Power versus Glider?
No Contest. The Glider wins every time.
The last time I flew a power aircraft was about three years ago. It was a club plane, a Cessna 172 with about 12,000 hours on it. Yup, 12,000 hours and used for training every day. That means it surely had at least 50,000 landings, most of those without finesse or grace. It was old, smelly, “loose,” bent, gutless and noisy, and with terrible visibility - a pilot’s nightmare. In ‘straight flight’ it could not be trimmed and flew with nearly a full ball deflection just to stay on a windless course. Other than that, it was a fine example of general aviation technology. And by today’s standards, even with pseudo-glass cockpits and GPS capability, a relic, a flying albatross capable of guzzling $60.00 worth of fuel in an hour and turning that expense into meaningless ‘hole-boring’ around the local area. That was then. This is now.
There is an alternative. If you are pilot enough. No throttle, no flaps, no noisy engine, no checking the oil before every flight… why do they do that anyway? No climbing up on the wing to open a face filling hot fuel tank to assure you there is fuel in it… even though the fuel gauges have never failed. No refueling. No ladder. No struggling with rudder to offset thrust, p-factor, or an out of rig airplane. No radio calls, no ATC. No transponder codes, no touch and goes, no paying for taxi time… remember, no engine, no oil pressure, no Hobbs meter. Sounds too good to be true. But it is true.
There is a better way. Silent flight. Soaring. Gliding. Going up with no engine. Above FL 180 and beyond with no smelly, carbon-dioxide-producing fossil-fuel-burning, loose assembly of rattling aluminum parts. Using a pilot’s guile, seat of the pants, smooth and talented hands to stay aloft long enough to ‘flame out’ a Cessna 172, for a mere fraction of the cost. Be a pilot with more knowledge and understanding of the atmosphere than a power pilot is likely to gain in a life time. A pilot able to read cumulus, ridge conditions, convergence, wave openings, sink, lift and more lift. A pilot who is part of the airplane… not sitting in it wondering if it will rattle itself into oblivion. A pilot who can land nearly anywhere, do a powerless 200 degree turn from 200 feet and still have to use spoilers to get it on the ground. Intrigued yet? Just on cost alone, this powerless flight will save you tons of money in today’s fuel inflation.
Note: If aircraft is pilot owned, the average cost per flight hour is significantly less for gliders. No engine repair, parts replacement, tires (one instead of 3 for power).
Note: Gliders have small, efficient, lightweight batteries. No engine fluids, generators, alternators, vacuum pumps, expensive brakes, prop resurfacing/rebuilding. Annual Inspections run less than $400 for a typical glider.
Note: Power planes are money pits by comparison. Parking, hangars, waxing, painting, cleaning all the gunk off the bottom. Yuck! Additional savings will be realized for insurance as a renter or owner, commercial or private; and of course, as your hours and experience grow, your rates decrease. And that’s just the economics of it.
There is more. Are you adventurous? Most pilots are. Calculated risks and whatnot. We do that every time we take off. But what about knowingly taking an airplane into the air without assurance that you’ll get back to your home field? As a glider pilot you will be “dropped off” by a tow plane or winch and you will be expected to bring the aircraft back, OR, suddenly your variometer – a very sensitive VSI/VVI type instrument – screams at you that you have a 600 fpm rate of climb in a thermal. The airplane begins to climb like a scalded dog… but it’s quiet, there is no engine… how is this possible? You spiral up in your ‘fighter like’ cockpit with incredible visibility over the very low cockpit rails. The control stick… no wheel – wheels are for cars – the control stick and slight rudder hold you between a 45º to 60º bank turn as you ride the warm air higher and higher. But you thought steep turns were noisy, 2G, aggravatingly power-intensive altitude-losing maneuvers. Not any more. You pass 10,000, having started at 2,000 feet. A pure eight thousand feet of free altitude. As you move from thermal to thermal you have to be careful to not exceed 10,000 for more than 30 minutes, and not venture above 12,000 because this particular glider is not equipped with oxygen. Most are. You are now cruising at 10,000 feet. With your 40:1 glide ratio, imagine the possibilities. If you never enter another thermal this day, you could easily glide 60 statute miles or over 50 nautical miles. Imagine. And then, if you hit a couple more thermals along the way, you can climb and descend yourself on a route for hundreds of miles. Glider pilots do it every day.
