Because Glider – Audio Episode Show Notes

2-33 on Runway 02

This is a two-part presentation, but I wanted to keep everything in one place.  Accordingly, I’ll put links to both audio parts here as they’re released.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Because Glider: Being an Account of One Man’s Path to the CFI Certificate by Way of Uncle Ernie’s Holiday Camp, a Couch at a Radio Station, &c.

If you follow me anywhere on social media, you’ll know that I recently completed the Herculean effort of becoming a certified flight instructor (or “CFI”) in the glider category.

I first started flying gliders in 2012 when my friend, and later instructor, John Harte, invited me to go fly a motorglider after a haircut that I had scheduled in Detroit one Saturday. By the second time we flew, I was training for the rating. Four months later, I was a commercial glider pilot and, six months later, I flew my first airshows as a performer in the same aircraft. Since then I’ve logged more than 200 hours in motorgliders, more than half of that in formation.

 

Winter in the ASK 21

Through the kind efforts of Mark Grant, Chris Felton, and others in the Civil Air Patrol, I even added an aerotow endorsement so that I could fly gliders that had no onboard powerplants. I earned that one after about 20 tows, most of them conducted in Owosso, Michigan in single-digit Fahrenheit temperatures where you had to close the canopy and hold your breath until you had airflow through the window on takeoff so you wouldn’t completely frost the inside of the canopy. If you earn an aerotow endorsement in Michigan in the winter, you have well and truly worked for that endorsement.

And then, like the urge of Ishmael to get to sea, I began to feel the urge to do the next big thing. Certainly, there are plenty of challenges that could have been that next big thing. I really ought to add both single- and multi-engine airplanes to my commercial certificate.

But a number of things pushed me to go for the CFI. I’m very broad in aviation, but not very deep. Until I started flying gliders, I could fly a lot of stuff, but only with private privileges. I did my glider checkride at the commercial level simply because the practical test standards are about the same for private vs. commercial and the only other requirements are the knowledge test and a more comprehensive oral during the checkride. (Written test and comprehensive oral? Oh, please don’t throw me in that briar patch!) So the idea of taking a single category of flying all the way to CFI appealed to me.

I have a son who was getting close to turning 14 at the time. His name is Nicholas, but most of you know him by his callsign, “FOD.” He has about 30 hours bumming around in the TG-7A with me, most of it sitting there in the instructor seat while I fly. 14 is an important age for someone who flies gliders because that’s the age at which you can solo. And it doesn’t matter that the aircraft has an engine and a propeller. If it’s certified in the glider category, you can solo it at 14. I decided that it was not enough to just fly around with him or teach him without having the CFI in my pocket. I wanted to take him to a real CFI for the solo and the checkride.

Lastly, I had always thought that instructing would be fun and that I’d become a much better pilot if I did it. During the DC-3 rating, I had the chance to sit in the back and watch somebody else fly under circumstance where I could just watch and think about flying. That was one of the most productive experiences I’ve ever had in flight training. I couldn’t help but think that being able to really observe and critique would make me a much better pilot.

So, last spring, I decided to go for the instructor certificate. This is the story of that journey.
[Read more...]

CFI Update: Possible Checkride Looms

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I got some good news yesterday.  It looks as though I might be able to get a checkride in the TG-7A here in the D after all.

Those following this space – and hearing the pre-roll on the Tony Condon episode might be familiar with my woes.  I’ve been trying since November to get a CFI-G checkride.  The fact that it’s an initial checkride and the fact that I’d prefer to do the ride in a self-launch glider makes it hard to find a qualified check airman.  Although the guys at the Michigan East FSDO have worked hard to find someone, they’ve been unsuccessful.  But a lead that I received on Friday panned out and the check airman is in the process of getting approved to do the ride.

So that means another abrupt changing of gears.  I had switched over and was training up in the ASK 21 to do the checkride as an aero-tow guy.  (With only 26 total aero-tows to my name, that would have involved a lot more time and money than I really wanted to spend when – after all – I’m ready to go in the TG-7A.  But one does what one has to do.)  But that also means that I haven’t flown the mighty Terrazzo Falcon for for awhile – Since December 2, to be precise.  So I needed to get back in the saddle.

So I loaded up my favorite right-seat counterweight – FOD – and launched for some practice this morning.  10 trips around the patch letting FOD take it except for the takeoff and landing (and except for the no-spoiler landings, which start downwind abeam).  On a couple of them, we flew a few miles upwind and then pulled power to idle, made a 180, and flew back to land.

