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My First CC flight |
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Planning Your First |
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By definition a CC flight is any flight that takes you far enough away from your take off point that you are not in straight gliding distance back to it. In other words you must find a thermal, or other form of lift, to get back home. |
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At SMQ there are requirements that a pilot must first meet before you are allowed to attempt a CC flight in SSV or HVS gliders. Those requirements are: have a private glider rating, attain the SSA Bronze Badge and complete the first 2 legs of the SSA Silver Badge, the altitude and duration legs. See SSA Badge Flying. There are many books and training aids available and the DIY task is designed specifically for beginning CC flights while keeping you close to home. The Silver Badge CC flight has a requirement of 50 kilometers or 30.07 statue miles. The flight can be made in any glider type. Most people do it in a reasonably low performance glider such as a 1-26. The 1-26 provides a challenge but the task is still quite easy on a good thermal day. In most cases all one needs is 5 or 6 good thermals and no more than 5000’ of altitude to make it. A safe and easy way to achieve this distance is to fly a route that takes you near other airports and suitable landing areas. From SMQ flying to the west or south west works well. Once you have met the prerequisite requirements the actual flight will be easy for you. However, the planning phase of the flight is when the real training comes into play. And you’ll seldom fly a straight line directly to your goal. Picking the right day to go is where your knowledge of the weather comes into play. You’ll know what causes thermals, how high they might take you, how to find them and most importantly how to gain altitude in them. Your 5 hour duration flight will prove that you have learned these skills. The DIY tasks will train you in finding landmarks and judging how far you can glide between thermals while keeping you close to the home airport. By knowing the gliding ability of your glider and how to use an FAA sectional chart you will plan your route and use Go / No-Go points to determine if you can make it from point A to point B and onto point C. A 50 kilometer flight might require 5 or 6 way points. This breaks up your flight to 5 or 6 smaller goals to attain the larger goal. If things don’t go as planned you should be able to land at any one of your way points. The steps below show you how to plan the Go / No-Go points and use a sectional to plan your flight. Remember, learning how to plan a flight is as important as being able to skillfully fly the glider during the flight. Step 1: Choose a goal With the use of a sectional chart, ruler and compass (the drawing kind) draw a 50 kilometer circle around your starting point. In our case we’ll use SMQ. You will need to fly to a point slightly outside this circle. Read the detailed rules to make sure you pick a point far enough away. Look for an airport that is slightly outside the circle and with your ruler, draw a line to it. When choosing your destination airport, look for one that has several other airports along your route. For our example goal we will choose Pennridge airport (N70) in Perkasie, Pa. The south west tip of Lake Nockamixon points to it, 2 miles away. See Sectional 1. The airports along the route are Solberg, Sky Manor, Vansant and Elephant Path. Step 2: Let’s do some math The stated glide ratio of a 1-26, all things being perfect, is about 23/1 at about 50 mph. We know that all things are never perfect so let’s use something less than 23/1. It’s common practice to knock off about 25%. So for our L/D we’ll use 15/1 as our best glide ratio. We’ll next want to so some calculations showing how far we can glide in a given distance. 