Well, nothing or everything. It depends how you look at it.

Consider that there are no tow planes at Hopkins Field (or at any other airport in the area).  The shortest road distance between Boulder and Hopkins is 368 miles and it takes about eight hours to get there, perhaps more when pulling a glider trailer. One way.  If I were to land at Hopkins, I’d have to spend the night and the earliest someone might be able to come and get me would be in the afternoon on the next day.  Provided I could rally a volunteer to get on the road for 16+ hours.

Hopkins Field, like much of western Colorado, is in a pretty remote place. There are a few small private hangars at the airfield but otherwise no infrastructure. Definitely no rental cars.  The only restaurant is a three mile walk away to the village of Nucia, population 585. Nucia has no hotel and only one Bed and Breakfast place with 4 rooms.  These could easily be sold out.  Would my cell phone work on the ground?  Unlikely.

Now be honest with yourself: let’s say you estimate the odds of having to land at Hopkins Field at 50:50, would you continue on without an engine?  You might say, sure, that’s part of the adventure of soaring. In this case, having an engine really does not matter to you. And I greatly admire your attitude and spirit of adventure.

For me at least, the impact is profound. Thanks to the engine, my thought process went about like this: it’s quite possible that I sink out and have to divert to Hopkins.  In that case I’d start my engine over the airport and then look for a way around the virga cells to the north.  In all likelihood I will be able to reconnect with lift, stow the engine away and continue my flight, heading back home.  The risk of having to land and spend a night or two in Nucia would drop from 50% to perhaps 2 or 3%.  To me that’s a totally different equation which made it easy for me to continue with the flight.

Such thoughts helped me continue on and everything worked out just fine.  I made it through between the virga cells, I did not have to divert, I rounded my turn point, and I had a successful flight back to Boulder.  Towards the end I was even able to extend the flight into Wyoming and thereby became the first pilot to fly from Boulder into Utah and Wyoming in a single flight.  My 1154 km flight included a 928 km FAI triangle and was good for 1174 points on WeGlide.  It was the longest flight in the world on that particular day. All of this could have been accomplished without an engine and the flight would have been neither faster nor slower.  However, most likely I would not have done it at all.

You can find the flight trace and my post-flight report here: https://www.weglide.org/flight/417542

Across the Great Divide Basin – 864 km

On July 5, 2024 I became the first pilot to fly from Boulder across the Great Divide Basin to the foot of the Wind River Range and back to Boulder.  The scenery was absolutely spectacular.  Very few people are familiar with this area. Even most Coloradans have never been there.

Prior to this flight you could search the entire flight history from Boulder on OLC and only find a handful of flights that ever even entered the Great Divide Basin of Wyoming. And not one of them went beyond glide range to Rawlins’ airport.

There are good reason for that: the Great Divide Basin is a dry, desolate, and windy place.  More than 10,000 square kilometer in size, it has a population of 203, concentrated in the only “town” of Wamsutter, essentially a refueling stop along Highway I-80.  Although it’s median elevation is 6500 ft MSL, the Basin is surrounded by higher terrain such that precipitation cannot flow to the sea.  If there was enough water, the Basin would be one big lake. But there isn’t and the Basin is a dry, dusty, desert.

The idea of perhaps having to land in the Basin is not exactly pleasant.  The terrain is undulating and scarred by drainages. The ground is rocky and sandy and mostly covered by sagebrush.  There are no people, no infrastructure, and the only roads are dirt tracks, most of which are only traversable by off-road vehicles.

Putting a glider down in this terrain is unlikely to kill or seriously harm the pilot. The glider, however may not  get off so easily. Who knows if and when you’ll be able to use it again.  You might also be out there for a while.  In addition to a satellite communication device, you better bring sufficient water, food, and warm clothing. The nights in the desert can get cold, even in summer.

Like other desert regions (e.g. in Namibia, Morocco, Nevada, etc.), the Basin can be a great place for thermal soaring.  However, the wind can be a limiting factor for it often blows so hard that it rips the thermals apart.

Over the past few years, I have often thought about flights across this area. I even spent hours on Google Maps looking for areas where dirt tracks are straight enough, and the terrain flat enough, to limit the hazards if forced to land out.

But I didn’t actually do it until I had a capable motor glider. What made the difference?  Even on a good thermal day marked by cumulus, I was not comfortable that I could reduce the risk of a landout far enough to fly across this terrain.  For me, personally, even a 2 % risk of a landout (a 1 in 50 chance) is too great for a flight over such forbidding terrain.

How does the presence of a capable and relatively reliable engine (such as the one in my V3M) change this equation?  It’s important to realize that it cannot eliminate the risks.  Let’s say the risk of an engine failure is 1% (i.e. the engine won’t start in 1 out of 100 attempts), this reduces a 2% risk of a landout (a 1 in 50 chance) to a 0.02% risk (a 1 in 5000 chance).  In my subjective assessment this is low enough to be acceptable to me.