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I took the controls for the no-spoiler ops.  It’s the thing that most rapidly deteriorates when I don’t fly, so I wanted to get a few of them in.  True to form, I stank up the joint on the first one, but they got better immediately.  I’m pretty consistently getting the aircraft down and stoppable by 1,700 feet down the runway.  The key is to be a quarter-mile out and on glideslope and airspeed with wings level.  From there, downwind rudder to the floor, upwind aileron to coordinate, and aim for the threshold.  I can take out the slip and check things if I need to.

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This essentially means a two-step process.  Go a little long on downwind, then outside rudder and inside aileron the make the big sweeper onto final.  That places me where I need to be for the landing phase.  In a day like today, flying left traffic on Runway 15 with a moderate wind out of the west, it was a left sweeper into position, then a reversal to slip the other way for the landing.  I should probably do that another dozen times or so before the ride, but I think that I have it dialed in.

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I also spent some time working on my instructor patter, including distractions.  I’ll get a little more realistic with the distractions at some point, but this was a fun father-son moment in the pattern.

So it’s fly and study like it’s my job for the next week and a half.  I might or might not use the blog to keep you updated.  In any case, my Facebook feed is usually pretty reliable.

 

The Ongoing Quest for the CFI-G – Sporty’s Phase

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Time for an update on pilot-y activities.  As many of you know, I’ve been working on my instructor certificate in the glider category. I knocked out the FOI knowledge test in April and I finally got the CFI-G knowledge test done – appropriately enough – on Halloween afternoon.  Then I contacted the FSDO about getting my checkride.

I’ll hand it to Larry McKillop at the Michigan East FSDO for doing the best that he can to try to get me a ride.  And I’ll hand it to Kerry Brown, the DPE who did my commercial checkride, for being ready, willing, and able to administer the ride.  But the whole process has been a sheep dip from the beginning.  Without numbing your mind with the Byzantine ways of the FAA, I can’t seem to get a checkride in the Michigan East FSDO.  Kerry is not an FEI and, even if the Michigan East FSDO wanted to designate him to do the ride, he’d have to be supervised.  No one qualified to supervise the ride exists or has answered the call to supervise a ride.  I reached out to a resource in the West Michigan FSDO who I understand could have done the ride, but that resource has declined to return phone calls.

Part of this is my fault.  I’m looking for (a) a CFI checkride (b) that’s an initial CFI checkride  (and there’s stan/eval magic about initial CFI rides) (c) in the glider category (d) in a self-launch glider (e) in the upper midwest (f) in the dead of winter.  Yeah, that’s a little specialized.  But it’s not like I invented a new category or like I’m asking someone to strap into an experimental spaceship.

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So I’m sitting here nearly two months later with no chance of anything happening in either FSDO in Michigan.  As I do so, all of the information that I’ve packed into my noggin is spilling out of my ears.  I have this huge plastic tub of study materials, teaching aids, manuals, and other stuff that I need to have memorized or at the ready against an oral exam that is justly reputed to be the most savage exercise in all of general aviation.  It’s nearly impossible to stay perpetually ready for the FAA CFI-G oral and the sooner I get the checkride done, the sooner I can have an evening during which I don’t have to sit in a Starbucks with a brick of 4×6 cards, murmuring to myself like a madman.

I heard that there’s a Diamond HK 36 TC (Diamond XTREME) at Sporty’s Academy at Clermont County Airport in Ohio and a DPE on staff there who’s eligible to do the ride.  So I headed down to Sporty’s on Friday to see whether it would be an option to qualify in the Diamond and fly the ride in that bird.

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And, besides, Sporty’s is legendary in the GA world and it seemed only proper to do a pilgrimage to that hallowed airport.  So I sprung FOD from school early and we headed down.  Sporty’s turned out to be everything they say it is and more.  Just about everything that you can do right in general aviation, Sporty’s has done.  The airport is located back in the boonies and would be difficult to find, except that signs pointing to the airport are everywhere.

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As you make your way up Sporty’s Drive, pilot figures look out at you from the woods.  FOD noticed them before I did.  I can’t decide whether they’s cool or creepy.  So I took a shot of FOD next to one.  I hope that they’re not memorials to pilots who have gone west or anything such that taking the picture was an act of disrespect.

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There’s a huge area with cafe seating and a vending area and that seems to be where most of the briefing and debriefing takes place.  Some of the tables are specially designated, such as the one reserved for liars, which I presume any pilot could occupy with little fear of ineligibility.

