How about an Aerobatic gliding scholarship?

Colin Field gives us insight to what his 2011 Gliding Scholarship allowed him to achieve.

Hanging in the Straps over Lasham

Ever since I started learning to glide, I’ve been really interested in Aerobatics- the challenge of performing unusual manoeuvres accurately, the thrill of experiencing sensations and views which you’d never normally get while in a glider, and (we must admit this) the bragging rights of knowing how to make the people on the ground look up and say ‘wow!’. I was just waiting for an opportunity to come along which would enable me to undertake the training affordably, and applying to the Air League for an Aerobatics scholarship was just the excuse I needed. I told the Air League how the training would be invaluable to my future career as “an aspiring UAV developer”, and how it would make me a safer pilot by “increasing my experience of how to handle unusual flight situations”. This did the trick and I was offered £300 to spend at one of the recommended training centres.

After doing some preliminary training at another club, I got in touch with Colin Short, the UK Senior Regional Aerobatic Instructor, about organising a day of training at Lasham. £300 is a fair amount of money, but will buy you 5-6 aerobatic flights and it’s therefore perfectly feasible to spend that sort of money in one day. We sheduled a date in late September when we had priority use of the ASK21, and coincidentally this lined us up perfectly with the stable high pressure warm weather at the beginning of Autumn. Apart from being quite a hazy day, the absence of clouds, the low inversion and the minimal breeze made it perfect for aerobatic training.

We started the day with a discussion of my previous experience, and it was clear that the training was going to be very personalised to what I could realistically achieve in one day. The main manoeuvres we were going to cover would be the loop, the chandelle, the humpty bump, quarter cloverleaf, aerobatic turns and general aerobatic competition techniques such as up-lines, down-lines, positioning inside the box and signalling when the display begins and ends. We decided that we’d look at the basic manoeuvres, the loop and chandelle on the first flight. So we put the glider on line, got towed up to 4000′, and commenced.

I’ve been a glider pilot since 2005 and the majority of my flights have now been as an instructor. Furthermore, I spent a lot of the summer flying a K21 so I think I know the beast quite well. But it soon became apparent that, despite my experience, I was flying the manoeuvres like a complete newbie and it would take a fair bit of ironing-out to get them presentable! Hence lesson 1: what might feel like a loop or a chandelle in the air, is likely to look very different (ie wrong) from the ground and in order to get the judges to accept it, significant changes in technique are required! So we went up for a second flight, polished off those manoeuvres and worked on the humpty-bump, which is a little bit like a look put you prolong the vertical up- and down-lines and make the top of the figure quite tight. After just 2 flights though, I was starting to feel surprisingly fatigued, and took a break. Lesson 2: aerobatics is surprisingly draining- take regular breaks in the shade and eat something between each flight (for energy levels!)

Flight 3 was much better, so I did two runs of the routine we agreed, before being sent solo on Flight 4 which was my examination flight. I took an aerotow to just 2500′ over the same patch of airfield, and performed my sequence. This was observed and scored by Colin on the ground, and although he came over and immediately started poking holes in my technique, he quickly broke into a smile, assured me he was kidding, and awarded me my Standard Aerobatic badge. Result! Lesson 3: With a little bit of practice and discipline, it doesn’t take long to get to the stage where you can start ‘doing it properly’ and begin adding manoeuvres to your repertoire.

Flight 5 was when we started looking at some of the more complex, rolling manoeuvres, starting off with the quarter cloverleaf. In this figure, you pull up as if into a loop then roll the glider so that you’re inverted at right angles to the entry line. At this point, you ‘level’ the wings and pull through as if in the second half of a loop. This is challenging because you need ground features to line up to, and you’re also judging a roll by eye onto a point which is now upside down and looks completely different to before! Despite having got to grips with this before I went to Lasham, I still wasn’t doing it right so a few more demonstrations were in order. But by now all of the pushing, pulling, rolling and staring at ground features was making me a little green so I took control and took us back for landing. Lesson 4: quarter clovers, when done in repertition by an inexperience hand, can spin one’s head quite quickly…

After a fair bit of a break, mooching around Lasham and helping with the launching, we took our 6th and final flight. Initially, I had planned to use this for additional training, but then I convinced Colin to take me for a demonstration of what he (as an Unlimited pilot), and the glider, are really capable of. First of all we flew around inverted, something I’ve always loved, while I snapped a few photos (surprisingly tricky) then had a go myself. He then proceeded to demonstrate a succession of rolls, cubans, stall turns, inverted and rolling manoeuvres, right down to surprisingly little height above the ground before bringing us back to the launchpoint. What a great demonstration of how to handle the K21! Lesson 5: training aircraft can be very capable at aerobatics, and with an experienced pilot at the helm, can pull off manoeuvres you’d question performing in many powered aircraft!

Even though we only spent 90 minutes in the air, and the majority of that was on aerotow, I have acquired some fantastic experience and an Aerobatic badge of my very own. I can thoroughly recommend the aerobatic course, for all of the reasons listed above but also because it’s an experience you probably won’t be able to afford for yourself for quite some time. Certainly, it has improved my aircraft handling confidence- I had some excellent demonstrations of how to recover from becoming inverted (always roll level, even if you’ve never been taught) and how to handle a glider which is pointing at the ground (always pull ‘g’ to avoid Vne- the glider is very strong in supporting ‘g’ loads up to 50% of the manual limits, but Vne means ‘NEVER exceed!’). It’s all very well knowing these facts from a book, but to practising them first hand is what makes all the difference if you ever have to do it.

Thanks very much to the Air League for funding the training, to Lasham office who made the booking and accounting so painless, and to Colin Short for giving up his day to fly with me. It’s safe to say I’m hooked, and maybe you’ll see me at an aerobatic competition soon!