I respect anyone who draws different conclusions for themselves.  If you watch the (in)famous soaring movie “The Sunship Game” (which features competition flying over similar terrain in Texas), you’ll see that for some pilots a 2% risk of having to land somewhere where they might wreck their glider is clearly perfectly acceptable.  (If you’re one of them you also won’t need a motor glider.) Others will say that even a 0.02% risk is too high for them.

I’m not judging either the one or the other and I am certainly not saying that my own assessment is the one to adopt.  Ultimately everyone has to make their own risk assessment and be comfortable with it.  I would just remind everyone that soaring is a relatively dangerous sport where we can work to minimize the risks but we cannot possibly reduce them to zero.  We are likely to make better decisions if we do our best to understand them for what they are and remain honest with ourselves as to what’s acceptable (or not acceptable) to us.

You can find the flight trace and my post-flight report here: https://www.weglide.org/flight/430267

Pushing From First Lift Until Sunset – 1286 km

On July 12, 2024 I succeeded in surpassing the greatest 6-leg distance ever flown from Boulder with a 1286 km flight including a 928 km FAI triangle.  The flight was good for 1353 points on OLC and 1282 points on WeGlide.

During this flight I was always able to keep airports or landable fields in glide and there’s no question the same flight could have been safely done in a pure glider.  Still, I don’t believe that I would have done it if I didn’t have a motor glider.

I’ll illustrate this by highlighting three particular phases of the flight:

Phase 1: timing of the start.  The day was late to develop.  The wind was howling from the NNW.  There were no thermals yet, and my first climb of the day was in rotor lift over the lower foothills, just west of Boulder.  I could see the first thermal clouds far to the south, approx. 40-50 miles away.  Perhaps, I thought, my 14,000 ft altitude (~ 6,000-7000 ft above the foothill terrain) would be good enough to get there, thanks in part to the ~20 kt tailwind. But I could not be sure.

Should I start on task  immediately or should I wait another 30 minutes or so for the convergence to work and the wind to calm down a little?  If I wanted a chance at a record distance flight I could not waste a minute.  But what if I didn’t connect with the lift to the south before I would run out of altitude?  There are no airports in this direction and coming back into a 20 kt headwind would not be an option either.  In other words, in a pure glider I would have no choice but to land in one of the farm fields south of Chatfield Reservoir, or perhaps at the nearby RC airplane field as one of my friends had done the year before.  In either case, a great soaring day would be over before it had really begun.

Thanks to the engine of the V3M, my calculation was different.  There was the same risk that I would not connect with the lift to the south in time. But if that happened, instead of landing out, I would start the engine above one of the fields, motor to the clouds, and re-start my soaring flight from there.

Phase 2: flying into a poor airmass. After I had passed Crested Butte on my second leg, heading into the north-westerly wind, I could readily see that a murky airmass lay over the Colorado River Valley.  I had previously rounded my first turn point and was still hopeful that I could complete my declared 1050 km FAI triangle.  But to have a chance, I would need to fly into the murky, thermally unreliable air ahead.

I had no idea if it would work and the only way to find out was to try.  Garfield County airport at Rifle was in easy glide so there was no safety risk.  But would I have left the good air behind, had I been in a pure glider?  Chances are that I would have quit my attempt at a record flight and changed directions to stay in better air to not risk the considerable inconvenience of a ground retrieve for myself and for others.

Phase 3: pushing until sunset.  When I came back to Boulder on my fourth leg it was already past 6pm and I had been flying for 7 1/2 hours.  Should I continue to fly away from Boulder again to add another two legs just to see how far I could push it?

The convergence line to the south looked promising but how long would the lift last?  Without an engine, my practice in the past had been to stay within glide range of Boulder when extending my flights in the evening when there was a chance that the thermals would quit on me.  In a pure glider that’s the only practical way to eliminate the risk of having to land in some farm field right when the sun goes down, perhaps forcing me to spend the night in the cockpit.

Again, the equation is subtly different in a motor glider.  Thanks to having an engine I only needed to time my last turn such that I could still get back home under power before the sun would officially set.  On this particular flight this calculation allowed me to fly just a little further to the south – perhaps by 30 km or so – than I otherwise would have.  But those 30 km represent a 60 km roundtrip.  And without these 60km, my 1286 km flight would not have broken the prior 1254 km record for the greatest distance flown from Boulder.  The thermals lasted until the end and the same flight could have been achieved in a pure glider as well.  But somehow I doubt that I would have done it.

