• Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?

    Go here:

    Edit Account Details and Profile

Glider Flying in Pensacola

Swanee

Cereal Killer
pilot
None
Contributor
Nice! Awesome to see the -102 out and about. Too many people keep her around the flagpole there, but she's a great cross country machine.

Is that Mcginnis? It isn't much better than a famer's field. I've been low there (800ft AGL) but scratched a save and pressed home.

Here in SE Va we had a 8400ft day yesterday. No joke. Was one of the best days I've seen east of Mississippi. unfortunately I couldn't go CCX because the club here only lets you take each airplane for an hour block at a time if someone is waiting for it. I need to get our Pilatus B-4 up and running so I can take off for a while.


I put together a couple of 50K triangles around coastal- pm me your email and I'll send them to you.
 

HokiePilot

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
Spot on guess. It is. I had trouble identifying it when I first flew over it. It is nothing more than a strip if grass with some trees cut out of the tree line in one end. It only has a 1500 foot runway so towing out was a little tight but we made it with some room to spare.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2
 

OscarMyers

Well-Known Member
None
Nice! Awesome to see the -102 out and about. Too many people keep her around the flagpole there, but she's a great cross country machine.

Is that Mcginnis? It isn't much better than a famer's field. I've been low there (800ft AGL) but scratched a save and pressed home.

Here in SE Va we had a 8400ft day yesterday. No joke. Was one of the best days I've seen east of Mississippi. unfortunately I couldn't go CCX because the club here only lets you take each airplane for an hour block at a time if someone is waiting for it. I need to get our Pilatus B-4 up and running so I can take off for a while.


I put together a couple of 50K triangles around coastal- pm me your email and I'll send them to you.

Where are you flying out of? I'm thinking about getting into gliders, and was gonna try and go checkout the tidewater soaring society. I already have a PPL and an instrument rating.
 

Swanee

Cereal Killer
pilot
None
Contributor
Where are you flying out of? I'm thinking about getting into gliders, and was gonna try and go checkout the tidewater soaring society. I already have a PPL and an instrument rating.


TSS out of Garner field. Good club- tons of experience. Members include international contest pilots, a bunch of retired military pilots, a plethora of AD AF, Navy and Marine guys of all ranks, and a lot of civilians. There are NASA rocket scientists who are members as well.
 

OscarMyers

Well-Known Member
None
TSS out of Garner field. Good club- tons of experience. Members include international contest pilots, a bunch of retired military pilots, a plethora of AD AF, Navy and Marine guys of all ranks, and a lot of civilians. There are NASA rocket scientists who are members as well.

Sounds great, I'm definitely going to have to take a ride out there.
 

MIDNJAC

is clara ship
pilot
Don't listen to me, follow the guidance of Neil Armstrong, Sully Sullenberger, Don Engen, Bob Buck...hell so many other legends.

As a curious aside, didn't ADM Engen die in some sort of an experimental glider crash/breakup/midair or something? Any of you glider guys know more about it? Loved his book, and what an unfortunate way for such a decorated and experienced guy to go.
 

Rocketman

Rockets Up
Contributor
yup but I don't know the results of the investigation. I don't think "experimental" means much as it relates to gliders. Lots of gliders are imported as "experimental" aircraft. Pretty unusual to pull the wing/s off of a glider......the piece I read said they were wearing chutes too. The glider was a German made Nimbus 4DM, a very high performance and extremely expensive open class motorglider. (26.5m wingspan, with a retractable Rotax 535C engine)
 

Homer J

I'm with NAVAIR. I'm here to help you.
When I was in college the school had a Sport Aviation class. Started out in a 2-33 until solo, then moved to a 1-26. I logged 16 hours total before the end of the semester. They had a former Air America Helio Courier for a tow plane. Watched it hover in a strong head wind more than once.
 

Swanee

Cereal Killer
pilot
None
Contributor
yup but I don't know the results of the investigation. I don't think "experimental" means much as it relates to gliders. Lots of gliders are imported as "experimental" aircraft. Pretty unusual to pull the wing/s off of a glider......the piece I read said they were wearing chutes too. The glider was a German made Nimbus 4DM, a very high performance and extremely expensive open class motorglider. (26.5m wingspan, with a retractable Rotax 535C engine)


The experimental rating simply means that you can modify it as you see fit without having to deal with the FAA.
 

Rocketman

Rockets Up
Contributor
When I was in college the school had a Sport Aviation class. Started out in a 2-33 until solo, then moved to a 1-26. I logged 16 hours total before the end of the semester. They had a former Air America Helio Courier for a tow plane. Watched it hover in a strong head wind more than once.

I used to own a 1-26E (#697) but 3 children came along and their mom refused to continue making the payment on it so away she went. (the glider and eventually the wife....) I really had a great time flying that thing and wish I had it back. I also have some time in a 1-36 Sprite which was a fun bird that you didn't see everyday.
 

Swanee

Cereal Killer
pilot
None
Contributor
Speaking of gliders - this is up there. Request Flight Level 900 https://www.flightglobal.com/news/a...ies-for-record-breaking-ascent-to-900-425116/

Perlan II readies for record-breaking ascent to 90,000ft

I've been following the Perlan Project for a few years. It was really disheartening when Steve Fossett died, and was worried that the project was going to simply disappear. But Einar Enevoldson really picked up the pace. Talk about a dude I wouldn't mind having a beer or two with.
 

jmcquate

Well-Known Member
Contributor
On the way back from a business trip I went with my dad on to Montreal the summer between my Jr and Sr years in high school. We stopped at the Schweitzer factory in upstate NY and both took rides with IPs. My Dad had an private instrument licence and I had just gotten my PPL. The guy I was flying with gave me a lot of stick time including the approach, but I remember not being able to bring myself to pushing the nose into the ground to get it to stop flying. I just continued flaring to bleed energy and the damn thing would just climb. It is a counter intuitive art.
 

HokiePilot

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
Speaking of gliders - this is up there. Request Flight Level 900 https://www.flightglobal.com/news/a...ies-for-record-breaking-ascent-to-900-425116/

Perlan II readies for record-breaking ascent to 90,000ft

So, I recommended this thread in the A-Pool info thread and read through it again. I wanted to follow up on this.

The Perlan II team managed to do some pretty impressive things this past year.

They set 3 consecutive absolute altitude records for gliders. The last of which, 74,334 ft GPS altitude, exceeded the highest published U-2 flight and is now the absolute altitude record for winged subsonic aircraft, powered or not.

Its impressive what they have to do to get these altitudes. First of all, they used a Grob Egret to tow up to 44,000 feet. Previous years, they had used a normal tow aircraft and it just took much longer limiting the amount of time they could soar.

Also, this is flight testing, so they had to ensure adequate flutter margin as they climbed to new altitudes. Normal flight test includes slowly expanding flight envelops with engineers studying data between each flight. With so few opportunities to get the proper conditions, they had to change their strategy. Every time they climbed up a few thousand feet or so, they had to level off and take vibration data. They had motors in the wings to induce vibrations and accelerators to record it. They data linked this to the base station in El Calafante, Argentina. The base station e-mailed it to San Diego for the engineers to analyze. The engineers there gave there thumbs up that there was adequate flutter margin and passed word that the glider was cleared to climb. All in real time.

They are headed back to El Calafante in a few months for Argentinian winter. The design altitude of FL900 is certainly in sight.

When they are flying, their website allows you to see real time position, altitude and technical data. Its pretty cool to watch them break records in real time.
 
Top