Imagine soaring from one end of Oahu, Hawaii to the other, using ridge lift, the trade winds blowing against and therefore UP the ridges, providing you with a cushion of air as you glide along effortlessly over a tropical paradise. Or maybe along the Sierra Nevada from… say, Tahoe to Tehachapi AND back. Or maybe from southern New Mexico to Colorado and back in an afternoon. Or all over west Texas, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, Arizona, Florida… on one cheap tow. Glider pilots do it every day. Records are measured in thousands of feet… 35,000 and 40,000 feet of altitude gain. Mileage in the many hundreds of miles and duration records long enough to challenge any pilot’s sensitive bottom. On one tow, one launch. Gliding, soaring, quiet flight is as much a challenge as you can possibly seek, short of flying a fighter. Pilots who do remarkable distances, times and altitudes are just like you. They started with the first step: sitting in an incredible high performance, sleek, excitingly responsive, light and efficient machine … an instructor alongside or behind to assist in the housekeeping details of a power to glider transition.
Think you know how to fly consistent traffic patterns in your Cessna? You ain’t seen nothing yet. You will learn to put the aircraft where it belongs, at the altitude, airspeed (within 1 knot) and ground track that will assure a perfect pattern every time. Ahhhh, remember? No go-arounds. You will learn more about wind, air currents, slips, skids and usage of drag devices in one flight than you learned in two years of power flight. Why? You only get one chance. Oh, and another thing. When was the last time you flew formation in your power aircraft? What? Never? Every tow is a formation flight, practicing positioning, maneuvering about the tow, emergency procedure signaling, steering the tow pilot without talking to her. Close trail formation at about 150 feet is just about as cool a discipline you can develop while tied to another airplane.
Want to pull G’s? Want to do a full flight of acrobatics? Lots of gliders are stressed for 5 Gs. Loops, sure. Split-S, piece of cake. rolls, just add butter and cinnamon. What are you up for? Most soaring FBOs and nearly all clubs have an instructor on staff, parachutes to borrow, high performance acrobatic gliders that will water your eyes. You can get checked out to do all this stuff solo… you see, most gliders except for the trainers, have only one seat. While we are on the subject of solo flight, as a transition pilot from power to soaring, it won’t take you long to solo. Many solo with less than 10 flights. Realize that ten flights may only be three hours of total flight time… and ten flights is only ten landings. Hmmmm, go back through your power log and see how many dozen landings and how many hours you did in that old, smelly power plane before you took it around the pattern solo.
Gliders are simple. Yet, there are fantastic, high tech electronics in many super-gliders today to increase the pilot’s situational awareness logarithmically. GPS, sure. Moving color map, of course. Radios, although usually unnecessary, most aircraft have them. Comfy, reclined seats. Lots of leg room. And visibility… yikes – makes an F-16 cockpit look like a bat cave. Vertical sensing instruments that are so sensitive they can detect climbs and descents in the single digits. If you are a gadget person, soaring is for you… at much less cost. No alternator, no generator, no busses, no blinking lights and buzzing horns. Just an honest, simple aircraft that wants you to fly it to its maximum performance.
So what are you waiting for? The sky is calling. No boring bore holes. What do you do next? Get on to the Soaring Society of America’s website… www.ssa.org and look around. Find out where you can fly (the “Where to Fly” map). You might be surprised that it’s right at your back door. There is a niche for you in soaring. It is a very open society of folks who would love to help you get into the sport. You can compete, fly high and fast, high and slow, go for distance and duration, play with really sophisticated electronic gear… all in the quiet comfort of a high tech fighter-like cockpit. Soar. You’ll love it.
By Dave Fairchilds and Photos by Glenn Holden
About the Author: Dave Fairchilds started flying with his dad at age 6 in an old Ercoupe over Lake Erie. Soloed early in Cessna 150. First flight in a twin was with Bill Lear in an Aero Commander 500 out of Santa Monica. Twenty years USAF as pilot: F-4E/D pilot and instructor, T-38 Instructor, F- 5A/B pilot, F-16 ground/simulator instructor. Aerospace: Test Support Engineer Northrop B-2, Palmdale; FlightSafety International Learjet 31/31a ground academic and simulator instructor; Aviation Instructor Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott. Commercial Pilot, SEL. MEL, Instrument. Commercial Glider Rating. Advanced Ground School Instructor Rating. Over 3000 hours in many types of powered and unpowered aircraft.