Saturday 26th March: gliding

I didn't take any pictures today.It was really cold outside, and I was focusing more on flying well.

I went gliding this day again. Last week I borrowed 10 pounds from Bjorn because he wanted to get back as early as possible and when we stopped at an ATM later in Nottingham it turned out that I couldn't withdraw any money with my card. So, I went there so that I could put 10 pounds on his account. Also, gliding is fairly good fun.

The weather today was really lousy though. Lots of grey cloud and it became quite windy throughout the day.

But I had lots of food. Last weekend gliding I had no food. This time I had lots. So I had energy. I helped out people with things like we're supposed to, apparently. I talked with some airforce people about stuff. One guy has been posted to Afghanistan a few times. He was telling me that the enemy weapons are fairly basic, but they can use them in a way which makes them effective. They were able to shoot down at least one British plane. They know some common routes that the planes fly through. They put some people in this area to fire at the plane. Then, it had limited logical routes which it would turn to in order to evade this firing. At those locations they had other people with guns who then somehow had a much better shot angle and were able to take down the plane. After that, apparently the British Airforce improved their tactics a little and added some extra technology to the planes. It was really interesting.

I did 4 launches in the glider today. I continued my training, this time including some extra controls. I learnt how to select a certain 'attitude' in order to control the speed of the glider. To do this you adjust the angle of the glider relative to the horizon in order to adjust the speed, then keep it at that angle by adjusting the trim control. The trim is connected to the forward and backward direction of the stick.

I did some turns, this time also using the rudder controls to counter the drag which pushes the nose around a bit when you tilt the plane with the wing ailerons. So the rudder controls keep the aircraft facing into the turn, which is pretty much required in order to turn properly.

Mostly my flying time was spent focusing on doing these sorts of things while keeping the speed constant and comfortable. When you turn, the aircraft wants to shift around in different ways, so it requires attention to get it right. Afterward the instructor said my flying was really good! He wrote a comment on my progress sheet. Hooray. Maybe soon they would let me try and land it. *nervous*

We finished a bit earlier today because the weather was really bleak. After packing up we went to the bar where someone gave us a talk about how to maximize effectiveness when taking long distance journeys. It was all about understanding the air systems in order to predict where the best choices of updrafts would be to maximize efficiency. There is quite a lot in it! It's all fairly logical, but it's interesting how far you can go with predicting where they would be, while being fairly accurate. A big variety of situations can generate a significant effect. I think it's really cool that gliding requires you to understand atmospheric systems. It's a good practical motivation to learn that stuff.

We eventually got to leave. I got back to Nottingham and bought a cheese pizza. Delicious.