God I wish everyone was a towpilot

tonycondon

tonycondon

Gastons CRO (Chief Dinner Reservation Officer)
Joined
Mar 9, 2005
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15,468
Location
Wichita, KS
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Display name:
Tony
and didnt have to work. Soaring in Iowa is looking AMAZING tomorrow. Most of our towpilots have frickin jobs. Im praying that the one guy who does IT tech support can get out for one tow. Im hoping to do my 5 hour duration leg of the silver badge, and will likely get silver altitude (1000 meter altitude gain). could be incredible.
 
TonLoc:

Wish I was:

1. There; and
2. Qualified.

How cool would it be to be able to do that from time to time.
 
good news, the guy I was hoping for has came through. I launch at about 11. Looks like if im not a bumbling retard I can get my 5 hour duration in today. Will report back tonight!
 
tonycondon said:
good news, the guy I was hoping for has came through. I launch at about 11. Looks like if im not a bumbling retard I can get my 5 hour duration in today. Will report back tonight!
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Ah, then if you DON'T quite manage it, that says ... what, exactly? :D

Good luck! Wish I was going with ya!! I swear, I'm going to Marfa or someplace and get my glider ticket - I keep trying with the soaring club here, but it never seems to quite work ... :(
 
...or do it Flintstones style with your legs out of the bottom?
 
tonycondon said:
good news, the guy I was hoping for has came through. I launch at about 11. Looks like if im not a bumbling retard I can get my 5 hour duration in today. Will report back tonight!
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Good luck to you Tony! Looking forward to your write up! :yes:
 
Waa waaa waaa.. How many times have you had my logbook in your hands, and yet I still don't see a tailwheel endorsement in there, Mr. CFI! :D

Let's see here.. If you launch around 11.. and you're trying for 5+hrs duration... by the time you get a chase vehicle to your location.. and de-rig and get everything in the trailer... and get BACK to Ames... That means you're probably pretty 'doubtful' for the EAA organizational meeting tonight. *sigh* Get your priorities in order, Tony! Everyone knows it's SO much better to sit around and TALK about flying rather than actually DOING it! Sheesh.. What are you thinking!? I'm making the HUGE sacrifice of skipping Accounting class tonight so I can attend the meeting -- that's what you call TRUE devotion. *sigh* I'm disappointed, Tony. tsk tsk tsk
 
Anyone care if I hijack this thread for a second?

I'm really interested in gliding after hearing Tony talk about it all the time. I have a few questions about it.

1. For a PP-ASEL, how much training is required for a glider rating?
2. When you rent gliders, how are you charged? By the hour? How is that timed? How much does it cost?
3. How much does a glider tow usually cost?
4. On a good day, can you glide for as long as you want?

Thanks for any answers.
 
bqmassey said:
Anyone care if I hijack this thread for a second?

I'm really interested in gliding after hearing Tony talk about it all the time. I have a few questions about it.

1. For a PP-ASEL, how much training is required for a glider rating?
2. When you rent gliders, how are you charged? By the hour? How is that timed? How much does it cost?
3. How much does a glider tow usually cost?
4. On a good day, can you glide for as long as you want?
Thanks for any answers.
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1.You can expect to need about 15 flights w/ a CFIG, plus about 10+ by yourself to be ready for the checkride. There is no written for PPL transitional pilots.

2 & 3. You are usually charged for the glider rental (which is usually minimal at clubs, if you're used to renting power planes - more if you're renting from a for profit glider school), which is by the hour or fraction thereof, and you pay for the tow. The tow charges are generally a base line charge for the first 1000', then a charge per 100' above that. How much that costs depends on where you are. At a club, you might pay $25-30 for a 3000' tow. Might be more at a for profit glider port.

4. On a good day, it depends on the pilot, now doesn't it? :) You might stay up for an hour and a half. You might stay up for 5. You might stay up for 25 minutes on that sleigh ride back down to the runway. Depends on you, on lift, on luck, on lots of stuff.

