Just Making it Home With 50m to Spare - LS4 Unterwössen
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- Опубліковано 19 тра 2023
- This is the last 3 minutes of a tense final glide. I've made it within 5km of the airfield but still need to squeeze a little height out of a ridge to make it back safely over the town for a direct final on RW24.
Lessons learned:
+ Tune the radio early!
+ Know the suitable landing fields when approaching your airfield from all possible directions
+ Use all available resourses
+ LS4 goes further than you think
If anyone knows what the FLARM indication is showing during the approach please write in the comments.
Turn on subtitles to see my thoughts at each stage of the flight. - Спорт
Among the buttercups before you know it. Great landing.
Unusual final from the Achenberg - never dared out much towards the flat lands to use that ridge, love the perspective.
magic how you made it home that day! very nice edited insight into your decision making!
👋Hi! yes it was looking 50:50 at best. I will try making a video of the full final glide as it started about 30 mins earlier and I probably made some questionable decisions!
Took me a while to work out where you were at the start as its been a few years since I've flown at Unterwoessen, such a beautiful place. Of all the landing there, I've never landed on 24, always 06! Always fun to fly straight at a mountain on base leg 😎
Yes! the circuit and aerotow on 06 is a special experience!
Very good job !!
As a paraglider pilot these speeds seem insane to me, coming in that hot lol, flare for days on those things. thanks for the videos 👍
Very nice 👍🇦🇺
Nice Landing. Love the Ls4. Hope to be able to do a fly holiday @ Unterwössen myself soon.
Re: Flarm, you seem to have a near empty battery at the end. Around 0:49 I guess the voltage drops. The E-Vario stops beeping. And the Flarm lights go off. After the E Vario is off, the Flarm reboots. The Strange Indication (3 green, 2 red) ist displaying the Flarm Software Version number @ boot. During the landing you see the Flarm first having no LEDs (pwr,Rx,Tx,GPS, ..) and then slowly getting into full operational mode @ aroung 2:24.
Thanks! That's one mystery solved and great explanation. It's great to know about onboard systems in extreme detail. Even without the gliding Unterwössen is a really cute town for a holiday. Lot's to do even when the weather doesn't play along. Let me know if I can help with tips.
I'm not a glider pilot so I don't understand. Just asking: Is it normal to go off the runway? Or was that for other reasons like more friction to stop faster? To me that looked like a really smooth landing and going off the runway looked intentional like that's how it's supposed to be done.
Yes and yes. Vacating the runway after landing is important for all aircraft including gliders. Since we have no way of taxying under our own power, we've got to make sure we use the remaining momentum to get clear of the runway. In the LS4 it is a kind of art, since the wheel brake does next to nothing I use the grass to slow to a stop. Aiming to get as close to the hanger/trainer as possible... to save walking after being sat down for 5 hours ... 🙃
I’m not a sailplane pilot…
Could someone please tell me what the blue handle (on pilot’s left) does. My two guesses are either spoilers, or gear.
They control the air brakes (there is a debate raging about whether they should be called speed brakes, air brakes or spoilers. I'm in the air brake camp). On the LS4 and most gliders it is a flat pannel that extends out of the upper surface of the wing. Creates a ton of drag and reduces lift.
Entering the final flare with 125km/h and tailwind... good trust in the wheel brakes. Why didn't you use the 2m/s lift in the begining of the movie to get some spare or even do an approach to the 06?
Anyway... nice videos you have here!
Actually I plan landings in the LS4 assuming no braking, the brakes are terrible. But I can see the grass is empty and I have a pretty good feeling on how much room I need to stop. Stopping in this LS4 is more about when to enter the grass. The grass does most of the braking. In this case I stopped about 3m short of where I wanted to... to minimise walking to the hanger.
Yes I also could have stopped for longer in the ridge lift. Some parts were certainly suitable. But really I was just looking for “enough” height to get home. ~50m margin is small, but when you’re so close you don’t need the same contingency as when you are 30km out. Tailwind really isn't an issue when it is steady and you have lots of runway. A downslope on the other hand would have got me thinking.
@@the.flying.adventure I agree, it was quite close to airfield. And yes the LS4 (at least those in U'wö) are not famous for the wheel brakes. Anyway I already experienced sink rates of 3 m/s and more in the traffic pattern of Unterwössen, that's why I always try to be more on the save side.
Nice landing. Don’t know anything about gliders. It certainly sounds loud in that cockpit, like an engine is running?
It likely sounds worse on video than in reality. This glider is in fact much quieter than the inside of an airliner cabin. It's the peace and semi-isolation that I love so much about this sport!
On 2:37 you fly with about 130 km/h towards the airfield, while the yellow triangle on the airspeed indicator is around 90. Was there a specific reason for this fast approach?
Touching down on the threshold of an 800m runway at ~130km/h was my “brake to vacate” speed to reach the far end where the glider needs to be put away. So more to minimise walking than anything flight safety related. I got to know the glider well so don’t need so much the book speed.
I am not an expert at FLARMs, but I think it is showing you another aircraft somewhere, maybe on the ground or also in pattern?
yes there definitely were a few other aircraft around at the time. Usually it is just one light indicating the relative direction and then the above or below light to indicate the relative height. This time lots of lights lit up, which got me thinking.
@@the.flying.adventure I think around 0:56 the FLARM re-booted. At 1:24 it shows the firmware version digitally encoded as 7.something. Close to landing it was back operational. Maybe check your cabling sometimes.
@Kai Horstmann yes this is now confirmed. That's some deep knowledge you have, thanks for sharing.
Looked fine to me the whole way. But I have no idea what is normal there. I'm a brand new pilot with my first solo only a couple weeks ago but I dream of coming home to Germany (2nd home) and flying there.
I highly recommend DASSU www.dassu.de/ for all kinds of flying training, gliding and powered. Very special place for many reasons
Ideally, you want to arrive over the airfield with more altitude than you need. Then fly the (rectangular) pattern, turn onto final, and use airbrakes to bring it down. Then, If you misjudge and are getting low, retract airbrakes to extend glide.
If you arrive low, there is no room for error. And the chance of stall/spin and death goes way up.
@@TheJustinJ yikes. No wonder people told me (during primary), that if you really want to hone your skills, “get sailplane experience”.
I personally think the sooner you can get comfortable intercepting the standard circuit patern at all loctions the better. In gliding it is rare to experience text book conditions.
Obstacle database in your Flarm?
It could be, it wasn't my glider so I don't know the exact configuration. I did find this video on what a FLARM obstacle alerts looks like: ua-cam.com/video/_zJDdxdpD8I/v-deo.html
Not quite what I got so I think this still needs some research. Thanks for the tip!
Nice landing, Lak?
Thanks. It's an LS4b. The "b" stands for "Brakes don't work"
In LS gliders the brake is officially just for emergency situations…😅
I guess I must be flying a Kestrel 19 "b"
😂