Video: Competition Glider & Sailplane Flying

Learn about competition flying for glider pilots in this free flying video.

Video Transcript

Now we're going to go over and join that other glider in his thermal. What's the rules about entering a thermal with another glider. Everybody flies the same speed and everybody turns in the same direction. So as he circles, we'll circle on the opposite side of the circle. And we can fly together with no problem of midair collisions. Everybody is following the same rules. Are there competitions that they have with sail planes? Yeah, the country is divided into regions, and they have regional competitions and they have a national competition from the winners of that group, and then you have international competitions where everybody in the world competes in soaring events. The winner of that is the person who accumulates the most points by having the quickest time around the measures course. So the fastest glider around the course wins and it's a speed contest. How many gliders in a thermal at a time? In contest, you can see 20 or 30 gliders in the same thermal at the same time. Out here, where you only have 4 or 5 gliders in the air, normally 2 or 3 is as many as you get in one thermal. How come it says that we're dropping? We're actually descending. He's climbing. You'll notice how's he higher than we are now. So he's making better use of the thermal than we are. Another way to put that is we're going down faster than he is. We're still 3000 feet, which was our release altitude 6 minutes ago. So we've virtually haven't lost any altitude since we released at 3000 feet.

Competition Glider & Sailplane Flying

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