I don't know where you are - there are private schools around - I was just looking at the numbers for the school at Marfa, TX - it costs about $2300 or more to do the transition. Seems they are averaging maybe $60 or $70 per hour for the whole shebang, not counting ground school which I figured at maybe $30/hour.
 
Thanks for the response.

I'm in Lincoln, NE. Not too far from Tony. How do they count time on the gliders? I take it there's no tach.
 
There's an ops officer on the ground with a watch recording when you start your take-off roll, and when you touch down. At least in the club I'm in there is. Don't know how anyone else does it, really.
 
I can hook your glider to my Impala SS on the highway and get you going fast enough.
 
So... Quickly, who wants to start a pool on whether or not Tony made it to his 5 hr threshold? $5 buy in. :D
 
etsisk said:
1.You can expect to need about 15 flights w/ a CFIG, plus about 10+ by yourself to be ready for the checkride. There is no written for PPL transitional pilots.
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If you already have time in old taildraggers and especially formation flight, the time could be less.

4. On a good day, it depends on the pilot, now doesn't it? :) You might stay up for an hour and a half. You might stay up for 5. You might stay up for 25 minutes on that sleigh ride back down to the runway. Depends on you, on lift, on luck, on lots of stuff.
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I never had a problem staying up as long as I wanted on a good soaring day. It's the marginal ones that require some skill for that.:D But the club I was in limited flights to one hour on busy weekends, to allow fair access to the gliders.

IIRC what you need to learn is:

1> Ground ops (rigging, launching, and recovering gliders)

2> Flying on tow. This is a lot like learning to land the first time. It starts out feeling near impossible and then gets so easy you wonder why it seemed so tough. Basically you have to make the sailplane do whatever the tow pilot is doing.

3> Handling a rope break at 200 AGL. This is so easy I wonder why they waste time teaching it. (j/k about the wondering part)

4> Landing in (at the airport). There are pattern issues and a towplane to watch out for. You have to plan the approach well cause you only get one shot, but spoilers make landing so easy you'll wonder why they don't put them on most airplanes.

5> Flying in a gaggle (group of sailplanes under the same cloud) without scaring the other pilots.

6> Landing out (away from the airport when you run out of lift) and retrieval/extraction (getting the sailplane out of the farmer's field without getting shot or damaging the aircraft and loading it into it's trailer).

Notice that I didn't mention finding and maximizing lift, flying cross country, or general soaring techniques. That's because you won't necessarily learn this while getting a glider rating on your certificate. You can learn that stuff, but AFaIK it's not required.

My experience in a soaring club is that you will have to spend the better part of any day you choose to participate. Going with a commercial operation costs more but would likely eat up less time.
 
well the short story is i made 5 hours. looking at the barograph trace though is not very exciting. seems that something caused it to drop to zero at about 4 hours. i think i can be considered "continuously monitored" or whatever, so hopefully I will still get Silver duration. full report to come...
 
Tony, how do you prove silver status? GPS data?

Also - you ever use Seeyou?
 
tonycondon said:
well the short story is i made 5 hours. looking at the barograph trace though is not very exciting. seems that something caused it to drop to zero at about 4 hours. i think i can be considered "continuously monitored" or whatever, so hopefully I will still get Silver duration. full report to come...
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Congrats Dood!
 
i prove it with a barograph, which is basically a pen connected to an altimeter that draws on a rotating drum with a piece of paper on it. this proves continutity of flight. i "notch" it after tow release to show that I am no longer on tow. then the time is measured from that point.

i havent gotten to do any soaring with GPS. Many many many glider pilots use SeeYou and other similar programs though.
 
bqmassey said:
Anyone care if I hijack this thread for a second?

I'm really interested in gliding after hearing Tony talk about it all the time. I have a few questions about it.

1. For a PP-ASEL, how much training is required for a glider rating?
2. When you rent gliders, how are you charged? By the hour? How is that timed? How much does it cost?
3. How much does a glider tow usually cost?
4. On a good day, can you glide for as long as you want?

Thanks for any answers.
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Chilhowie gliderport (about an hour from here) charges $1549 package deal PP to glider transition program. I'm up for a BFR this December, and I'm trying to decide between commercial and glider.
 
