Downwind, base and final, forty-eight times
A glider has no engine, and so no second attempt at a landing. That is why the last few minutes of every flight follow the same pattern, the circuit, flown the same way whatever happened before. At our field it is a left-hand circuit: you fly back along the length of the field on the downwind leg, turn left onto the base leg across the end of the field, and turn left again onto the final approach, into wind.
My instructor gives me numbers, and I have written them on a card that lives in my pocket:
- reach the start of the downwind leg at about 250 metres above the field, and do the checks there: straps, loose items, approach speed, wind, airbrakes;
- fly downwind at 95 kilometres an hour, keeping the field at the same angle below the left wing;
- turn onto base at about 150 metres, earlier if the glider is sinking fast or the wind is strong;
- turn onto final at no less than 100 metres, with a hand on the airbrake lever.
The airbrakes are what make it work. They are paddles that come out of the top of the wings and spoil the lift, so that the glider comes down more steeply without speeding up. The trick is to arrive on final a little high, with the airbrakes half out, and use them to hold the landing point still in the windscreen. If the point moves up the windscreen, you are undershooting and you close the airbrakes. If it moves down, you are too high and you open them further.
The numbers are easy. The judgement is not. The altimeter shows the height above the field, but you are not supposed to fly the circuit by staring at it, because one day you will have to land in a farmer’s field where the altimeter tells you nothing useful. So I have spent the summer learning to judge height by eye, and my instructor has spent it covering the altimeter with his hand and asking me how high I think we are. In June I was usually fifty metres out. Now it is closer to twenty.
The season ends in October, when the days get short. I have 48 launches and four hours forty minutes in the logbook, nearly all of it circuits, and I now fly the whole of each circuit myself, including the landing. My instructor still says something on almost every final. Lately it has mostly been the word gut.