by Paul » Thu Jun 02, 2005 10:51 pm
Art
I have many hours flying engines off on the lazair and find it to be a very enjoyable and economical way to soar. Before I got into ultralights, I used to fly hang gliders and had a ball doing that. My longest flight was in Chattanooga Tennessee, 3 hours flight from the ramp being around 1300 feet above ground to my peak altitude gain being about 6000 feet. Being from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont, Canada, we have only a small group of hanglider pilots and we always had to use the buddy system to get out flying. I work shift work and weekends while everybody was straight days, weekends off. I grew tired of it and that's how I got started into flying ultralights. It might not seem to be pertinant to be talking about hangliding but this is where I got my soaring skills and knowledge about flying conditions. One thing that may help you is reading soaring books such as one that even though it's written for hanglider pilots, it still covers micrometeorology for all pilots called Flying Conditions by Dennis Pagen and the subtitle is micrometeorology for pilots. It explains thermal activity, how thermals drift with the wind, where to look for possible thermals, explains wind gradients and many other aspects of soaring in which the information can apply to very light aircrafts. I would suggest to read up on soaring and only progress to higher winds as your skill increases also. Many of my own soaring flights were with winds of 10 to gusting up to 20+miles/hour due to mid-day thermals and sometimes with vary stiff cross winds. At the airfield that I use, the wind was generally across the runway so I would actually land across the runway which is about 25 feet wide. When it comes to instruments, it would be to your advantage to purchase a variometre which tells you your rate of climb and descent. As you start to understand thermals,let's just say for example while your'e on a straight course you start to slightly turn left, this can be a possible clue that theres a thermal on your right so you turn right and then you actually feel the plane getting into the lift of the thermal and then you will be searching for the center of the thermal which has the highest climb rate and depending how windy it is, you'll have to drift downwind accordingly. There's also ridge lift you can soar if you have hill's over 250 feet or more. Again the book from Dennis Pagen explains all of that and the precaution you should know about. Landind during windy mid-day thermal activity was a little hairy at times and very challenging. You had to watch the windsock like a Hawk, and when you had a consistant wind direction you take that opportunity to land. The problem that I encountered after landing in windy conditions was getting the plane back to the tie downs, sometimes pulling the plane backwards and generally walking my plane back off the runway holding wind side wing down so as not to have the plane to go flying without me. Not all soaring days are windy in fact I had after supper flights during summer when the day starts to cool down and seems to release all the heat in the surrounding fields and parking lots and creates one huge mass of rising air. Theres a term for that in hang gliding lingo but I don't remember it. Anyways, to soar you generaly get into higher winds, and if you take it slow so as to learn new skills and limitations of yourself and your aircraft , you can do it safely with greater knowledge and understanding while reducing risks.
good luck and have fun learning
Paul