Virga Dodging - Glider Team Flight with Extreme Sink and Cross-Wind Landing

[@Gianky640220]

Yours are the only long gliding videos that keep me tied all the time! Thanks a lot for sharing.

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks so much! That’s very rewarding to hear and makes all the effort worthwhile!

[@kizuno1]

That was one of the best in-flight, "in the moment" decision making tutorials ever, thank you for sharing!

[@cceipek]

Many thanks, Kempton! That’s high praise coming from you!

[@cliffordalbritton8517]

Thank you....great pointers and lessons learned...I appreciate you sharing!

[@chrisklix746]

Another great video! Keep em coming, and say hi to Bob Faris for me next time you see him.

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks Chris! Will do, always fun flying with Bob. And a lot to learn from him.

[@joeevens1368]

One of your best.

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks, Joe!

[@greggdavis]

Nice one Clemens! Much appreciating all your written comments - thanks again!

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks Gregg!

[@diablouser]

From the previous video of yours you commented about circling properly i.e. at the 45° or so bank at constant air speed. When I was flying a glider with a compass on top of the instrument panel, I placed four big white dots on the instrument at 45 degrees. That gave me an instantaneous and constant reminder right in my line of vision where the horizon should be when in a thermal. You could put a thin red cross on that front Flarm antenna to do the same thing..

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks! In my glider this is even easier because the left and right edges of the instrument panel are at 45 degrees. If the line up straight against the horizon, you’re at a 45 degree bank. :-)

[@diablouser]

@@ChessInTheAir I just got a HPH304MS with a LXNAV 9070. For someone who flew his got his badges with a smoked barograph, a chart and cameras, and most recently an Odie, the amount of info is a potential major overload. It has an automatic thermal screen and I have populated it with the usual average data plus current Gs and turn radius. No excuse to be lazy in a thermal. I hope I can still remember to look outside!

[@ChessInTheAir]

@@diablouser yes, 99% of all useful information is still outside. :-). I try to spend no more than 5 seconds per minute looking inside the cockpit.

[@ChessInTheAir]

@@diablouser have fun with your new glider!

[@Johan-ex5yj]

You definitely had some luck on your side there, getting V1 on the ground just before the worst of the gust front hit! 😅 Great team work with CX, once again. 👍

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks Johan, indeed!

[@sdmailman6393]

Very good, ,informative

[@schloemo]

Got so mad at you for not taking that nice climb near evergreen. Scary landing. Great video!

[@ChessInTheAir]

Lol. Yeah, I can relate to that ;-). Glad you liked the video!

[@gonzalofigueroa737]

Nice 👍 video

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks Gonzalo!

[@jjiacobucci]

Interesting, your choice of backround music @ 23:56; "Storm Calling" by Ethan Sloan. Enjoyed your highly instructional video. Overdevelopment in mountains necessitates prudence to the max.

[@brushitoff503]

You tell a good story & this was enjoyable to watch for all the learning moments & the joy of flight itself so thank you!

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks again!!!

[@nicothien488]

Nice lessons. Also important: While still flying, the wind obviously shifts you downwind. But once the main wheel is down, the wind pivots your tail away from the wind (more resistance from the vertical stabilizer) and therefore your nose into the wind. So don't super crab to land on the upwind side of a runway only to notice after touchdown that you're now going off the runway in the direction where you left yourself no space by 'playing it extra safe by having lots of downwind margin'.

[@ChessInTheAir]

Yes, definitely good advice. If you take out the crab before touchdown - as one should to reduce the side load on the gear - you’re mitigating that risk, but at that point you’re also quickly drifting downwind, just as I was in the video. I remember landing while still being relatively fast just to stop drifting even further to the right. That’s also why there was a slight bounce.

[@ChessInTheAir]

Additional tips in heavy X-winds for anyone are to keep the upwind wing relatively low so the wind can’t get under it, and to apply downwind rudder if necessary to counter the weather-vaning effect that Nico mentioned. Also, move the stick back to firmly plant the tail wheel on the ground - this greatly helps making the rollout straight. But only do this once you’re well below stall speed so that there isn’t a risk that you’ll take off again. So my sequence is: take out crab during flare, touchdown, full spoilers to stay on ground and reduce speed, be prepared to apply downwind rudder if necessary to remain straight, gradually move stick fully back to get tail wheel on the ground, continue to keep upwind wing a bit lower then downwind wing as you roll, move flaps negative for better aileron control (unless handbook says otherwise), apply gear break as necessary or desired.

[@MikelLee]

@@ChessInTheAir Exactly, I learned to fly at Minden NV at Soar Minden. It was a good learning experience because we had lots of days with cross wind takeoffs and landings. Everything you noted above is right on target. When starting that final flare, and straightening out the crab angle, keep that upwind wing down to maintain the centerline and be ready to apply down wind rudder. Plant that tailwheel and keep the spoilers out. As you noted tailwheel comes down at a speed where you will not pop up again. I learned to fly there in a Grob 103 and the procedure to land that particular glider was the tailwheel should always touch before the main. When I was training if the main gear touched before the tailwheel, the instructor would call you out on that.

