1000 km Glider Flight - 16 Decisions: What Would YOU Decide?

[@angeloalojzija9274]

What a great video. I enjoyed every second of it!

[@davidbowes5915]

Great video. Thank you for posting this!

[@lessainsbury8508]

Wow ! Fantastic video. Very informative. Congrats on your first 1000 km flight. As others have eluded to ,this video does not seem as long as the timestamp.

[@cptmayday]

Great video! Learned a lot. I like the decision making questions in-between. Really entertaining. Thanks a lot...keep it up!

[@heracliosilva3835]

What a beautiful flight!! Amazing. Congratulations!

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thank you!

[@zinuzoid]

Thanks for making this awesome video. I learn a lot from these decisions. 👍

[@ChessInTheAir]

Glad it was helpful!

[@christianboulay]

Bravo! Congratulations for your first 1000km! Great flight and great video...

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks a lot!

[@passenger6735]

Inspirational. I learned to glide 40 years ago as it was an easy route to my following career as a commercial jet pilot. Watching this 'educational' video just made me want to get involved again. Thank you so much for taking your time to make this video. OH. Congratulations too. A fantastic achievement.

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks for the kind feedback! I learned when I was 16. Flew a few years (but not much) then came back 30 years later and have only seriously been at it for the last 4 years. So it may not be too late to return :-)

[@jeromeollieric8244]

very nice and instructive. Thank you very much

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks, Jerome!

[@ThermalWave]

Great video! Looked long when I started watching, but felt much shorter! Your thoughts and the different choices are engaging and the editing & speedup are well done 👍

[@ChessInTheAir]

Hi Christian, thanks for the kind feedback. I’m glad you liked it.

[@csabamartha8889]

Thank you for sharing you experience. It was very educational, completely hooked me for all the more than 1 hour, which is rare :)

[@ChessInTheAir]

Great to hear! Thanks for watching - I‘ve been doing this style of video for a while despite the huge effort involved. I learn a lot by reviewing my own decisions. You may enjoy some of my other videos too. :-)

[@ToetFly]

First of all, congrats with your 1000km! Great video, I like your learning approach to invite us to join your decisions and make our own. This makes your videos stand out and different from other (more commercial) videos. I also like you not to talk to much and only give spoken information that is informing us as viewers how you make your decisions and what are your considerations. Very usefull! Please continue like this, it's helping me a lot to improve my own xc flights here in Europe. Although I'm very jealous at the cloudbase you may work with (we don't have it here in Europe, except in the mountains or on exceptional days), your videos are a great source for the decisionmaking process, which every gliderpilot around the world has to face. Thank you so much!

[@ChessInTheAir]

Many thanks for the kind feedback! Glad you’re finding the videos helpful!

[@paulhsv1121]

Outstanding!!

[@samuilkazakov7340]

Thank you very much for your great work!!! Your videos are always inspiring for me as much as educational ! Keep going! Hope to see you in LOGO!

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks! Haven’t been in LOGO since the start of the pandemic. But look forward to going back. Are you based there?

[@greggdavis]

Great video once again Clemens, thanks for spending the time to create the notations and offer up your thought processes! Great flight.

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks Gregg!

[@jakubtomaszewski5137]

Congrats on your first 1000 km flight! I hope you'll get many more of those in the future. Great video and very good editing, video didn't feel as long as the timestamp suggest. I love that you give us a chance to make up our own tactical decisions, I admit on few occasions (3) I'd go different route than you chose. I cannot believe how long legs has your Ventus.

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks! Yes, the Ventus runs very well. But it sure helps to find rising air to fly in as well :-)

[@jakubtomaszewski5137]

@@ChessInTheAir Oh, I didn't want to offend you. I meant you have skilfully stretched your Ventus legs very well cursing so fast and so far without circling using rising air :) Really good educational video.

[@ChessInTheAir]

@@jakubtomaszewski5137 haha, lol, no offense at all :-). It sure helps to have a great glider. I would not have had the confidence to push through the blue stretches without such a glider. Eg we have two Discus CS in the club - they’re very good but there’s still a big performance boost with the Ventus 2.

[@cliffordalbritton8517]

Thrilling!

[@csleclerc57]

Could you give the song title at 38:00 minutes in. Love your videos.

[@timothyclark7052]

I'm thinking of getting the Oudie N, what Oudie did you have on this flight? I'm surprised the battery died, is that normal? Did you get live weather updates during the flight? Great video thank you for making it!

