HGFA Skysailor Magazine

SKY SAILOR 11 July | August 2019 it’s still a highlight. I visited Bali a few times, and spent three months in France, Austria, Italy and the Slovenian Alps, flying some awesome XC. Still, the bulk of my airtime has been spent at my local 10m high coastal dune in Bunbury, WA, I’m getting to know every nook and cranny of all eight kilometres of it as well as the bird life – the Nankeen and Black Shouldered Kite are my favourites. I’m lucky to live only two minutes away from launch and can usually steal away an hour from most work days. One of the first things I did on my Volt2 was practice finding the stall point – new wing, higher performance: new stall point. As FlyBubble [www. youtube.com/watch?v=2lKCKAXre04] imparts: Listen to what the wing is saying when it talks to you. You’ll quickly learn when you’ve stepped over the mark, but safely. Practice helps build your muscle memory for that particular wing. Do it often enough and you won’t even have to look at it, you’ll just feel it. After 300 hours on the same wing you’ll get to know it very well, it becomes something you trust. Even more so during a SIV course. I did one in Annecy, France and there’s nothing more real than pulling a deep stall until you watch the wing horseshoe and disappear behind your head (it’s like falling off the back of your chair from a two storey building). Then, I did not catch the recovery properly and quickly entered into a cravatted spiral dive – with a twist. I was looking at my wing, facing the wrong way, and entering a spiral dive. ‘Okay, that all happened a bit quickly, but I’ve got this!’ (Meanwhile, Jocky Sanderson came over the radio telling me the same.) The building Gs actually sorted out the twist, then I countered with weightshift and a little brake, straightening out the spiral pretty quick. The cravatte was a big one, so I had to pull an asymmetric to reset and flush it out. It’s actually pretty impressive how you can still fly straight with only half a wing inflated. For pilots who have never done a SIV, I can’t recommend enough how good one is for your skills and how much confidence it builds while providing a more intimate relationship with your wing. I have never given my wing a name, but she’s mostly called Baby, usually when trying to thermal out of a low spot or making a gap to the next known lift, “That’s it, Baby,” or “Yeah, Baby.” Lately, I have experimented with ballast, I sit about 7kg under the max weight of 95kg on the Volt2 S. I find the closer I get to the max weight, the better the glider flies and feels, to my surprise even in light conditions. My local site is 10m high and 8.5kt bang on is enough to stay up. The top landing approach is a bit like a baseball slide into home base, but do-able. When weighted at the top end, the glider feels more solid and connected to me, more responsive and a little faster. I imagine it is the same for a lot of other good gliders. I’m amazed what a difference it makes. If you’re not at top of your weight range, try adding some ballast. Pilots I fly with ask me, ‘When will you get another new wing?’ I often respond, ‘When she At my local site in Bunbury, WA Photo: Lewis