Being a ‘lapsed’ glider pilot, I was asked to talk to a gliding instructor who is thinking of getting a PPL. The good news is, as holder of an EASA glider pilots licence, he gets 10 hours credit on the training. Our conversation got me thinking about the differences which we would need to address.
Some good things about glider pilots:
- They know how to fly
- Their look-out is generally better than power pilots. They have a lot of canopy to look through, and when thermalling, they fly in close proximity to other gliders, so really need to be vigilant. These days of course they rely on FLARM, as well.
- They use the rudder in turns – the long wing-span of gliders means that adverse yaw from the ailerons is significant. Any turn needs to be made with a combination of aileron and rudder. This is something which lazy power pilots tend to forget rather quickly during or after training!
- Every glider flight potentially ends in a forced landing into a field, so they are generally good at picking fields, assessing the wind and making a safe glide approach into the chosen field.
- These days we both use GPS to navigate.
Some things where a glider pilot will need to adapt:
- A glider pilot may feel claustrophobic in the cockpit of a Cessna 152 – peering through letter box sized windows. To manage the blind-spots, power pilots used a structured lookout method before entering a manoeuvre, be that a turn, climb or descent.
- Glider pilots feel comfortable flying very close to other gliders – this is not something we encourage in power flying!
- Effects of controls – a glider pilot may be surprised by the effect of power and flaps on pitch attitude.
- Taxi-ing – this is not something a glider pilot does.
- If not in lift, a glider is always descending, so glider pilots are not used to flying straight and level and maintaining a constant altitude.
- Climbing and descending – power pilots have a greater range of options to learn: Vx and Vy climbs, powered and glide descents.
- Stall recovery – though we demonstrate stall recovery without power, in principle every stall recovery uses power in order to minimise the height loss.
- Glider pilots regulate their approach to land by varying the air-brake (spoiler) setting. In power flying, we set approach or landing flaps and then leave them alone, and control the approach angle with the throttle. Air-brake and throttle are interchangeable in this respect and also in their direction of use. For example, getting low on approach? Push forward to close the air brakes or apply more power from the throttle.
- Go-around and touch and go – these are not options available to the glider pilot!
- PFL’s – with a glide ratio of 9:1 the Cessna 152 has all the gliding attributes of a brick, compared with a training glider (25:1) or a modern competition glider (55:1). Only the Horsa WW2 assault glider (think of Operation Market Garden) at 5: 1 glides worse than a Cessna!
- Cross country technique – although glider pilots plan a route via way-points, they rarely go in a straight line, as they will deviate to top up altitude in thermals and avoid areas of excessive sink. Power pilots are not supposed to feature -crawl and should plan as close to straight lines as possible. They use simple techniques for regaining track promptly when off track.
- Controlled airspace – glider pilots tend to avoid it, apart from the odd class D transit. For power pilots, CAS is a fact of life. Careful planning and maintenance of heading, altitude and position are paramount in order to avoid infringing. Transits of class D are often flown and the RT for this needs practice to maximise the chance of getting the clearance needed. .
- RT – glider pilots will use the radio, but probably not to the extent that a power pilot does on a typical cross country flight – so phraseology and practice will be important.
- Radio nav aids (VOR, ADF) are not something a glider pilot will use but are part of the flying training syllabus.
- Take-off and landing performance – gliders launch swiftly from the winch or aerotow and are capable of landing in relatively short fields. For powered aircraft, calculating the required runway length for take-off and landing are important consideration for all flights.
- Weight and balance calculations for a powered aircraft are more involved than for gliders – there are consideration of fuel, passenger, luggage etc.