[@ChessInTheAir]

Hi Tim, I use an Oudie IGC. The battery should last at least 12 hours but the battery of this particular unit obviously doesn’t. I had recently replaced one Oudie IGC with another after I dropped the old unit and broke the screen. The new unit must have a defective battery. It only keeps power for about 7-8 hours which clearly is not enough. The prior unit had a better battery and I never had problems with it, often running it for 9-10 hours (including preflight.) The IGC will not accept live weather updates as far as I know - at least mine wasn’t connected to anything during the flight. I did have the Skysight forecast loaded onto the unit before the flight. It doesn’t update but it shows you the forecast for the specific time of the flight. A live update would be better but often the forecast is good enough. I am thinking of getting an Oudie N as well once the software supports all the things I need and rely on. Hope this helps.

[@justinsmith3858]

thanks Clemens vert wet la ninja in AUS but inspiring to watch as always my longest so far 900 km so look fwd to 1000 km one day You probably know this but i always take a plug in battery to add to my phone and my Oudie as even mu new battery oudie lasts less than 8 hours and if that outlanding does happen its nice to have a phone still working

[@MrAneigher]

sporting risk vs safety risk. This is what I came here for

[@ChessInTheAir]

Hi Alex, thanks for your interest. I think this article may be for you: chessintheair.com/competing-and-survival-managing-risks-in-soaring-contests/

[@MrAneigher]

@@ChessInTheAir Indeed it is very :) Thanks for sharing. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the psychological aspects of our sport. Seems like this is often overlooked in training

[@ChessInTheAir]

@@MrAneigher Agreed, in my experience the required training for glider pilots is very basic indeed. It's just a license to start to learn on your own. With respect to soaring and psychology, follow Daniel Sazhin at SoaringEconomist.com. Daniel is a top glider pilot and a behavioral psychologist.

[@desertpoj]

Totally outstanding flight and a wonderful video. If I may ask a really boring question, I have a Ventus 2C in the U.K., what weight were you flying the task at and what flap and speed were you using to thermal at that weight? Many thanks, DCH

[@ChessInTheAir]

Hi DCH, I think this flight was fully ballasted up to gross max. I used to fly a bit too fast in the thermals, I am now trying to keep the speed at about 60 knots in Flap +2 when at this weight. Hope this helps. If you look up my flights on WeGlide you can see thermalling speed, bank angle and radius. Most of my summer flights are with full water ballast. I will admit that there are other pilots who thermal better. Keith Essex would be a top example. Hope this helps.

[@bradjackson9489]

A fantastic video and so informative. When you extended your triangle how did you know where to turn to get 750km? Did you just do the math or did your Oudie show how far to go?

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks Brad! This was more of an estimate. The first extension was passed TP2 and I knew at that point that I would also need to extend to the south past the finish to get to 750. The Oudie can tell you how far you have already flown based on the OLC & WeGlide rules of max six legs. It can also show you the area within which you have to turn to comply with the FAI triangle rules.

[@skyzocker5061]

Hi, great and very educational video as always! I just wondered why you didn't use your phone when your glider computer ran out. Don't you have a software like xc soar on it or what was the reason for that? Greetings from Germany :)

[@ChessInTheAir]

Good question. What I needed to know at this point in the flight was a calculation of how far I had already flown so I could determine when I would exceed 1000k and also where exactly I would need to fly to close my triangle. To answer these questions the phone would have had to be running XC Soar from the beginning logging the entire flight. (It wasn’t and if it had been it too would have been out of battery at this point as well.) My mistake was to just rely on the built in battery of the Oudie IGC and not bring the right cable to plug it into my power bank. I wasn’t worried about navigation or final glide calculation because I know that area very well and could assess these aspects without needing a computer.

[@skyzocker5061]

@@ChessInTheAir Makes sense, thanks for the quick answer :)

[@mattmatt245]

How do you judge distance to the clouds in such terrain, where there're no reference points on the ground ?

[@ChessInTheAir]

Good question. It’s obviously a guess informed by experience and usually just a range estimate (approx between X and y miles). The cloud shadows on the ground are a useful reference point together with some known features. Also, in some cases folks flying often in the same area will know the most likely location of where clouds form and that provides another clue. But it’s not a precise estimate for sure.

[@mattmatt245]

@@ChessInTheAir One more question. At grand prix soaring contests, how is this possible that everybody crosses the start line at the same time ? Is there a starting cylinder instead of a line and the finish line is different for every pilot ? Thanks.

[@ChessInTheAir]

@@mattmatt245 The Start Line is a straight line with a length of 5km, perpendicular to the track to the first Turn Point. The number of competitors is limited to 20 so there should be enough space. You can find the rules here: www.fai.org/document-compression/24908

[@dennismoss5622]

What forecasting tools do you use to tell where the convergence is going to be? Great flight!

