DS Diary
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I thought it would be interesting to keep a diary of my ds learning sessions, so I can look back and see that I might have improved, (hopefully), and that everyone else can have a read and a good laugh at my crashes. I have found that information on how to ds is very sparse for someone going it alone, so your best bet is to find someone local that can do it and tag along.
I became interested in dynamic soaring when I first watched lift ticket wow, got to try that I thought, built a plane especially for it and found a promising slope nearby. After a few attempts with my Backdraft that year, and only managing two or three circles with no speed gain before crashing, decided to join the whitesheet club and get some help. That didn't work, made several trips down when conditions were good but there was never anyone there. Sent e-mails to guys in Southern UK with websites dedicated to dsing with no reply, then finally came to the conclusion that I was on my own. Had the odd attempt with a foamie on my se slope, but it always ended with a long walk, so frustrating!
Towards the end of 2007, I decided I was getting no where fast and needed a different approach, the main thing holding me back was lack of suitable sites, and the belief that a "Parker Mountain" type pointy hill was required. This site got me exited, I cant read it but the video's are fantastic, you can ds trees, wow! Plenty of them about. Got some really good info from here too, and after getting a ds capable flight sim to practice on, felt I might be able to make some headway at last.
Day1 Day2 Day3 Day4 Day5 Day6 Day7 Day8
Rob came over for a flying session and we decided to go up to my ds spot to have a go, the wind was the right direction for it to work, but once there we found the wind was too light with no separation over the top of the hill. Along the ridge a ways there was some small trees near the ridge, very calm air behind them so we gave it a go with our foamies. It worked, if we hit the right line the planes definitely went faster than in the normal slope air, and though not exactly ripping it in the light wind, it was a lot of fun. Dsing small trees works, its a tight line between the rising slope behind the trees, and the trees themselves, and between us I think we hit every branch and grass tuffet going, sometimes finding it hard to fly as we were laughing too much.
Went for a fly with my Burp and Nitro, just the two as it was a
good mile walk from the van to the slope. Wind was good, 30mph gusting 40
and flew the burp for a while, its a little rocket that thing is.
Flew the nitro next, great energy plane for big half pipes and loops,
was carrying plenty of lead which helped. In between flights got to thinking
what that hill on the horizon would be like, kind of looked ds-able, winds
in the right direction, what the hey, lets go for a walk. It was another
1.5-2 miles further on so a bit of a trek, its all good exercise though
right?
Got there in the end, checked out the back
of the slope, seemed nice and calm, fairly narrow ridge about 20-25ft and
probably 150ft ish drop either side and quite steep/well, steep enough.
Ticks in all the right boxes, how come I haven't tried this hill before?
30mph plus wind though, far stronger than I want for learning.....I will fly
the front slope and see what happens.
Wind was not quite on but managed to gain 100ft or so, walked back a bit
so my head was roughly where I thought the shear layer was, and went for it.
An aggressive dive down the back, turn and back out, was quite high off the
slope as I hit the shear layer, but the plane wagged a bit, shrieked and
visibly accelerated as it flew by me and over the brow of the hill into a
big stall turn on the front, then repeat, over and over. Wow this is fun,
haven't been able to do that before.
Gained a bit of confidence after practicing this for a while, so went
for a turn as soon as I hit the shear, round again and out for a stall turn
on the front, some of the circuits were nice and the first time I got a bit
lower to the hill, 15ft or so, the plane made a loud whump as it went
through the shear, thought I broke it the first time it happened as was used
to the wag and shriek. Managed a few whumps, but it was very hard to get the
plane in just the right place every time, comes with practice I guess. Had
to land out a couple of times when it all got out of shape and lost energy,
but its a tough little plane, just pulled it out of the ground, climbed back
up the hill and tried again. My best was three consecutive circles before
fear/panic/the need to relax for a few seconds .. set in. It started
raining, it rained harder, it was getting darker, hmm better go home then.
The 2.5 or so mile walk back to the van in strong wind and rain passed
quickly, I hardly noticed, and had a smile on the whole way home.
Wow...WOW.. that was a fun afternoon, and so unexpected. Was very determined
to crack it this year, and have spent a good 20hrs or so dsing on the flight
sim, but today, that much wind, never thought it would happen, or the Nitro
would die trying. Totally stoked.
The videos don't come close to the real thing, its just so much better
than you even imagine, the fun has begun.
Back to my local, newly found little ds site again, bit less wind this time at around 25mph. It worked great, and a bit more confidence along with a few more hours practice on the sim has given me a big step up. Still have a great deal to learn, but really feel I am on the right path now after having spent around 3hrs almost constantly dsing yesterday. After a few warm up circuits I made my first 10 consecutive circles behind the hill with my Nitro, and managed several more 10`s during the afternoon. Sometimes though I made a mistake and ran out of energy, just managing to limp back over the brow of the hill to the safety of the front side slope lift. I think that having some clearly set out goals is helping me and also keeping me motivated, so will aim to up my consecutive circuit record on each outing, until I can do 50 or so, along the way will hopefully gain some insight into optimizing my flight path and regularly hitting the same spots, seems like a good way to keep it interesting anyway, until I get a speed gun.