You can find the flight trace and my post-flight report here: https://www.weglide.org/flight/434838

Other Examples

So far we looked at three examples of flights that probably would not have happened this way without an engine. For those interested, there were at least three more that you can look up:

1026 km on August 3:  completion of the Colorado Border-to-Border Challenge via an unusual route along the Southern San Juan Mountains. Without engine I would likely not have continued to my first turn point.  https://www.weglide.org/flight/455212

856 km on August 16: perhaps my most difficult flight to date in very challenging conditions with low thermal tops, strong winds, and big stretches under blue skies without any thermal markers. This flight was very satisfying because I was trying things I hadn’t done before even though there was never even a remote chance of breaking any records.  I definitely would not have done it without engine. https://www.weglide.org/flight/467435

709 km on Aug 27: this flight included an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to ridge-soar the Northern Sangres (which I would not have tried without an engine). https://www.weglide.org/flight/474491

What Do All These Flights Have in Common?

Reflecting back on all of the flights that “would not have happened this way” without an engine, there are essentially two reasons for that:

(1) Flights I would not have executed this way because of a significant land-out risk that would have resulted in great inconvenience.  This was the case in the vast majority of the examples provided.  All of these flights can happen just the same in a pure glider if the pilot’s motivation to complete them is so great that he or she is prepared to put up with the inconveniences in case of failure.  If you are willing to do them regardless (and I know there are pilots who readily will), you can feel free to judge me for my lower tolerance of inconveniences or my comparatively inferior ambition and motivation.

(2) Flights I would not have undertaken because they led across hostile terrain with very poor landout options.  The only flight that falls into this category is the one across the Great Divide Basin.  This one, too, could have happened with a pure glider, but failure here has greater consequences than mere inconvenience since it could easily result in damage to the aircraft.  Having a reasonably reliable motor reduces this risk by almost two orders of magnitude but it does not eliminate it. Whether to conduct such flights does not just require comparing your motivation against your convenience but also against your risk tolerance.

What About the Impact of the Engine on Speed?

In 2024 I also set three new state speed records:

Open Class 750km Speed Triangle in Utah: https://www.weglide.org/flight/422726

Open Class 500km Speed Triangle in Colorado: https://www.weglide.org/flight/476006

Open Class 750km Speed Triangle in Colorado: https://www.weglide.org/flight/478660

It’s a fair question to ask what role, if any, the engine played in these flights.

In the case of the 500 km speed triangle in Colorado, I think the presence of the engine had no impact whatsoever.  There were good thermals marked by clouds, bases were high, and I never perceived there to be a real land out risk.  There is no doubt in my mind that this flight would have happened just the same, with or without engine.

In the case of the 750 km speed triangle in Colorado, I am inclined to come to the same conclusion even though this flight was more challenging due to the lower cloud bases, which kept me below 16,000 ft for the first two thirds of the flight. Ultimately, however, I believe that my motivation was strong enough that even in a pure glider I would have overcome the relatively small doubt that I may have had about my ability to continue the flight to completion.

The case of the 750 km speed triangle in Utah is a different matter.  The route led over very remote terrain in the Great Basin that I was not familiar with.  I had done my homework and knew where I could safely land. I was also careful to always keep a landable place in glide.  However, good stretches over the Great Basin were entirely blue. Without a crew, landing in the Great Basin would have been a major inconvenience.  So it is fair to assume that I would not have done this flight without an engine.

Therefore, in my assessment, I think it is fair to say that the engine does provide an advantage in the sense that even some speed record flights would simply not have happened if the pilot had to fly a pure glider.

On the other hand, I still believe that that the presence of the engine has no real impact on the attainable speed.  Unquestionably, the glider does not fly faster because it has an engine. Plus, importantly, the presence of the motor did not make me press any harder on any of these flights than I would have done without it.

What About Other Benefits of Motor Gliders?

Of course motor gliders afford other benefits to their owners.  Most of them are obvious because the motor makes you independent of a tow plane.  This means you can fly from where you want and when you want. This sense of independence is the main reason why pilots are willing to shell out a lot of money for that noisy contraption behind the cockpit.

This article doesn’t attempt to list all benefits and disadvantages of motor gliders.  (And yes, the disadvantages exist, too.  Think much greater complexity, more involved maintenance, higher costs, etc.)  This article only explored the more subtle question whether motor gliders provide a competitive advantage.

Conclusion

Do motor gliders provide a competitive advantage over pure gliders?  In my view the answer depends on what you mean by “competitive advantage”.

Based on my first season with the V3M I am confident that the motor does not make me faster. If that’s your definition of competitive advantage, the answer is “no.”

However, the very presence of an engine has surely helped me undertake and complete flights that I would not have executed the same way with a pure glider.  To me this is a powerful benefit that makes me glad I spent all that extra money even though in Boulder we normally have easy access to a tow plane.

Could this advantage play a role in a contest?  I think it can.  Imagine a day where the land out risk is very high.  Some pilots may not decide to fly the task at all or return prematurely.  It would be easy to see that those would be the ones that neither have an engine nor a crew ready to bring them back.

Which brings me back to the beginning.  Having an engine is like having a crew that’s ready and willing to follow you around.  If having a crew in a contest is unfair, then having a motor is unfair, too.

Perhaps future seasons will allow me to form a more nuanced view. In the meantime, I’m curious about your perspective.  Please share it in the comments below.