A quick note to those who have formed expectations about this mecca of pilot gear and other merchandise.  One might be forgiven for expecting that the pilot shop at the airport is 100,000 sq. ft. of gadgets and T-shirts.  It’s not.  Or at least it’s not all retail.  The shop itself is something like 200 sq. ft. of stuff in cases.  But you can go to the desk and point to anything you like from the Sporty’s catalog and someone will be dispatched to the warehouse (sometimes on a bicycle) to fetch what you want.  I sent FOD to get me an el cheapo device to strap my new iPad to my leg and he returned with tidings of the bicycle logistics.

Shortly after arriving, I met up with Charissa A. Dyer-Kendler, my instructor for the day.  She’s a CFI, CFII, CFI-G, and AGI with a Gold Seal designation and a Ph.D. to boot.  We preflighted the Diamond, started up, and taxied out.

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The Diamond is a two-place motorglider. The numbers (as reported by the Wikipedia entry, are as follows.

General characteristics

Crew: one
Capacity: one passenger
Wingspan: 16.0 m (52 ft 6 in)
Wing area: 15.24 m2 (164.0 sq ft)
Aspect ratio: 16.8:1
Airfoil: Wortmann FX 63-137
Empty weight: 497 kg (1,096 lb)
Gross weight: 770 kg (1,698 lb)
Fuel capacity: 80 liters (18 imp gal; 21 US gal)
Propellers: One 2-bladed Hoffmann HO-V 62-R/L 160 T, three position, fully feathering.

Performance
Cruise speed: 182 km/h; 98 kn (113 mph)
Never exceed speed: 275 km/h (171 mph; 148 kn) sea level to 6000 feet
Range: 1,094 km; 591 nmi (680 mi)
Maximum glide ratio: 27:1 at 105 km/h (65 mph)
Rate of sink: 0.91 m/s (179 ft/min) at 79 km/h (49 mph)
Wing loading: 48.56 kg/m2 (9.95 lb/sq ft)

The weather was somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 overcast with nearly calm winds and good visibility.  Good enough for pattern work, but not good enough to get up high and do the high airwork and explore the glide performance.  No problem.  The most important stuff is probably the pattern work anyway.

Remember how I’m honest with you about both my wins and losses?  Here’s some of that:  I sucked horribly. Awful, ugly, nasty, yuck.  I could probably write a few thousand words about the flying experience, but I’ll just summarize instead.

The bird is adverse yaw incarnate.  No input, however slight, on the stick fails to be reflected in yaw.  Even magnified in yaw.  Stick movements are on the order of fractions of an inch.  The inclinometer ball is located down low on the left side and it tough to see from the instructor’s seat over on the right.  I’ve always had a dead butt in terms of ability to coordinate flight by feel instead of my looking at the ball and that made it worse.  Go get a breadboard and a beach ball.  Put the breadboard on the beach ball.  Now climb up on the breadboard and stand on it.  And juggle while you’re up there.  You begin to understand my impression of the whole thing.

The dive brakes on the Diamond are freakishly effective. They’re Schempp-Hirth-style brakes that are essentially flat perforated surfaces that come straight up out of the tops of the wings.   If you pop them out much beyond the halfway detent, you come out of the sky like a hot set of car keys.  I’m talking Wile E. Coyote just after he runs off the cliff.  And you have to put the dive brakes mostly or entirely away before getting close to the runway or you’ll have a truly impressive sink rate going by the time you interface with the pavement.  The best technique seems to be putting the dive brakes away entirely before the flare and re-deploying them only when well and truly down on the runway.

The Diamond is a tricycle-gear aircraft.  The cowling is fairly low in front of you and you’re looking right down at the runway except where the rounded, raised snout for the prop sticks up to your left as you sit in the IP seat.  These factors combine to make for a much flatter-looking sight picture than I’m used to in the TG-7A or the Citabria.  It’s Cirrus-like.  So you’re pretty flat in the landing attitude and it’s not hard to be skewed toward the side upon which you’re sitting because you want to pull the snout over in front of you.

These are just a few of the impressions that I developed.  There were more.  Suffice it to say that, after 2.8 hours and 17 takeoffs and landings, the quality of my landings was only beginning to approach survivable performance.  I don’t think that I’ve ever performed so poorly at anything else in aviation.  I left a palpable haze of stink over the runway.

And all of this in nearly calm winds and no lift/turbulence.  I can’t even begin to imagine what this would have been like on a normal weather day.  Gah!

Part of the problem might have been the fact that I’ve been flying the TG-7A as my primary bird for more than two years.  Its dive brakes are mere suggestions to the relative wind and, unless I’m flying lead and need to drift further down the runway on landing, I usually have the brakes all the way out in the wind for touchdown.  The TG-7A’s control forces and stick movements are much more robust than the Diamond’s.  It wallows through the air in a way that makes control much more straightforward, or at least a lot less touchy.

