On May 2nd at 1:30 in the afternoon I sat in my sailplane on the runway at Sunflower Gliderport in Yoder, KS. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was headed, but I knew I was going to hook up to the tow plane, climb above the airport, release, and then soar as far as I…
As noted earlier in the design section when discussing handling qualities, the horizontal stabilizer was sized using criteria involving a dimensionless coefficient known as the horizontal tail volume coefficient. Based on known good handling qualities of other sailplanes and the value of their tail volume coefficients, one can size the horizontal tail for Concordia. With…
Pawnee with glider on tow. Looks like a good day for soaring. Chilhowee Oct 2008
Uys continues… Contest Day 5: Crews and pilots woke up on Day 5, still very tired. Ronald and AP, the JS technical support and crew members, prohibited the pilots from getting up early to help with the rigging. When Attie and I eventually arrived for briefing, both gliders were rigged, ballasted and ready to be…
Uys continues… Contest Day 1: Finally Day 1 arrived for the 18m Class. It was a 337 km polygon with 5 waypoints. John Coutts, Attie and I started together at 14:24. (Couttsie was an integral part of the Team JS. He might be a Kiwi but we regard him as an honorary South African. With…
This personal account from Uys and Attie Jonker brings a unique and interesting perspective to the challenges of the 2010 World Gliding Championships.
Question : Why should an airplane CFI attend a “glider” related Revalidation Clinic?
The design of an open class sailplane from a competition pilot’s viewpoint is relatively simple. Such a glider should have outstanding straight line and thermaling performance, good handling qualities, and a comfortable cockpit. The pilot may also want an engine since outlanding a 28 to 31 meter span ship can often get very interesting as well as putting himself and his placing in the competition at risk. Unfortunately each of these criteria is normally compromised in the end when designing a sailplane for production or, to put it more directly, when the business side of the equation is considered.
It all started with a simple principle; if you are going to do it, it has to be overboard. The evolution of my tow vehicles: My first tow vehicle was an Econo line van, blue, white, and rust. With a window air conditioner mounted in the passenger window for camping in Waynesville OH. The common…
I really did not give my glider battery much thought until it ran down and took out my logger 7 miles from the airport at 6,000 FT AGL on the final leg of my first 300K gold distance flight attempt. After that I gave my glider battery a lot of thought. Until recently a Sealed…