Bill Jennings said:
Chilhowie gliderport (about an hour from here) charges $1549 package deal PP to glider transition program. I'm up for a BFR this December, and I'm trying to decide between commercial and glider.
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go glider. chilhowee has some kickass soaring. they had 2 guys do 750 km flights in the ridge down there. another guy in a 1-26 (low low performace) did 344 km and one of my low performance gliding heros averaged over 100 km/h in a Ka-6 wooden glider.
 
Well Tony, you know I'd help ya out of I was there and qualified too! :)

Although I've heard the same thing from you guys with instrument, hehe.
 
tonycondon said:
go glider. chilhowee has some kickass soaring. they had 2 guys do 750 km flights in the ridge down there. another guy in a 1-26 (low low performace) did 344 km and one of my low performance gliding heros averaged over 100 km/h in a Ka-6 wooden glider.
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scratch that, those were 750 MILE flights, and Stevenson in the Ka-6 did a little over 900 km, averaging over 100 km/h

simply amazing.
 
Naa we just finally changed subjects back to VOR intercepting and getting on to me for arguing or not doing things quickly enough. He's gone for a week again and I was strongly instructed that I'm lacking on my oral. Kinda hard to know exactly what to do when you've read the book 4 times, dont remember any of it and have to write 4 papers on the side for class.
 
tonycondon said:
scratch that, those were 750 MILE flights, and Stevenson in the Ka-6 did a little over 900 km, averaging over 100 km/h
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Running up and down the western edge of the smokie mountains? How bad does the turb get in really good mountail lift situations?
 
Tristar said:
Kinda hard to know exactly what to do when you've read the book 4 times, dont remember any of it and have to write 4 papers on the side for class.
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Have you had any good sit down time with Aunt Martha? :rofl:

(seriously, those King CD's WORK)
 
Bill Jennings said:
Running up and down the western edge of the smokie mountains? How bad does the turb get in really good mountail lift situations?
Click to expand...

i dunno actually. Ive never flown ridge. Ridge Lift is the wind that blows up the upwind side of the mountain or hill or whatever. I suspect its not that bad turbulence wise. If you are thinking mountain wave, the actual lift is extremely smooth. The flow is actually laminar in the wave. the rotor, on the other hand, is not so much smooth.
 
Its hard for me to sit through some king videos anymore. They drilled it in to me too much in private a couple years ago. I have ASA and have watched it a couple times, its on my things to do list again though.
 
t0r0nad0 said:
Here's a documentary I made when in college about a small glider port near St. Louis, MO. Let me know what you think...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXHkAirTnWg
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I thought it was done very professionally! (Though starting a documentary on gliders showing a Cub starting the engine was a little surprising. Also, not all soaring starts with a tow from a powered plane. Okay, it's admittedly a nit! :))
 
t0r0nad0 said:
Here's a documentary I made when in college about a small glider port near St. Louis, MO. Let me know what you think...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXHkAirTnWg
Click to expand...
Great video! I remember hearing about Starling Field but had never been there. I grew up in North St. Louis and later down by Hillsboro. I watched the Arch being built from my back yard as a kid. I wish I had seen more of such places back then and Starling Field is one of them.
 
gprellwitz said:
I thought it was done very professionally! (Though starting a documentary on gliders showing a Cub starting the engine was a little surprising. Also, not all soaring starts with a tow from a powered plane. Okay, it's admittedly a nit! :))
Click to expand...

in the US, a large majority of commercial operations and clubs aerotow. like nearly all. even the clubs that have winches or autotow options usually still have a towplane.
 
Hey Tony..

I found out today that the Citabria at Boone is available to do tailwheel TRAINING in, but insurance won't allow anyone to solo it. So maybe I'll call out there sometime and see what they're gonna charge to fly it. I think Connie was $50/hr last time I saw his rates in the office. *sigh* That's a bit out of my range.

If that won't work out, I'll get the tw done this fall in the PA-11 when I'm working for the cropduster. With any luck I'll be ready for towing services for the fall season. :yes:
 
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