Am I a competent Buick driver who just climbed into a Ferrari? This might well have been the time (and the time was probably coming one way or another) at which I finally tried to fly an aircraft that requires real finesse and touch to fly and I turned out to be utterly unprepared.  I’ve had suggestions of that from the Grob 103a and I’ve long had instructors tell me that I probably stir the coffee a little too much.  On Friday, all of that and more came home to roost.

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I left town with my confidence in my socks.  The legion Waffle House restaurants around the area was the only consolation and FOD and I made such use of them as we could.

I’m not saying that I can’t learn to fly the Diamond.  Maybe I can.  I’m sure I can.  But the Diamond is 200+ nm away, costs $114 per hour, and instruction if $60 per hour.  Hotel and food add to the financial proposition.  And it’s winter, which means low ceilings and, if there’s more than 20″ of plowed or drifted snow around the airport, the bird stays on the ground because if its wingspan.

As I write this, I can’t see getting down to I69 enough to get the additional training that I’d certainly need in order to be flying at a level good enough to do a CFI ride.  In truth, I’ve probably encountered a platform that has exposed a weakness in my flying that isn’t addressable without a boatload of training that I can’t afford – financially or in terms of the required time.

So the Diamond probably isn’t the answer.  I’m not completely foreclosing it as an option, but I can’t presently see it being the answer.  Maybe I can get a TG-7A down to Sporty’s and get the DPE to do the ride in that aircraft. Or maybe a miracle will occur and I can get the ride up here in Michigan closer to my usual AO.  There’s also the fact that options will likely improve as we get through winter and spring arrives. But I’ve got all of this stuff in my noggin and I’d really rather not wait that long.

It’s soul-crushing to train and study this hard and then run into walls like this. There’s no way that it should be so hard to get a ride.  First procedural barriers and now a bona fide confidence-destroying possibility that there’s a non-trivial gap in my stick-and-rudder skills.  I swear to you I can fly. Really! But my sense is that I’m further behind now than when I finished the knowledge test.

Recognizing that further stressing about it is going to be counterproductive, I’m putting the ride on the shelf for at least the next couple of weeks.  I’m at a plateau and even the cursed FOI might be right about switching attentions to something else for awhile.  I’ll find a way to turn this whole thing into an epic Airspeed episode at some point, but the story arc isn’t yet going in a direction that you or I have come to expect.  So stay tuned, but don’t expect a triumphant episode to listen to on your long holiday drive.  Maybe something to audition while you’re heading to Oshkosh.

 

Inside Airshows – Part 3: Tuskegee 3 – Audio Episode Show Notes

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These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedTuskegee3WithPreRoll3.mp3.  Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!

If you want to understand a subculture or an experience, a great way to do that is to take an outsider and plunge him into the place you want to know about, wait awhile, then drag him back to the surface and wring him out to see how it changed him.  It’s even better if you can get the guy to wring himself out.  You begin to realize that not everybody who writes about the majesty of flight does it because he’s a fighter pilot.  Some of us write because we’re not fighter pilots.

You also need to talk about the world in its own terms, using the lexicon of the world, sometimes without explaining the vocabulary to the uninitiated, except maybe through context.  If you’re a pilot, you’ll understand most of this.  If you’re not a pilot, that’s okay, because you’ll feel a little of the strangeness of this world and you’ll put it together in context and in realtime.  Just like I did.  In some ways, you’re in for a better ride than the pilots.

There are three things you need to know about me.

First, I’m a pretty average Joe.  I’m 46.  By any reasonable estimation, my life is more than half over.  I live in the suburbs.  I have a wife and two kids.  I run the rat race every day about as well as the next guy.  You wouldn’t recognize me if you ran into me in the grocery store.

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Second, I always wanted to be an astronaut.

Third, I realized a few years ago that it was entirely up to me where between that baseline and that dream I would live each day of the rest of my life.

*****

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Listen to this.

[ICAS hall noise.]

This is the sound of a magical zone in spacetime.  It’s a room with about 60,000 square feet of floor space.  It’s at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.  I don’t know what happens in that room for the other 361 days each year.  I’m not even sure that this room  exists for the other 361 days of the year.  But, for four days each December, it’s filled wall to wall with just about every airshow performer who’s active anywhere in the us and Canada.  This is the exhibit hall at the International Council of Air Shows annual convention.

