Saturday, May 03, 2008

Glider Ride

Staring at instruments, having one's vision blocked in one of the most beautiful areas to fly in the country, always thinking of what's next and how best to get to the destination -- that's what instrument flight is in the Bay Area. It's frustrating -- rewarding, for sure, to be able to do it and to have learned all that I've learned, but sometimes you just want to go cruisin'.

So I did.

In Hawaii.

With no engine.

I arrived in Honolulu with a hotel reservation and no plan; I figured I could sit there in the hotel all day and it'd still be a great vacation, but I felt pressure to go out and do stuff so that I wouldn't come back and have to tell people that I sat in my hotel all day when I was in Hawaii. So I booked a glider ride out of Dillingham Airfield on the North Shore of Oahu, and paid the extra $20 for their "mini-lesson" which puts me in the front seat, doing the piloting of the aircraft.

I arrived at Dillingham an hour early!! That was cool, of course, because I had plenty of time to walk around, check out the gliders and airplanes, chat with the staff (we had a protracted debate on who exactly WANTS to see a Jimi Hendrix sex tape...my take was "nobody"), and just stare at a runway backed by a huge mountain, and bordered on the other side by the warm ocean. Hawaii's an incredible place.

At 10:30, my pilot showed up. Very cool guy, young, maybe mid-20s, named Scott, and so we chatted for a bit as we walked out to the glider. I told him I'm an airplane pilot and just got my instrument rating, and he congratulated me and tailored his lesson to me, which was nice. He gave me an orientation of the panel; there was an airspeed indicator ("Keep the nose just below the horizon, and it'll stay at about 60 mph which is what we want."), something akin to a VSI but far more sensitive and calibrated to the elevator input (so you know when you're in an updraft or downdraft), a compass (no DG)...I think that's it. Oh, there was an inclinometer, but Scott told me it was broken. There was also a string taped to the cowling outside the window -- this is apparently normal -- for a glider, it's very important to be coordinated as much as possible, so there's a lot of rudder use, and you step on the opposite direction of the string (makes sense..).

I'd paid for a one-hour flight, but the winds were pretty severely uncooperative, in that the direction they were coming from gave us no updraft off of the mountains (we spent a lot of time trying, but not finding one). So we took off, pulled by a towplane, and we were towed over the adjacent mountain range -- pretty close to it, actually; much closer than I'd be comfortable getting if I'm flying myself someplace in a Cessna, but probably still a good 7-800 feet off. Seemed really close, probably in part due to my unfamiliarity with the region.

So eventually we released, which entailed a pitch up to slow down and tighten the tow rope, followed by a pitch down to slacken the tow rope and then a release of the rope. Cool stuff -- because of the winds, we ended up doing 2 half-hour flights instead of one one-hour flight, and on the second takeoff, Scott was explaining to me how a glider pilot can actually communicate with the tow plane pilot. We had no radios or headsets or anything, since it's so quiet, but by steering to the left, you can tell the tow plane to go right; etc. Neat stuff.

We tooled around the mountains, and Scott gave me the controls. I was very conservative with the controls, and had to force myself to keep looking out the window, especially not fixating on the airspeed indicator. It was hard! But it was so beautiful outside -- the mountain range, the fields, the towns, the beaches, the ocean...wow. Just incredible. I flew around for a while; we'd been towed up to 5000' and we were descending constantly (as gliders do, sans updraft), so at about 1200' we headed back to the field and Scott took the controls for the approach and landing.

This was a trip. He crossed over the runway at 500', went out over the ocean, made a hard left 270 over the water and squared up for the runway, landing on the bicycle-style 2-wheel configuration. Crazy!

The second flight was similar to the first but the tow plane left us in the northwest corner of the island, from where we could get a great view of both the north and west coasts. Amazing. And then we flew right over the mountain range; I tried again for an updraft but was unsuccessful. I got more aggressive on the controls, trying a few steep banks, which gliders can do far more successfully than Cessnas (I assume the much longer wingspan and lighter weight gives much lower wing loading and lower stall speed?), and tried to stay coordinated.

Good stuff. I may want to add a glider rating to my license; it's amazing how in touch with the air you become. I'm looking forward to getting back in an airplane, maybe getting a mountain checkout, maybe learning to fly some other aircraft...should be a fun few months!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I forget if I ever said congrats for passing. CONGRATS!

As for gliding, here's another thing for you to try:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=I06FYjaAIzg

MKT said...

Oh man...not for me!! I'm very much not a thrill-seeker or adrenaline-junkie; I'd be way too frightened to try something like that!

And, thank you!