1 statute mile is 5280’. Not an easy number to work with. A nautical mile is 6076’. We’ll use 6000’. Close enough. So, with no lift or sink and a 15/1 glide ratio we will lose about 400’ when flying 1 nautical mile. That’s 6000/15 = 400. Or we will lose 800’ flying 2 nautical miles, and so on. What this means is if we are 2 nautical miles from an airport that is 300’ msl, we must be no lower than 2100’ msl at the 2 mile mark to arrive at the airport for a 1000’ pattern entry. See Sectional 2. Step 3: Let’s draw circles Let’s now apply this newfound knowledge to a sectional chart. Get a compass and draw 2, 4 and 6 nautical mile circles around the airports on our route from SMQ to Pennridge. Or we can use our computers to do it online. Step 4: The online way to view FAA Sectionals Sorry, this is not meant to be a Google Earth tutorial. Bring up Google Earth on your computer. Go to this website to load FAA sectional charts over the Google Satellite images. Read the page but the download link is under “Sources and Citations.” Click on “Sectional data download.” It will only take a second because it doesn't really download them until you pick a sectional. In your Google Earth Temporary Places you will now see “Aero_Charts”. Open it, now open “Sectionals” and select “New_York_71 _W”. This will download the section and you should see it. Step 5: Drawing circles on the sectionals using Google Earth Go to this website to draw circles on the Google Earth Sectionals. Take a short look at this page. There is a significant amount of good info on it. Go to the bottom of the page to where it says “Draw rings around a point.” The best way I have found to do this is to put the cursor over the airport and read the Lat & Lon from the lower left of the window in Google Earth. Use the Sat view or the Sectional view, whichever makes you happy. They will be off a little from each other but not a big deal. You can also purchase a program at www.GlidePlan.com. For SMQ you will read something like Lat 40 37 32 23 Lon -74 40 07 04. Remember the dash in front of the 74 or you will go to Kyrgystan. To see how this works enter 40 37 32 23 & -74 40 07 04 in the Lat & Lon boxes. Enter 2nm in the Radius box. Select Google Earth in the map format box. Click on Draw map. A new page will come up with a green .kmz link near the top. Click on it. You should now have something that looks like this or this in Google Earth. Now keep doing it until you add the 2, 4 & 6 mile rings around the airports. After you have marked the airports and added 2, 4 and 6 nautical mile rings around them you should have something that looks like this and this. In this close up note that Route 31 is about half way between Solberg and Sky Manor. This is the widest gap you will need to cross on this route. About 11 nautical miles. This is a view of Doug Roberts GPS track on his flight to Pennridge from SMQ. To see it in Google Earth click here. Step 6: Label the circles Remember the math in Step 2? Here’s where we mark the rings with the altitudes you need to go forward on course to the next airport, or to return to the one behind you. Remember to fly with your altimeter set to msl when you leave SMQ, that’s 105’. Remember to add the airport altitude to the 1000’ pattern altitude and use 400’ per nautical mile of flight. Try not to make your charts too cluttered and use more than one page if it’s helpful. Here’s an example of what part of the chart may look like. Step 7: Gather information and go The final step is to gather all the information you can about the flight and prepare to go. Know everything about each airport, patterns, runways, can you land on the grass, radio frequencies, NOTAMS and anything else. Use Google Earth to look at your route and the airports. Know what they look like from the air. If you have a friend with a power plane take a flight along the route. Look for other places you can land. Make sure others know where you are going. Get cell phone numbers. Have the trailer ready to go and a retrieve crew ready if needed. Make sure the tow pilot is ready for you if you plan an aerotow back home. Be prepared if on the aerotow back you have an unexpected release. Know where you are so you can fly home or find a place to land. This flight should take no more than 2 hours. Pick the best part of the day to fly. Remember you are doing this to have fun. You’re not setting any kind of record. Know that you can make it and don’t take risk with a guess that you can. It’s not necessary. Many people do not succeed on their first try. If you have to land at Sky Manor, no big deal. You got that far. You’ll learn from it and be better the next time. Most of all have fun and be safe. Airport Information Somerset - http://www.airport-data.com/airport/smq/ http://www.airnav.com/airport/smq Elephant Path - http://www.airport-data.com/airport/PS03/ http://www.airnav.com/airport/ps03 AGA Farms - http://www.airport-data.com/airport/61pn/ http://www.airnav.com/airport/61pn Sky Manor - http://www.airport-data.com/airport/n40/ http://www.airnav.com/airport/n40 Pennridge - http://www.airport-data.com/airport/n70/ http://www.airnav.com/airport/n70 Vansant - http://www.airport-data.com/airport/9n1/ http://www.airnav.com/airport/9N1 Solberg - http://www.airport-data.com/airport/n51/ |
