This week is a short week thanks to the Independence day. Flying will start from Thursday till Sunday.
I went to the VSC and flew 4 flights in a row because I am the only student to show up.
I flew the best in the first lesson and LS kept saying well done again and again. The second and remaining lesson was not as good as the first one. And LS said he saw the diminishing return of my performance.
It's not easy to keep the high standard for 4 flights. Physically, it's tiring and my brain power consumed a lot of energy and it'd be good to bring some glucose drink to the airfield! Let me do it tomorrow.
For the flying, here is some points of suggestion from my instructor:
Take off
- Wing always level and follow the bank angle of the tow plane. Always.
- Use rudder to keep the heading when take off.
- Balance on the nose wheel with a pitch control
Turning ( From Hank)
- Rudder First ( Seems rudder is very important in gliders )
- Overbanking tendency
Height awareness
- Come to think of it when the variometer is showing 2 ( ft per minute )
- which can be translated to one complete circle of 30 degree bank turning losing 200ft
- Do the calculation fast mentally in my brain
- i.e. GL is 520ft, then 1400 FT reading in the altimeter means 900AGL
- 2000 -> 1500 and after turning 1 circle, the height becomes 1300 AGL that should reads in the Altimeter as 1800FT.
- Need this figure quick for fixing the high key and pattern
Pattern
- know where to start - how close to the airfield
- The height - need to be at down wind at 1000AGL
- after doing all the check, it should be the time to turn base, i.e. ~500AGL
- Use the airbrake to control the height on downwind and base
- A steady final require stable airspeed
- Use the airbreak to control the reference point
- Roll out early ( I have a tendency to roll out late )
- Hold it! ( I push the nose when I touch down .....I guess it's because my arm was tired and I wanted to relax my arm! )
Hold it, Hold it, Hold the nose and no way to let go the stick forward.
