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Leaving The Nest
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Ian Sutcliffe, SOSA Gliding Club
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When I was first bitten by the cross country bug, I became a sponge soaking up information from every source possible. With 150 club members to listen to, this quickly became a problem. A combination of fear and information overload kept me close to the field. I would take off thinking about everything from which way to turn in a northern hemisphere thermal to how to set the MacCready Ring on the variometer for the best inter-thermal flying speed.
Admittedly, cross country soaring is a complicated and very unforgiving enterprise. There is a lot of valid information that you need to know to fly safely. The trick is to remove the stress and develop uncomplicated rules of thumb that make cross country flying joyful and successful.
Watching the pros is a very helpful exercise. Note that I said watch – not listen. What the pundits tell you is not the same as what they do. Not that they are lying or trying to deceive you, they just act based on experience. When asked to explain something, they most often revert to theory and tell you how it is supposed to work.
The top soaring pilots always seem relaxed. After 5 years and many hundreds of hours chasing them, a few consistent approaches are apparent.
Rig early and often. The top cross country pilots are usually rigged and ready to go before breakfast. Sometimes the day is scrubbed and they have to derig without flying, but most of the time they are ready and relaxed when the conditions are just right. In the meantime they have had time to have breakfast, watch the weather, chat with other pilots, and prepare for their flights.
Solve the drinking problem. Most top pilots have a way of keeping hydrated. Some drink lots of fluids early in the morning, pee twice before flight and consume small amounts of water while flying. Others have permanently attached plumbing that allows them to drink 4 or 5 litres of water during flight and relieve themselves whenever they feel the urge. But all top pilots have a simple system for keeping hydrated and keeping relieved that they use consistently. I think a lot of bad decisions have been made due to full bladders or dry throats. Find a solution that works for you, practice using it even on local flights and ‘eliminate’ the problem.
Plan to go cross country and land somewhere safe. If you have to be back you won’t get far. It is simple as that. Hook up the glider trailer to your car. Leave your keys in the car with the doors unlocked. Find a person willing to come and get you – and leave them your keys. Tell your spouse that you will be home sometime before breakfast the next day. Then take off, head on course and plan on landing somewhere safe. It is amazing what a small change in attitude this preparation can make. Once the only concern you have is where to land if you get low, your focus can be entirely on flying well and reading the sky. The really amazing thing is that freeing your self to focus on flying if the best way to increase your chance of returning home.
Think on the ground. Personally, my mind goes to mush once I leave the ground. Simple math becomes a major chore. Course and wind adjusted track headings are quickly forgotten. Setting control zone frequencies in the radio is distracting. Converting the ASI in knots to the distance to go in Kilometers is suddenly a challenge. Determining safe height about ground when the very ground we are flying over keeps rising and falling and calculating gliding ranges take on a surprising amount of limited brainpower. The only solution is advance preparation.
One trick I have seen is to prepare 5x8” index cards with the course you plan to fly. The index card summarizes distances, bearings, airport frequencies, ground and circuit height altitudes ASL along the route. You can also pre calculate the height needed to get to landable airports or fields every 10 or 15 Km’s along the route. This removes much of the mental arithmetic during the flight and makes an easier reference than a marked up map. Before launching pre-set the frequencies in the radio and note the latest wind forecast on the Index card. You can also prepare and fold a map with the course noted, but I have found that the quick reference card is simpler to work with.
Rules of Thumb - MacCready Setting: There are as many rules of thumb as there are pilots, but some seem to work reliably all the time. There are two that have served me well. Set your MacCready ring of setting to 2 or less. Unless you have a really stoking day, this will guide you well. Higher numbers increase risk significantly while lower values do not lower the risk very much. For the anal among us, you can work out various permeations and combinations on a spreadsheet, but take it from me (yes I have done it) that for most of Canada a MC of 2 works well. You can always dial it down if the lift becomes too weak.
Rules of Thumb - Glide Calculations: Glide calculations can be complicated. You have to consider wind speed and direction, potential sink, anticipated thermal strength ahead among other factors. You can buy a simple wiz wheel calculator or spend several thousand dollars on a flight computer to help, but I have found that a simple calculation works well for me. I plan on losing 200 feet for every kilometer I fly. If I need to fly 10 Km to the next landable field or good thermal, I expect to lose 2,000 feet. This translates into a 20:1 glide ratio. Most of the gliders we use to fly cross country have glide ratios of 30 or 35:1 and many are above 40:1. Using 20:1 (200 ft per Km) leaves me a margin for headwinds and unexpected sink. Using this ratio, I am almost always okay and have rarely been caught out.
Both rules of thumb are conservative, however, it is a great confidence builder to leave a thermal at 4,500 feet, plan to reach a rock quarry 10 km ahead by 2,500 ft and get there at a higher altitude. Pretty soon you will use your own judgments and make intuitive calculations.
Eyeball your Glide Ratio: A great exercise is to put your flight bag on the ground and walk 40 paces away. The flight bag will be approximately a 20:1 glide ratio from your eyes. You will be amazed at how flat a glide this looks like. Sixty paces is 30:1 and 80 paces is 40:1. You can use this in the air to estimate how far you can glide.
A purpose for every flight: Bill Scull wrote a great book with this title and is highly recommended reading to any budding cross country pilot. Essentially he suggests that you write out a short purpose for every flight before you leave the ground. For the new cross country pilot, this is a BIG idea. Most of us take off, hope to find a thermal and stay up for an hour or so. This is fine if you have nowhere to go. But if you want to build the confidence to strike out on your own, you need to build skills and the confidence to use them. (For more on this topic, see separate article)
Pre-Flight checklist: If you are going cross country you don’t want to run out of water (or pee bags), suddenly remember that your car keys are in your pocket or that your cell phone is in your knapsack at the flight line. Make up a checklist of the things you need to do and bring along. Prepare a cross country kit to bring along with you on every flight. This will avoid making last minute preparations that are both tiring and distracting.
Bring your own gaggle: A final word is to fly with others. Find 2 or 3 people, who are launching with similar or better performance gliders, agree on a communication frequency and a place to rendezvous and then go fly somewhere together. Two minds are better that one and two can cover twice the thermal search area as one. Talking about soaring tactics, seeing someone else core a thermal, seeing how fast others are willing to go, are all excellent training and confidence boosters. They are also a lot of fun and make the bar conversations more interesting when you come back. Of course, flying with others may mean that if you land out you will have someone to talk to.
This article is designed to stimulate more cross country soaring. Keeping it simple makes it fun and having a purpose will make it more interesting. Good luck and good soaring.
Ian Sutcliffe - SOSA Gliding Club
Ian Sutcliffe learned to fly gliders in the UK in 1983 and currently flys an LS8-18, based at the SOSA Gliding Club at Rockton, Ontario. Ian learned to fly power in 1985 and flys a 1952 Cessna 170, based at Buttonville, Ontario. He began cross-country soaring in 2000 and has earned his silver and gold badges and two diamonds.
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