rottydaddy
En-Route
I was a little scared after scheduling my glider checkride last week- even this morning I was not sure I was properly prepared, for the oral, anyway. I realize now that a lot of the old ASEL stuff was still in my head, and stirring it up to review it all, then adding the glider stuff, just created some mental turmoil.
Turns out I had nothing to worry about, but as is usually the case in any review or add-on, I was remined of the importance of cracking the books fairly regularly.
The wx looked very promising, but threatened to heat up quite a bit, so we all met up at 9AM and got the 2-33 staged ASAP. Then it was time for the dreaded oral test.
The DE is an easygoing guy and an enthusiastic glider pilot; he kept the oral brief and simple, but definitely poked in the right corners. My terse and precise answers helped the whole process. I sure learned my lesson about that the first time I had to sit through one of these; that memory has served me well.
Another club member was doing his CP-glider checkout also, so I took a break while he got "grilled", then let him do his ride first. Fairly direct x-wind all day, but the wind was smooth and steady, and the early-day thermals were fairly isolated. He seemed to do OK, and as it turned out, he made the grade (congrats, Andy!).
I was quite confient about the flight portion, and it went well. I hollered out everything I was thinking and doing, used the written vesion of the weird mnemonic-based checklist, made a big show of scanning, made my clearing turns, tried to keep all my turns clean and consistent, etc. I brought the 2-way along but had decided to just monitor the CTAF. Still a little clumsy with just a handheld, especially in the pattern. You can't hold 1/2 spoilers and take your hand off the handle to transmit.
First hop involved a box (not my best ever, but I tried very hard and it showed), followed by one straight-ahead and one turning stall... he'd told me beforehand he might have me stall with the spoilers cracked, but he waived that, and let me do my slow flight and steep turns while milking a juicy thermal near the airport for a little while. He invited me to just play in that if I wanted, but I was eager to just get this thing done, and I also wanted to make a good show of convincing ol' 94H to come down, so I did a little this and a little that and a little something else and got into a good pattern. Nailed my spot landing... not a bad show, overall.
Before the next one, he said he wouldn't do a "low-altitude rope break"; I didn't pay much attention to that (I was more than ready to deal with the usual drill from 300 or so). But he played a little trick on me... as we climbed out, he said "so where would you go if it happened now? How about now?" He seemed happy with my answers, and right after we made the first turn, he said "how about now?" This seemed odd- we were at 700 or 800 feet, just NW of the field... I took a look at the angles and said "definitely could make the runway..." so he hit the release.
Now, this was not a problem, as any glider pilot could tell you, but it was a surprise, and I had never worked this problem from this spot before. In retrospect, I probably could have even made it into a more-or-less proper pattern, but my decision to just go to a left base (for a downwind landing) worked out pretty well. Unfortunately, a power plane was departing 25 off the pavement at the time, but they saw us in time to adjust while we were still pretty high, and I had them in sight throughout. They passed well below us; no factor.
The x-wind helped limit the downwind landing and rollout, and again, I stopped it pretty much where I planned to.
And that was it. Reluctantly handed over my shiny new plastic cert, and got a slip of paper in the correct color (white- whew!). So I now have a license to carry pax and continue to learn about soaring.
And good for another two years on my PIC privileges... almost forgot that!!
Turns out I had nothing to worry about, but as is usually the case in any review or add-on, I was remined of the importance of cracking the books fairly regularly.
The wx looked very promising, but threatened to heat up quite a bit, so we all met up at 9AM and got the 2-33 staged ASAP. Then it was time for the dreaded oral test.
The DE is an easygoing guy and an enthusiastic glider pilot; he kept the oral brief and simple, but definitely poked in the right corners. My terse and precise answers helped the whole process. I sure learned my lesson about that the first time I had to sit through one of these; that memory has served me well.
Another club member was doing his CP-glider checkout also, so I took a break while he got "grilled", then let him do his ride first. Fairly direct x-wind all day, but the wind was smooth and steady, and the early-day thermals were fairly isolated. He seemed to do OK, and as it turned out, he made the grade (congrats, Andy!).
I was quite confient about the flight portion, and it went well. I hollered out everything I was thinking and doing, used the written vesion of the weird mnemonic-based checklist, made a big show of scanning, made my clearing turns, tried to keep all my turns clean and consistent, etc. I brought the 2-way along but had decided to just monitor the CTAF. Still a little clumsy with just a handheld, especially in the pattern. You can't hold 1/2 spoilers and take your hand off the handle to transmit.
First hop involved a box (not my best ever, but I tried very hard and it showed), followed by one straight-ahead and one turning stall... he'd told me beforehand he might have me stall with the spoilers cracked, but he waived that, and let me do my slow flight and steep turns while milking a juicy thermal near the airport for a little while. He invited me to just play in that if I wanted, but I was eager to just get this thing done, and I also wanted to make a good show of convincing ol' 94H to come down, so I did a little this and a little that and a little something else and got into a good pattern. Nailed my spot landing... not a bad show, overall.
Before the next one, he said he wouldn't do a "low-altitude rope break"; I didn't pay much attention to that (I was more than ready to deal with the usual drill from 300 or so). But he played a little trick on me... as we climbed out, he said "so where would you go if it happened now? How about now?" He seemed happy with my answers, and right after we made the first turn, he said "how about now?" This seemed odd- we were at 700 or 800 feet, just NW of the field... I took a look at the angles and said "definitely could make the runway..." so he hit the release.
Now, this was not a problem, as any glider pilot could tell you, but it was a surprise, and I had never worked this problem from this spot before. In retrospect, I probably could have even made it into a more-or-less proper pattern, but my decision to just go to a left base (for a downwind landing) worked out pretty well. Unfortunately, a power plane was departing 25 off the pavement at the time, but they saw us in time to adjust while we were still pretty high, and I had them in sight throughout. They passed well below us; no factor.
The x-wind helped limit the downwind landing and rollout, and again, I stopped it pretty much where I planned to.
And that was it. Reluctantly handed over my shiny new plastic cert, and got a slip of paper in the correct color (white- whew!). So I now have a license to carry pax and continue to learn about soaring.
And good for another two years on my PIC privileges... almost forgot that!!
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