[@ChessInTheAir]

Mainly Skysight. If you’re cheap you can use Windy (for free) and look where the surface winds collide. Not as elegant but essentially the same information.

[@danilasmirnov8187]

Great video! One thing I keep asking myself, is why there is so little radio contact during the video? Or you just skip it? For example, at 1:01:35 there is a jet zooming past, and given the wide lense, it should have been quite close. Was it passing over 180, or did you have the radio contact with it?

[@ChessInTheAir]

Hi Danila, thanks for asking. We see other air traffic on our instruments and we will only seek to establish radio contact when it is necessary. Jets are rarely a concern because we fly with transponders so they and air traffic control know where we are and ATC will even route jet traffic around us if necessary. Most of the time there is also a lot of vertical separation because jet traffic is usually well into the flight levels above 18000 ft (except for the usual arrival and departure routes into Denver airport). The biggest risk of a conflict is from other gliders and we have our radios tuned to “air to air” frequencies where we make regular position announcements so others know where we are and what we intend to do. There are a few on the video and others are cut out where I sped up the playback. We also have specific collisions avoidance technology in board (FLARM) that will warn us if there is a conflicting trajectory with another aircraft. In most of the area where I was flying that day there was very little air traffic. Btw - I’ve looked at 1:01:35 a few times and I can only see some canopy reflections that could easily be mistaken for a jet. I’m glad you liked the video!

[@danilasmirnov8187]

Oh, I see. Because I didn’t know that you’re using the transponder as well! Looking forward to new videos😊 By the way, I find this format greatly insightful and much more useful than the standard theory books. Though they are a great foundation. PS. Maybe it’s a reflection indeed. But looks as if something flies from underneath the closest cloud in the convergence at your 1 o’clock and disappears over the right shoulder

[@ChessInTheAir]

@@danilasmirnov8187 Hi Danila - yes, you were right about that jet all along :-) I had to look at it again on a big screen to see it. It does look like it's at least several thousand feet higher though, so that's why my instruments would not have given me any warning. But this is a good reminder for anyone why it is critical to fly with a transponder. It is exceptionally difficult to see fast moving traffic like that even in the best lighting conditions. If you add a low sun and some canopy reflections one is extremely unlikely to notice it at all. I'm astonished that you spotted it on the video!

[@Johan-ex5yj]

Well done on your first 1000km! 👍 After 8.5 hours in the cockpit, can you still walk when you crawl out of it? 😀

[@ChessInTheAir]

Good question! Fortunately the Ventus cockpit fits me quite well. Of course sitting still in any seat is not super comfortable after that much time. But I have to actively work on mental alertness - that seems more concerning than the physical aspect. Especially as I headed to land I had to coach myself to really pay attention and get out of auto pilot mode. I’m sure it helps that I’m reasonably fit from doing long trail runs and hikes in the mountains. But both physical fitness and mental capacity have limits and that’s definitely worth paying attention to.

[@Johan-ex5yj]

@@ChessInTheAir Yes, that is true it is not only physical fatigue but also mental fatigue, which is of concern. 8.5 hours is a long time to keep concentrating.

[@jme104]

At 5:40 I see no need for two options, B is the only one .

[@forthrightnight]

Hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, so thanks for the great videos, the text instead of talking works well. What I don't find works for me is the music. I like to turn up the volume to hear the vario and then the music comes blasting in. I find the music an annoyance. It's like putting music in a hunting video. I watch hunting to hear the sounds of the forest and the whispered musings of the hunters planning the hunt. IMO music if used at all should be very low key. Cheers.

[@ChessInTheAir]

I understand that the music is not to everyone’s taste. I use it for sections when the video is sped up to 8x or 20x of normal speed. There’s nothing worse than a vario sound at 20x speed, you can try it yourself. Keeping the original speed would make this an 8+ hour video that no one would watch. I could cut out the faster sections completely but then viewers would lose context. Also fast playback of straight flight along cloud streets generally works quite well and adds a lot of value as you can see things in fast playback that are much harder to see in real time (such as the development and dissolution of clouds). I could keep the fast playback sections completely silent but I know that many viewers tune out at that point. Adding music works better for most. Obviously not for all. It is also expensive (I have to pay for using it), and quite time consuming to select and add. If you don’t like it I suggest you simply turn down the volume. Since the content is typed anyway you won’t miss anything anyway. Creating a video like this takes about 20-50x as long as the playback speed. You can calculate the number of hours yourself. Turning down the volume of the sound that you don’t like will only take a fraction of a second. ;-). Thanks for your understanding. :-)