Glider time
Mike has even more glider time logged than Chuck, but not because of the same reason, but because he started out with motor gliders. I think I have about an accumulated hour of glider time as a passenger, and a total of maybe 2 minutes of time with radio controlled gilders. The latter was after spending a whole summer building one and is probably the reason why I quit that hobby and bought myself a guitar instead. Apparently, talents aren’t distributed equally.
“There is nothing more useless than Fuel in the fuel truck or Runway behind you.” – Lanec Ratard (and old coworker. I think he got it from his flight instructor)
JPKalishek, your supposed to add “altitude above” and “second lieutenants” to that list. It is a very old one.
I love gliders. But that’s for singles and retired only….so I’m waiting to be retired to glide again…
What Chuck describes was part of my motive to get a glider rating. I figured it might be fun, but it would also be a good “back-pocket” skill to have when flying power, as any airplane is capable of becoming a glider. I think of some of the famous incidents where airliners successfully landed with no engines – the “Gimli Glider” and US Airways 1549 were both flown by experienced glider pilots, that experience may have saved the lives of all aboard. Prevention is a much better idea though, do a good preflight, and mind thy fuel.
Quill, I’d be somewhat wary of getting glider time to be able to better handle a powered airplane with stopped engine. Gliders have so much better glide ratios that I’d be afraid to vastly overestimate possible glide distances. But then, I have no glider time whatsoever, so cannot really say.
I’ve never flown a full-scale aircraft deadstick, but I have been flying R/C models (glow, electric, and gliders) for over 45 years and have landed deadstick many, many times. I don’t know how control responsiveness, etc., varies with full scale aircraft, but I do know is that a model’s responsiveness greatly drops when there’s no prop blast over the control surfaces. Plus, deadstick, there’s no induced lift from the prop blast.
Of course, with no one in the model, landing short or off the runway entirely is mainly a danger to your wallet, not to your body.
CD