Standing at the back of the hall facing the doors way across the room, the Thunderbirds and the other Air Force TAC DEMO and static display pilots and leadership are off to the left against the far wall.  The Blue Angels and the rest of the Navy and Marine Corps contingent are on the opposite wall.  The Snowbirds are in the middle on this side.  Sean Tucker, Mike Goulian, Skip Stewart, Patty Wagstaff, Bill Stein, Rob Holland, Billy Werth, Greg Koontz, Kent Pietsch, Andy Anderson, Bob Carlton, Gene Soucy, Scooter Yoak, Team Aerodynamix, John Klatt . . . every one of them is in this room right now.  Hanging out.  Booking next year’s appearances. Swapping stories.  Doing whatever superheroes do when they get together each year between seasons. [Read more...]

Aviation Puts the Awesome in Sixth Grade Science

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Sixth grade was rough for me.  I was 5’4” and clumsy, I read a lot of Heinlein, and I was much more comfortable around adults than my age peers.  I remember spending a lot of time wishing that there was some way that I could really impress the other kids with the deep thoughts that I was thinking.  But, alas, I never managed to do that.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago.  My son is now in sixth grade.  Thankfully, he’s much better adjusted than I was and at least as smart.  But he also longs for ways to demonstrate to his peers the awesomeness of the thoughts he thinks.  He arrived home one day and announced that he was to be “scientist of the week” in his science class.  He was supposed to do a science experiment and report on it in class.  He and I thought for awhile and hatched a plan.

On that Tuesday, the skies were clear and visibility was unlimited.  I met him at the doors of his school as classes let out in the afternoon.  I wore my flight suit.  (Because, of course, it’s always good for your classmates to hear that your dad met you at the door wearing a flight suit.)  We drove to the airport, preflighted a TG-7A motorglider, loaded our scientific instruments and implements of destruction into the aircraft, and launched for a piece of airspace out between Detroit City Airport (KDET) and Selfridge ANGB (KMTC).

FOD Experiment Posing

The idea was to take two balloons to 10,000 ft. MSL.  One out in the unpressurized cockpit and one sealed in a mason jar as a control.  We’d observe the experimental balloon every 1,000 feet or so and then measure it 10,000 feet.  We could also visually compare it to the control balloon in the jar.

I’m working on my CFI in gliders and,  if I have someone else in the aircraft (other than when I’m flying formation), I take the instructor seat on the left and the other person takes the primary pilot seat on the right.  (Air Force doctrine calls for the stick to be in the right hand and the power in the left and, because there’s only one throttle and it’s in the center, the PIC sits on the right side in the TG-7A.)  This means that I can let my son do most of the flying from right after takeoff until just before landing.  I get practice flying from the left seat while also honing my instructor skills while he flies.

I gave him the controls just after rotation and we flew north of the field and began to climb.  He circled up and I held up the balloon(s) for the camera, along with note cards with the altitudes on them.  At 10,000 MSL, I did the measurement, and then we pulled the throttle and circled back down and landed.

FOD Experiment Measurements

The experimental balloon didn’t grow as much as we thought it would.  We actually worried about that.  There was no apparent difference between the experimental and control balloons if you just eyeballed them.  But, when we measured, we found that the circumference did expand from 25.5 cm to 29 cm.  Assuming that the balloon is spherical (close enough), that’s a 41% growth in volume.  After (not before!) doing the calculations, we compared our results to the actual difference in atmospheric pressure for a standard atmosphere and found that the balloon’s expansion was within 2% of the 43% drop in atmospheric pressure in a standard atmosphere.

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We did a PowerPoint presentation summarizing the experiment and he delivered it for the class on Friday.  It went over extremely well.  The teacher even called in the other science teacher to watch once the first slide with an aircraft on it popped up and made it apparent that the presentation was going to be special.

Lessons learned (among many others):

(a) It’s okay to have preconceptions about what will happen, but be objective about your data-taking and accept the data.  The best scientists know that it would be even cooler if the experiment had yielded results different from what you expected.  Isaac Asimov put it well:  “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny . . .’”

(b)  Aviation captures imaginations.  The presentation made a huge impression in the class.  It held the class’s attention and even drew in the other teacher.  Every kid in the room understood the results.

(c)  You can become a legend at your school if you present photographic evidence that, at the age of 11, you flew a TG-7A nearly two miles high and back.

FOD and I will surely come up with additional excuses to incorporate aviation into his homework.  And, in the meantime, we’re spending lots of time flying for flying’s sake.  It’s nice having 100 lbs of willing student in the right seat so that I can sit left seat and practice my instructor thing for my CFI certificate.