Mike's Gliding
Page
How
I started gliding, photos and links
Gliding
is a fantastic way to spend weekends and
holidays. Gliding clubs are wonderful places to
hang out, full of friendly people and wonderful
characters.
Gliding
is exhilarating, and always a tremendous
challenge, it seems impossible that I will ever
be really good at it, but it's great fun
learning.
After
many year of flying I qualified as an Assistant
Instructor in April 2006, and I currently own
shares in these three gliders:
In case you are looking at this
and you are not a glider pilot, let's just bust
some myths here:
Gliders are perfectly safe,
probably safer than a powered aircraft as there
is a lot less to go wrong. They are extremely
strong and can withstand tremendous loads safely.
They can be controlled very precisely and can
generally be landed within a few feet of where
the pilot chooses.
Gliders do not depend on the wind
to stay airborne, and do not fall out of the sky
when the wind stops, in fact a modern glider will
travel 50 feet forward for every foot of height
in still air. In the right conditions gliders can
stay airborne as long as it is light enough to
fly, travel thousands of miles in a day, and fly
much higher than a commercial aircraft. For more
info click here
Slideshows:
Click
on the links below for photo slideshows
Every year in
early spring the Midland Gliding Club organisies
a trip to Santa Cilia, near Jaca in the Spanish
Pyrenees, where we have a great time end enjoy
some truly awesome flying experinces
Trip
to Jaca in 2006
Trip
to Jaca 2007
Video
of Flying in the Pyrenees
A number of club
members recently restored a T21 open cockpit 2
seater:
Photos
of the T21
Photos
and Videos of life at MGC:
Photos
of Midland Gliding Club
Video
of Bungey Launching a K21
Video
of bungey launching a Discus
Articles:
Description of the
Jaca 2006 trip
An account of my
10,000 foot thermal flight in Britain
My
Take on the Jaca Experience
How I
started:
I started
gliding in 1984, I had played with making model
gliders as a kid, and always dreamed about
flying. I saw an advert in the local paper to go
for an air experience flight in a glider for £5
(this was 1984 remember) so off I went and found
the Staffordshire Gliding Club, which was then
based in Morridge, near Leek. After much waiting
around etc., which is all part of the game, I was
finally strapped in to a K13 two seater. The
winch launch was like nothing on earth, I can
still remember it, screaming up through the sky
at 45 degrees with a loud howling noise all
around. Eventually at the top of the launch it
all settled down and we were floating around the
sky. Wonderful! After a couple of minutes taking
photos and admiring the view the instructor
demonstrated that you can convert height into
speed. He did this by sticking the nose down till
we were going about 100knots (117mph) and diving
below the height of the ridge. From the front
seat I watched as little fluffy dots grew into
sheep desperately running away from this howling
monster diving at them out of the sky. At the
point where I could easily identify the gender of
said sheep, the instructor calmly informed me
that it was also possible to convert speed, of
which we had plenty, into height. He did this by
pulling back on the stick, generating about 4g in
the process, giving me the impression that my
eyeballs were about to end up in my boots, and
screaming over the top of the ridge and down onto
the runway.
Why he decided to do this to me
has always been a mystery as all the other air
experience flights I have seen and flown have
been very sedate. It did the trick, however, as I
was back the next week with my membership fee in
hand, totally hooked.
This is a photo
of the old Staffordshire Gliding Club site at
Morridge which I took on my first flight. The
Hangar is in the middle, the building in the
foreground is the Mermaid Pub. Let's play spot
the runway.
In those
days the Staffordhire Gliding Club was based at
Morridge, on top of a ridge near Leek. It was a
pretty awful site, pilots from other clubs were
told never to land out there, but to select a
field instead. It was a great club though, really
friendly and enthusiastic, and also very cheap. I
have many fond memories of my time there.
As the weeks went on I
learned the basics of gliding:
- Turn up early and
get your name on the flying list to make
sure that you get to fly.
- Work all day
getting all the equipment out, pulling
cables, pulling gliders, driving the
retrieve winch, keeping the log, putting
all the stuff back in the hangar, all for
2 or 3 flights of 5 minutes.
- Learn how to do
Daily Inspection of the aircraft, drive
the winch, maintain equipment, build a
new clubhouse.
- Wear silly hats
and plenty of suntan lotion.
- Alternatively wear
all the clothes you possess and still
freeze to death.
Messing
about with cables, Staffordshire Gliding Club
1983
Lift was scarce in those days
so most flights were only 5 or 6 minutes, not
much time to learn how to control this strange
machine that seemed to have a life of it's own,
but slowly I began to feel that I had some
control over what I was doing. At this point the
only goal I had was to go solo and fly one of the
single seaters.
