Constant aspect approach (PT 'U') and landing

[@freeasabird83]

I found this very informative thanks

[@Vl7248]

Transitioning to the uprights that early severely reduces your pitch and role authority. If you land mid day in thermic conditions that technique could be problematic.

[@avianhanggliders1985]

I appreciate that there's many opinions on this, however on a well set up glider you should have no lack of control authority when on the uprights. Certainly I have never even in strong and thermic conditions. Should you need to, you can throw your whole body weight outside of the A frame and make a very effective weight shift. Transitioning too late to the uprights is worse than too early. We had a number of accidents in the UK where pilots were too late transitioning and hit the ground while still holding the base bar. In this situation instead of an upright breaking, the glider rotates forward and downward just as the pilot swings through resulting in them being hit in the head or neck, resulting in fatal or serious injury. If your hands are on the uprights then the upright will break and the glider can't rotate forwards and down violently. Also if you are upright you won't swing through as violently. An impact with the ground feet first while in an upright position is far less likely to result in death or serious injury than if you impact head first in prone while still holding the base bar.

[@Vl7248]

@@avianhanggliders1985 I believe there is a comprise. I don’t wait till the very last second but do try to penetrate the wind gradient in the base tube and transition just before ground effect

[@avianhanggliders1985]

As I say, there are varying opinions on this and if you have a method that works well for you and your glider then by all means carry on with it. But the disadvantage to waiting until you're through the wind gradient is that if it's a stronger gradient than you expect it can drop you quite suddenly and give you less time to transition than you expected, suddenly you have a lot to do with the ground coming up. Also if you fumble the transition it's much better that that happens higher, a minor thing like a glove getting a bit caught might be no drama high but cause a big problem if you're close to the ground.

[@Vl7248]

@@avianhanggliders1985 I’ll be experimenting more at my local ridge site. But I’ve found it challenging to fly from the uprights as I have no pitch control

[@avianhanggliders1985]

@V What glider do you fly, is it a topless? Some toplesses have a very big change in trim speed with VG setting and so they slow down a lot and get very heavy in pitch at 0 VG. It's still possible to pull on speed but it gets tiring very quickly. In this case it can be better to land with a little bit of VG still on, it makes it easier to pull speed. Although not too much VG that it stiffens roll. Also consider moving the hang point forwards a little to trim faster.

[@davewolfe5169]

Thank you very much good instruction

[@zayamichael]

Not enough speed but I’m guilty of that too

[@andydonaldson]

Looks more like a normal aircraft type landing pattern to me (downwind leg, base leg and finals) than a constant aspect approach (one long continuous turn with the target held at a constant angle).

[@avianhanggliders1985]

I normally think about it in terms of downwind/base/finals, which is why I wrote that on the captions but in practice I tend to fly an arc, like in this video, I don't roll out of the turn onto base, I carry a pretty constant bank angle all the way from downwind to final. If I'd been high I would have opened out the turn more and made a bit of base leg though.

[@SVSky]

Airplane flying referred to as "power off 180"