Have spent a lot of time walking around my local hills, thought I knew them well, however I now have a list with over 40 places to try out, most of them involve trees, some of them might need advanced techniques that I will have to grow into as they have very little front slope, but even so that's a lot of places to try out. The wind was North West today, thought I would try out Knap Hill, very light wind so just took a light 48" lumberjack foamie. it was rubbish, the front slope is small and not very steep, it was a struggle to fly on let alone gain enough height to try the backside out. The slope has potential though and with a stronger wind and slippery plane or a bungee launch I reckon it will work, as even in a light wind there was a lovely calmness to the back slope, its steep with a good drop down to the valley floor too.
Have been eager to try out my bungee. Bungee is a misnomer its a catapult really, 20m of 10mm bungee elastic, 20m of 220kg breaking strain dynema kite line and a dog lead stake. I have no confidence that the spiral stake will stay put, so in addition have tied about 1.5m nylon rope to the end of the bungee, can then anchor this to a tree, fence post ect. So, off to Clench Common with the catapult and my Dynamite, the wind is fairly light and don't have a tow hook on any other plane, so the Dynamite gets to have a go. The first place I want to try is on the top of the hill, nice row of beech trees. Wind is very light, and once the catapult is laid out feels dangerously close to the trees, nice big landing area though....let her rip. Very aggressive launch to nearly twice the height of the trees, missed them by miles. With all that height had plenty of confidence to dive back down towards me and back up over the trees .....nothing. No acceleration, no whoomp, the best I could do was three circuits before landing. Good practice I guess, and the flights were variable, sometimes only managing one and a bit circuits, so something is going on but just not exiting enough, so after a couple of hours, packed up the kit and moved lower down the hill, towards the car park. Set up the catapult behind a denser copse of trees, not much slope in front of them but very calm in their lee, might get some energy out of it. Noticed the difference straight away, some kind of shear layer there but a real challenge to hit it in the same place on each circuit while concentrating hard on missing the ground and the trees. Managed four full circles a few times and was very happy with that, decided to pack up before more aggressive flying resulted in terminal damage. Things can only improve with stronger winds and leaves...roll on spring.
Tried out another hill today, Cuckoos Knob is what the footpath leading kind of towards it is called, so guess that's the name of this slope from now on. it is a long spline type ridge, so gradually gets lower as it moves away from the main hill line, the best bit being around 40m -45m high, the backside is reasonably steep but the front side is quite a bit shallower.
Only one way to find out if it works, throw the Nitro off and see what happens, should be something as it was really calm on the backside. I noticed straight away that it was really smooth, it felt more like doing it on the sim as I needed very little aileron correction, just get the plane onto a wing tip and crank the elevator, it got fast real quick. Very impressive for a fairly small hill, in fact I was having trouble coping with the speed, and was beginning to feel the need for lower rates on my low rate flight mode, as at speed things were getting twitchy. My best for the day was 6 circles, which I managed once as after 3 or 4 circles it was going scary fast and all over the place. Seems a different kind of speed to stall turning a heavy plane on the frontside, its constant, in your face and low to the ground, sooner or later something nasty is going to happen....sooner.
Ah well, first ds casualty, better get busy on the re-build, just needs a new fuselage back end, everything else is salvageable. Black box analysis revealed that the elevator was too aggressively applied at the bottom turn with too much aileron, the plane stayed fairly intact considering the speed it hit, think I will build a spare one just the same, sure it will be needed...real soon.
Rob and Andy came over to fly Cuckoo`s Knob, wind was slightly off, but thought it should still work. After dragging them over the hills in a hail storm, the sun came back out for Andy to launch his halfpipe into the cold wind. Its a heavy foamie but still didn't cope well with the strong off the hill wind, enough height to drop in for a circuit though, was looking forward to this as Andy has been dsing on his local hills, my first chance to see someone do it. Unfortunately it was not to be the case, in this wind direction it was too far back from the front side to retain enough energy, but he reckoned a moldie might possibly manage it. Enough said, Nitro was in the air and going for it after some hasty repairs the night before. Had plenty of energy, but on my first bottom turn pulled too much elevator to pitch up into a stall, lost all the energy and nosed in down the bottom of the hill. That was a short lived repair, time to lay up another fuse part. Felt guilty dragging them through the hail storm to a ds site that was not working, but they were soon both smiling when we walked back to the main slope and they got their Sting and Erwin airborne, turned out to be a great day after all.
Next day the wind was quite light, forcast was on for Cuckoo`s Knob though so decided to give my Dynamite a go. Got up there and was just loading up ready for the walk, checked the wind...it had swung round 90 degrees to south west.....damn it. Ok, off to the other side of the valley to my south west slope, got there and the wind swung back to west....double damn. Decided to walk up there anyway, it might be working, well it wasn't. Had a compass with me though so checked the direction needed for good dsing, not south west as I had thought but south by south west, guess that explains why it wasn't working in a westerly. Lesson learnt....pay close attention to the wind, much more so than normal slope flying, and wait for the right conditions or try some other sites on my list, and oh yeah....start a detailed list of sites that work and in what conditions.
This site was last updated 03/27/08