Solo Time
What a nice day to fly. Clear and relatively calm. Not much lift, but just a nice day. The gliderport was busy.
I had solo time booked for one of the 2-32s in the morning, so I took 87R up for three flights to between 4,000 and 3,000 feet. The longer tow and smooth air gave me time to box the wake, which worked just fine.
I didn't do much exciting other than practice some speed control in turns and look for lift (there was none yet). I was mainly interested in trying to improve my landings. I entered the pattern a bit higher than normal and did a better job that I had recently.
ASK-21 Training
Later in the day, Jim and I took the ASK-21 up to practice some maneuvers in a different glider. Our first flight was a high tow (5,000 feet) which gave me time to box the wake on tow and re-acquaint myself with flying a more responsive glider.
Off tow, we ran thru a bunch of maneuvers to get used to flying the 21: slow flight, imminent stalls (forward and turning), stalls, steep turns, spiral dive recovery, full-stick-back turns, and incipient spins. It was a whirlwind tour of flying the 21 but it came pretty easily and I enjoyed it. We landed on on runway 24 without much trouble. The spoilers threw me a bit. They don't slow the glider like those on the 2-32.
The next two flights were lower. We worked on a few more things, mainly slips. Then I got to put them to use, landing without spoilers on runway 31 and 24. The ASK-21 can slip a lot harder than the 2-32, so it wasn't too bad.
Jim said that I did well enough on the flights that he'd be able to solo me in the 21 with just a few more short flights to make sure I can takeoff and land without incident.
Posted by jzawodn at February 23, 2003 09:18 PM