[@ChessInTheAir]

@@MikelLee Thanks for sharing! In heavy crosswinds it may be necessary to touch down before you’re slow enough for the tail wheel to touch down first. You could see this in this video. Had I continued the flare, holding the glider above ground, I would have further drifted to the right at the speed of the wind (20kt in this case, ie very fast). I felt it was better to do a main wheel landing with more speed than wait to slow down further. A side benefit is that at higher speed you have more aileron control to quickly counter turbulence and gusts. I tend to only do full stall landings when there isn’t much cross wind. But I don’t know if this is “standard procedure” and your CFIG may have good reason to instruct differently.

[@christianboulay]

Another very good and instructive video about decision making... Thank you!

[@ChessInTheAir]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@StephenJPayne]

Really interesting.

[@ChessInTheAir]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@rodsilva80]

nice drama, keep the videos going!

[@christophwieland9526]

Nice video! Again, great to follow your piloting and so much insightful to decision making processes.

[@ChessInTheAir]

Thanks Christoph!

[@jimm1378]

Awesome video, I enjoyed that! I'm curious why you don't mention the motor option? Maybe just to orbit and wait it out?

[@ChessInTheAir]

Hi Jim, glad you enjoyed the video! In dynamic conditions the use of an engine is very tricky. Once the engine is extended you can only fly very slowly because otherwise it would over speed. At the altitudes we’re flying at the climb rate with engine extended is at best very modest, perhaps 1-2 kts. Now, imagine you enter en area of 5-10 kt sink, or worse. At that point the extended engine becomes a big liability because you can’t fly fast to get out of the sink and the sink is much greater than the climb rate of the engine. The best use of these engines is if the lift slowly dies at the end of a long soaring day and you still have some ways to go to get home. But when conditions are dynamic with strong lift and strong sink you want to keep it tucked away. Hope this helps!

[@chrisgrab7148]

Great videos! Question: at 15"11'': desctrption: "MC4 is 48:1" - Is that correct? Should it say MC0 is 48:1?

[@ChessInTheAir]

Hi Chris, yes you’re right. That was a mistake on my part.

[@chrisgrab7148]

@@ChessInTheAir Still- great videos! I’m learning a lot! Maybe one day I can bring my pw5 to the Rockies from cornfields of Illinois! Lol

[@mattmatt245]

What's so terrible about getting sucked into the cloud for a minute or two ?

[@ChessInTheAir]

Good question. Gliders typically do not have the instrumentation required for non-visual flight and glider pilots are not normally trained for instrument flight either. Flying without visual reference is completely disorientating. There are numerous cases of glider pilots who got into clouds, lost control of the glider (e.g. entered a spiral dive) and the glider broke apart in mid-air. Depending on the temperature, icing of the wings and the canopy can also occur instantaneously. In most countries cloud flying in gliders is also illegal.

[@mattmatt245]

@@ChessInTheAir One more question. When flying under the cloud street, do you adjust your MC speed for the head/tail wind or you don't care about this until final glide ?

[@ChessInTheAir]

@@mattmatt245 I think the wind has no impact on the mathematically optimal MC speed. It‘s just a function of the expected climb rate in the next thermal. But MC tends to be a bit overrated. First, you don’t really ever know what the climb rate will be in the next climb; and second, minor variations in airspeed (+/- 10 kts) have a relatively small impact on the achieved XC speed. In doubt, you might fly a little faster into a head wind, and a little slower when there is a strong tail wind. What you can do to go faster is to round downwind turnpoints high and upwind turnpoints low. This way you’ll take advantage of the tail wind when thermalling. This effect is particularly impactful when the wind speed is high and the thermal strength is low (because you spend a lot of time thermalling and you will drift a significant distance while going around in circles.) But be careful not to fall out of the good height band and get stuck (or even have to land out).

[@ewthmatth]

I think there's a typo at 15:10 At the top it says glide ratio at MC=0 is 48:1. Then at the bottom it says glide ratio at MC4 is 48:1 It was supposed to say MC0 again at the bottom, right?

[@ChessInTheAir]

Yes, you are absolutely right. My mistake. Thanks for catching it!

[@apocalips8008]

Great lesson in how to turn an otherwise normal flight into a dramatic YT drama..... really boring..

[@brushitoff503]

So where's all your gliding experience & knowledge then? Do you fly Gliders? I haven't for years but miss it a lot & found this enjoyable, at least there's a few people out there in the world sharing the pasion that is flight, are you one of them? If so freakin awesome! Share some videos!

[@johngalloway156]

Apocalips has no idea what he is talking about.

[@ChessInTheAir]

I record my flights because I learn from a detailed flight analysis. Our sport is (per activity hour) about 60x as dangerous as driving a car and twice as dangerous as riding a motorcycle. I believe we must take the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others because we may not get a chance to learn from our own. If only one accident is avoided by sharing my learning it will be worth it. There are definitely KZbinrs out there who deliberately risk their life for entertainment. Their channels often get millions of views. I am not one of them and I don’t aspire to become one of them. If that’s the content you’re looking this may not be the right channel for you because I hope to never get into a situation where I record content that shows me almost dying (or worse). Hopefully this sets a better expectation as to what you can and can’t expect from my channel. Thanks for watching!

[@Johan-ex5yj]

To me, anything relating to flying (especially Gliding) is entertaining, not boring! Clemens’s channel is not just entertaining but also very educational for anyone interested in Gliding, one of the best on KZbin.

[@ChessInTheAir]

@@Johan-ex5yj thanks Johan - high praise indeed :-)