The club K13 on
approach
When I first started I asked
someone how many launches it took to go solo, and
I was told about 75. After about 3 months I had
got to 47 launches and was beginning to realise
that I might actually go solo one day, a rather
daunting prospect. The next Saturday was a nice
day, I did 3 flights with an instructor which
went well. He asked me if I wanted to go again,
and never refusing a chance to fly, I agreed
readily. I got in, strapped myself in, and the
instructor said "you don't need me this
time" and walked off. (Bastard!) This was
rather unexpected, but I managed a good first
solo flight, which left me feeling on top of the
world.
After flying for a
couple of years I gave up gliding for a long time
to have a family etc. I started flying again in
1996 at the Midland
Gliding Club on the
Long Mynd near Shrewsbury. Its a great club, one
of the few places in the country where you can
still take a bungey launch. It has been slow
progress, I got my Bronze certificate in 1996, it
took 8 years to get Silver, this is why:
I had completed my Bronze, in December
1996 and spent 1997 honing my flying skills
before buying a share in our distinctive bright
yellow K6CR in June 1998, which I intended would
rapidly see me through to gaining my Silver. In
1999 the K6 was recovered and had an aero tow
hook fitted and I started thinking about getting
my silver done in year 2000, as it was already 3
years since completing Bronze, and I felt that my
flying skills were up to it. I completed my cross
country endorsement by July, and by Task week in
August 2000 was ready to go.
On 20 August 2000 the day looked good,
so I prepared to go, only trouble was the K6
Trailer refused to co-operate, as the lights
refused to work so after some consideration I
declared a remote start 50K leg from Shelton
water tower to Leominster, thus if I landed out
it wasn’t too far to fetch me back, John
Warren valiantly rewired the trailer whilst I was
away flying. It was a stunning day, I whizzed
round the task no problem, In even got back at
5,000 feet above Mynd as I stopped off on the way
back from Leominster to get Silver Height. Killed
two birds with one stone, or so I thought until
we looked at the logger trace, which was invalid
as I had put in the wrong turning point
information. No problem, it was the first day of
Task Week, I had Silver Height, the trailer was
fixed, I had done a 120 k triangle, all I had to
do was wait for another good day and do it again.
The weather did not co-operate, however and no
opportunities to repeat the attempt were
possible, but all I had to do was wait for
another good day. That was when it all started
going wrong!
They say life begins at 40. Well I was
40 in September 2000, and it rained solidly until
Christmas. I started flying again in January
2001, but developed terrible sciatica, which
stopped me flying, driving or sitting down and
lasted for 3 months. I was just getting better
and ready to start flying again when the news
announced the outbreak of Foot and Mouth and the
Mynd was closed. I flew a few times from Shobdon,
but eventually in July the Mynd reopened and I
returned to continue my quest for Silver. I had
been feeling a bit out of breath at that time and
been to the doctor, he diagnosed a chest
infection and gave me some antibiotics, which
didn’t seem to help much, and arranged a
chest X-ray for the following week. I came up to
the Mynd and had a glorious flight in the K6
after so many months off, but felt a bit tired so
didn’t stay up too long.
The following Wednesday I dutifully went
for my chest X-ray. The nurse asked me to wait
while they developed it to make sure it was OK. A
few minutes later the nurse came out with a very
worried expression on her face and asked if I
felt OK in the kind of voice that implied that
she fully expected me to be dead. She showed me
the X-ray. Where my right lung should have been
was something that looked like a walnut, I had
suffered a spontaneous pneumothorax, a collapsed
lung. I was rushed to see a doctor, who said I
had to go to hospital immediately, but before I
went could he please show the X-ray to the other
doctors in the hospital, as he had never seen one
this bad, and it would be a good learning
opportunity for them. He asked me what I had been
doing, when I told him I had been gliding he
nearly fainted.
After 4 days in hospital with a chest
drain came the bad news, no flying for 3 months,
so that was the end of my gliding season and
summer holidays. Who said life begins at 40? I
hadn’t even had a chance to attempt silver
distance
The next year didn’t start too
badly, and in June 2002 I got my Silver Duration
5 hour flight, which in a K6 means that you
can’t walk properly for several days
afterwards, but unfortunately at that point I
suffered another setback, as for many years ago I
have suffered from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), and this
returned with a vengeance for no reason that I
could fathom, and kept me out of action for 6
months, another year gone with no opportunity for
a silver distance attempt.
I started 2003 with the sole aim of
flying until the end of the season, which I
managed. I made several attempts at silver
distance, without success. As my father was ill
it was difficult to get up regularly, and on many
occasions when it looked good and I got ready to
go, I got to the front of the launch queue and
the sky went dead and I ended up doing a circuit
and then sitting on the ground for the rest of
the day waiting for things to improve.
My big hope was Task week, I went up on
the Friday before task week as it looked like a
cracking day. I got everything ready, several
people had set off on 750 k tasks, surely I could
make it this time. As I had no retrieve crew I
elected for a 50k remote start Leominster to
Halfway House. I launched and set off under a big
cloud with lots of gliders circling under it.
Heavy Sink. There must be lift here somewhere.
