This story was written by a gentleman with a powered Private Pilots License (PPL) who wanted to learn gliding. I found it in the main gliding newsgroup rec.aviation.soaring It reveals how gliding is rather different to powered flying and new flying skills have to be mastered.
Subject: Solo All Over Again - A Power Pilot's Transition to Gliders
Date: 14 Oct 1998 18:51:48 GMT From: "Michael" (crewdog@flah.net)
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.student, rec.aviation.soaring
Portions of this were previously posted to this newsgroup under the title "A Different Kind of Flying."
A few years ago I took my first flight in a sailplane. I don't know what make it was. I was not a pilot then, only a student skydiver. It seemed like fun but money was tight and the nearest club was far away. Years later I was a pilot and airplane owner, and I shared a hangar with a guy who was in a glider club. I'd long ago meant to give it a shot...
The Soaring Club of Houston operates out of a private field. And field is the operative word. It used to be a cornfield. The corn has been replaced by grass but it's nothing like a well maintained grass strip. I had a location marked on a sectional and a frequency. So one beautiful Sunday morning I climbed into the TriPacer, pointed the nose roughly Northwest, and took off for an adventure.
The general location of the field was not too difficult to find - there were a pair of gliders soaring over it. Not knowing if there were more, and knowing full well that gliders can still be trying to thermal at 1000 ft, I dropped down to 600 to find the field. The radio was a great help - one of the tow pilots told me to look for the row of hangars on the West side of the field. I guess a GPS would have been nice but I don't have one... He also warned me that the West side of the field would be rough on my nosewheel. I didn't bother to tell him that there are damned few places a Pawnee can land that a TriPacer can't...
I flew a tight low right hand pattern (landings were to the North that day and the local rule is that gliders fly their pattern on the West side of the field and power traffic on the East) and landed without incident, despite the fact that I had blundered to the West side of the field originally. The adventure was just beginning.
I hung around for a while and watched the operations. I was amazed at the cramped simplicity of these ships. There was not a gyro in sight. Most of the pilots wore parachutes. A couple had some training in their use - but I talked to one who had a type that was pretty severely undersized for him. Without at least some PLF training he was almost certain to break something. He had heard of PLF training but never actually saw it done...
It had been long enough - it was time to give it a shot...
The club has a wonderful demo program. For $35 you get an intro ride with a commercial glider pilot (CFIG on request if they can scrounge one up) and if you like it $20 of that can be applied to your club initiation fee. They were very busy that day - but there was an instructor who could work me in on the new acquisition - a beautiful new very high performance glider. Something they called a DG - supposedly the heaviest thing on the field and a glide ratio over 50:1. People told me how lucky I was to get to fly it. I think the instructor was quite surprised that his passenger was not interested in just sitting there enjoying the ride - his first instruction to me was to touch nothing.
I was somewhat miffed that I would not get to do the takeoff or landing. I had this conceit that with 300 hrs in power planes I could fly at least a little. I was in for a rude awakening.
I had no idea what he did on the takeoff. He spoke of getting the weight on the main (off the nosewheel) as soon as possible so I understood the stick back early on the takeoff roll, but I followed him on the takeoff and I could not anticipate or even understand what he was doing with stick and rudders.
At about 1000 ft he gave me the plane. I was so far behind the aircraft that it would get away from me and I would not even know what was going on or how to stop it. Multiple times he would take the controls back, fix my blunders, and return control to me. I never got the hang of it.
We went up to 4000 ft. He told me that the lift was very marginal, and even the qualified people were working hard just to stay up. My chances of being able to thermal that day were nil, so we would get all the altitude we could.
Once off tow, he made the clearing turn to the right and gave me control. I knew flying on tow was hard - but I figured that at least once off tow I would be able to hold heading and airspeed, make turns - generally fly. He told me that stall was 40 kts and we should fly 50. The best I can say is that I never stalled. I saw my airspeed indicate anywhere from 42 to 75. I quickly gave up on the ASI - by the time it told me anything was wrong, it was far too late. I eventually settled on keeping the mag compass on the horizon, and ignoring the instruments. My airspeed steadied out, though never to the rock steadiness I get in power planes. It was time to try some turns.
The procedure was bizarre. A gentle turn (no more than 30 degrees, I'm sure, though I had no gyro) started by putting in a little stick and almost all the rudder there was. Once bank angle was reached, you took out some rudder - and all the stick. I was flying gentle turns with opposite aileron and inside rudder - and I would need even more inside rudder to center the yaw string.
The string was distracting. I'm used to a ball (inclinometer) and stepping on the ball to center it. Now I had to do just the opposite and I would routinely get it wrong. I knew I was flying behind the aircraft. We found a thermal at 3500 or so. At first my instructor flew circles in it - and then he told me to take it. Dividing attention between keeping the compass on the horizon, the yaw string centered, and the bank cranked in took absolutely everything I had. Every few seconds I'd try to glance around for aircraft but I had no delusions that this was a proper traffic scan. I spotted a couple of planes and a bird... But I was managing to hold altitude.
Most of the rest of the lesson consisted of trying to work marginal thermals. Towards the end of the hour I felt like I was sort of getting the hang of it. But it was getting to the end of the day, we were running out of lift, and it was time to land. I turned us onto downwind, following a road. Holding course and airspeed seemed much easier now than just an hour ago, but I was dead tired. I was grateful to return control to the instructor as it was time to turn base.
The pattern looked low. Scary-low. I knew he had to know what he was doing, but it looked like we would never clear the trees. Of course we did. I expected that the flare would look low, and I was not disappointed. It wasn't much of a flare - he lifted the nose to touch the tail and then we were down.
I rested for an hour, but I was still rattled as I flew home. I haven't felt that far behind the aircraft since my first couple of hours. It was the most humbling hour of my life. I had heard glider pilots talk a lot about how they were much better pilots, and how power pilots really didn't know how to fly, and how soaring was really the purest form of flying. Now I was convinced they were right - that there were things to be known about flying - the art of the stick and rudder - that I had no clue about. It was a matter of pride - I had to learn to fly gliders.