Gliding has been compared to sailing: the object is to go places without an engine, using the natural movements of the air. For someone who enjoys flying, not necessarily to go anywhere, this is much more engaging than power flying - and it's quieter!  It's more engaging because you spend 75% of your time maneuvering, and all of your time thinking about your next move, rather than just going in straight lines.  And the aircraft are so beautiful!

This is a Valentin Taifun 17E touring glider (or "motorglider"). Although it has an engine and looks a lot like a regular airplane, it's designed to fly with the engine off, so in fact it's a glider. The engine is there so that it doesn't need a towplane to launch, and so it can fly home when the lift stops! However, it's also possible to use the engine to get from A to B, and it's quite a capable cross-country light airplane as well.
Some people wonder if an aircraft with an engine is really a glider. A boating analogy may help - small sailboats don't have engines, but bigger sailboats, for cruising and touring, do have auxiliary engines. By analogy to those touring sailboats, these aircraft are also called "touring motorgliders." When you compare this glider to a light airplane from front or rear, the difference becomes immediately obvious - a light airplane generally has a wingspan of 35 ft, while this glider has a 56 ft wingspan!
N14XX has 2 seats, side by side (which is more sociable than front-and-rear, I think). Its gliding performance is not bad, but is no match for a dedicated high-performance "pure" (motorless) sailplane. On the other hand, it's a much more practical aircraft than a pure sailplane!.
I bought this aircraft after I moved to Manhattan, thinking it would allow me to continue my gliding there, by enabling me to fly to the mountains to find lift. Unfortunately, I've found that I don't do as much flying in New York as I did in California, and I wasn't making good use of this beautiful machine, so I sold it in 2011. 

For a couple of years after I moved to New York, I flew with a club in Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Glider Council.  It's about a 2-hour drive from Manhattan, but it's a great club, I highly recommend it. This is one of the club's gliders, a Grob 102 single-seater.  When people see this photo, their reaction tends to be "wow - that's small!" Single-seat pure sailplanes are indeed small - much smaller than they look when you don't have someone standing next to them. The cockpit is really just a fairing for the pilot's body - there's practically nothing else inside - so it's only about 2 ft wide and 3.5 ft high! Of course, the Taifun (above) isn't a whole lot higher - about 4 ft - but it's wider, because it has 2 seats, and it stands on tall landing gear, which makes it look much bigger. This glider has a published glide ratio of 38:1, and a minimum sink rate of about 140 fpm, so it will go farther than the Taifun and stay up in weaker lift - but it needs a towplane to launch, if you run out of lift before you get home then you have to land at another airport or in a field somewhere, and of course there's no option for cruising under power. Still, there's a wonderful sense of intimacy with the aircraft and the air when you fly something this responsive and snugly-fitted to your body!

When I lived in San Diego I owned a single-seat sailplane, registered N202PW, and flew it out of Warner Springs, in the Laguna mountains east of the city. "2PW" was originally imported in 1982 by its first owner, Pete Williams, who brought it to Arizona.  He sold it in 1987 to a partnership in San Jose, CA. After 1990 its third owner flew it out of Minden, NV, and was a cross-country record-chaser who established at least one Nevada State record in the Sports Class with this aircraft.  I became the glider's fourth owner in 2002, and flew it for 3 seasons before work kept me away and eventually led to my move to New York. This is a DG-202-15, with 15-meter wings. It's a flapped glider, and the flaps move with the ailerons (and vice versa) at all flap settings. It is also the same glider, aerodynamically, as the DG-400, which has a retractable motor that allows it to self-launch (it cannot cruise under power, however, as the 2-stroke motor and small fuel tank were not designed for that). Dick Johnson did a report on the DG-200 (same thing, but with the earlier, split canopy) and measured a glide of about 41:1.

2PW is a wonderful aircraft to fly, with easy, smooth, predictable handling, a docile stall, and an incredibly hushed cockpit (when you close all the air vents), and the sense of security that comes with truly spectacular glide performance.

Here's the instrument panel in N202PW.  It's simple compared to an airplane's panel, because there are no engine instruments.  The PDA on the right is the navigation display! 

The main flight instruments are airspeed, altitude - and two varios. The vario is your engine - without a working vario, you're coming down, so many gliders have 2 of them.  The main vario has audio output so you can hear whether you're climbing or not, without needing to look at it. 

The visibility from gliders is usually good, but the forward view from N202PW is amazing.  The canopy comes down farther than most on each side, and extends all the way to the tip of the nose.  Although they don't show up in this photo, I could see my toes in flight.

Return to home page