Eventually with a field landing after 2 k in the
offing, I turned back at 400 feet to take a
re-launch. Not having a fantastic amount of
height I landed at the south end of the field in
front of the winch. A helpful soul brought a
Landrover to tow me back to the launch point, but
as he didn’t bring a helper or tow out gear,
we decided to tow the glider out of the way, and
then I would go get the tow out gear and tow the
glider back. He proceeded to tow me half way into
the forest despite increasingly loud bellows to
stop. Eventually we set off in the Landrover to
get my car. The Landrover broke down. I walked
back up the field, got the car and tow out gear,
retrieved the glider, and got back to the launch
point just after everyone had disappeared for a
late lunch. Eventually I got a launch at about
3.30 pm, and took an age to climb to cloudbase,
and set off at 4pm. Down to Leominster and back
was no problem, got back to the Mynd at about
5,000 feet and set off north. There was a huge
hole in the sky where all the lift was supposed
to be, I tried for an hour and a half to find a
way round it, and considered final gliding all
the way round into the valley, but decided that
at 6 pm with no retrieve crew this would not be a
popular option, so returned and landed, after all
I had the rest of Task Week to go and the
forecast for the next day was stunning.
The advice in the bar that night was to
sod the 50k and declare a 300 as it was going to
be THE day. Like so many THE days, we spent the
day sitting outside the hanger watching all the
keen people doing circuits. And so the rest of
the week went by. I did, however have one major
achievement that week.
You may wonder why I didn’t take an
aerotow when I couldn’t get a winch launch.
Well the story goes like this. In 1999 we had an
aerotow hook fitted to the K6 by Roger as part of
the refurbishment. As it was a new mod Roger had
to test it before we could use it. So every
weekend from then on I tried to get myself, the
K6, Roger and the Tug together in some
arrangement whereby Roger could take the K6 for
an aerotow so that we could use the aerotow hook.
Believe it or not, the first time that this
conjunction of people and objects came together
in the correct formation was task week 2003.
Almost four years.
So to 2004. It started well, I got some
field selection tests in the motorglider in
April, I was aerotow current, things were looking
good. Then came the fabulous weekend of 22/23
May, with Weatherjack giving a 5 for both days.
Surely I could do it this time. To simplify
matters I decided to fly to Bidford and do an
aerotow retrieve as this lessened the potential
problems with loggers etc. I got ready, in the
process depressingly finding an old map on which
I had marked the route to Bidford 3 years
previously, and set off. Cloudbase was 2000 feet,
but there was some good lift about. As I went
over the Clee hills the lift got more patchy,
approaching Worcester I was reduced to taking
every bit of lift I could find to stay up. The
best day of the year and I was under the worst
bit of sky. I tried going south round Worcester
as it looked a bit better, and I only needed a
few hundred feet to get on to final glide for
Bidford. It seemed to take forever drifting along
in tiny scraps of lift, but eventually I got a
climb onto final glide and set off. At last I was
going to make it, I could make out the line of
trailers on the airfield in the distance, I was
freezing cold and just wanted to get on the
ground and have a cup of tea. The sky exploded
with lift, the vario went off the scale, I stuck
the nose down at 2,500 feet and reached Bidford
at 3,000 feet. I flew at 70 knots between the
thermals to come down. 20 minutes later I was at
3,500 feet. In conditions like this I could have
done a 500k in the K6. After all the years and
all the effort to get Silver distance, when I
finally got there I couldn’t come down.
Eventually I resorted to a sideslip with full
airbrake and landed. Made it at last.
The aerotow retrieve was interesting, as
they insisted on a downwind takeoff, and then a
tow at 80 knots, which in K6 involves 2 hands to
keep the stick forward, and the tuggie appeared
to be lost as I eventually pulled off somewhere
near Ironbridge.
So that’s how it took eight years
to go from Bronze to Silver. Why did it take me
so long? Certainly illness and life events got in
the way, and the weather refused to co-operate on
many, many occasions. If I was a braver soul I
could have done it much sooner, cowardice
certainly played its part in the length of this
story as I kept waiting for a good day, but ended
up doing it in bad conditions on a stunning day.
After 8 years of trying, I finally
completed my Silver Badge
Although it feels like a fantastic
achievement now that it’s all done, the main
thing is that I enjoyed every minute of every
flight and all the messing around on the ground.
Thanks to everyone at the club for all
your help and ecouragement.
Things have speeded up a bit since then,
since completing Silver I completed the Basic
Instructor course in September 2004, and the
Assistant Instructor course in April 2006
Photos:
Click
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Further
Info
For more info on
gliding check out the British Gliding Association.
Or find out
about trial lessons at the Midland Gliding Club .
Or check out the
demo copy of SFS3, a truly excellent soaring simulator
available from RC Simulations.
Link to a flash slideshow of Midland Gliding Club
Flash Slideshow
of Jaca Photos
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