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Aviation History
1950
1950 - 1433.PDF
FLIGHT, 27 July 1950 INTERNATIONAL GLIDING CONTESTS Some Reasons for Britain's Poor Showing By ANN DOUGLAS (Captain of the British TcaHi) THE 1950 International Gliding Competitions are over,and these notes are written as we return from Swedenwith the sad reflection that the British team came near the bottom—15th, 24th, 25th and 27th, out of 29 competitors. Naturally this is a great disappointment to us, and we cati profit only by attempting to study carefully why we ended where we did. The standard of soaring in international competitions is nowtremendously high. For instance, one pilot took only 30 min. longer than a power aircraft to cover 88 miles, the glider's average speedbeing nearly 53 m.p.h.; several other pilots took only a few minutes longer. The Yugoslavian pilot, Arbaijtei, finally placed fourth, flew 19Smiles to the south on the penultimate contest day and arrived back at the airfield on the last day, having driven all night. Within15 minutes he was launched again and flew 233 miles to the north, much of it over impenetrable forest country. In England it is not appreciated how high the world standardhas become, nor how low is the general British standard. Tf we regard the ability of our team pilots, drawn from the top rankof British soaring, as only 60 per cent of the world standard, we ' can begin to get some idea of the capabilities of the average Britishsoaring pilot This may sound rather hard, as in England gliding is regarded purely as a sport—perhaps if we changed the wordto " relaxation " it would be nearer the mark. Often, we allow the work devoted to getting into the air to take precedence over anyreal work done once there. This is an unfortunate attitude, as not only does it prevent many of the poorer soaring days being used,but it produces complacence and lack of interest in the development of technique. As regards technique, at Orebro we were thoroughly beaten bygliders with a lower performance than Olympias. It was an edu- cation to study the leaders, through binoculars, at the start of theirflights. Speed and rate of circling were varied continuously to take advantage of every alteration of lift and sink. The gliderwas used purely as a tool and the maximum taken from it at all times. McCready (U.S.A.), especially, has developed his techniqueto a very high order indeed. Unless absolutely desperate, he ignores all but the strongest thermals, and when at his operational heighthe does not waste a second in reaching his straight-flight cruising speed, which is as high as conditions will permit. As record distances have increased speed has become of primeimportance, in order to get the most from the hours in which thermal activity exists. In England, generally, little thought isgiven to this aspect, largely because of the restrictions on distance- flying inherent in a small island. It was noticeable that it was inthe speed dashes that our pilots showed up worst; we got there, but usually about 20 km/hr slower than most of the others. The one thing in which our pilots did well was to land safelyin the most appalling claptraps. Rough fields 100 metres long by FINAL PLACING5 *J3 Pot. 1 2 3 4 5 6*7 •8 9 10 II 12 13H 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 2223 24 25 26 27 28 29 Pilot B. Nilsson ... P. B. McCreadyM. Borisek M. Arbaijier S. A. Magnusson ... P. A. PerssonT Ldf A. Gehriger R. Fonceilles H. Lambert K. J. Temmes R. Comte S. E. Aim K. J. Haltiala R. C. Forbes H W. Jensen P. C. Malotaux K. Rasmussen S. Maurer ... K. Ruckstuhl H. R. LaschFr. G. Legler M. Schachenmann ...L. Welch P. G. Mallect A. G. Kleyn P. A. Wills P. Lepanse C. J. Haydn Sailplane Weihe Weihe Oraoll Weihe Weihe WeiheWeihe Weihe Arsenal 41II Air 100 Weihe Schweixer SGS-23... Weihe Weihe Weihe Hutter 28 Fokker Olympia ... Fi-I ... ... Moswey VI Moswey III Air 100Moswey III Air 100Weihe Gull IV Fokker Olympia ... WeiheBreguet900 Olympia Nationality Sweden U.S.A. Yugoslavia Yugoslavia Sweden Sweden Sweden Switzerland France France Finland . . U.S.A Sweden Finland Gt. Britain Denmark Holland Denmark Switzerland Switzerland South AfricaSwitzerland SwitzerlandGt. Britain Gt. Britain Holland Gt. BritainFrance Norway Points | 867.5 1 847.8 777.S 755.0 744.S 729.8 7142 712.9 704.7 660.4 655.3 647.1 640.6 637.3 630.4 622 5 605.7 598.3 595.1 585.9 570.5558.3 554.4 533.6 519.1 484.2 482.2466.5 234.3 * These two competitors may change places on final confirmation of Lot's distance figure. Tha winner in his Weihe : B. Nilsson of the \about 20 metres wide, with obstructions, had to be reglrdeS asreasonable. L'p north the country is almost entirely covered with forest, interspersed with lakes, bogs, and with only a possible landingpatch every 20 km or so. Macready landed in a bog on the last day and the Finns, in their own country, sometimes land down-wind across the lakes, aiming just to reach the lee shore—usually sedge—before they lose way !A further point on technique, which has been much more highly developed elsewhere, especially in Sweden and Switzerland, is an accu-rate knowledge of how far the glider will go from any given point at any given time. In England this experience is not so necessary as wehave fields everywhere, but in places like Sweden it may make the difference between a long flight or one shortened by a" prematurelanding made because of doubt about reaching a safe landing area One last point on this subject: it was noticeable that the leadingpdots had a very wide knowledge of met. and aerodynamics. It was not in the handling of their gliders that our pilots fell short,but in the technique of using them to the best advantage. Now for some excuses for our deplorable position. Gliding inEngland is unsubsidized. This means that costs are high and facilities limited, which in turn means that it is extremely difficultfor even the most up-and-coming pilots to get very far until they have been flying several years, by which time they have probablygot married. Three of our pilots arc over thirty, one of them over forty. The first and second places were taken by people intheir twenties. Lack of Training Secondly, due to the ordinary demands of work, there was littletime or opportunity for our team members to do any serious training—I mean training against " sparring partners," and notjust practice flying. The winner of the contests was trained for contest flying by Capt. Aim of the Royal Swedish Air Force.. We could have pushed up our marks if we had been able to practice for a iveek in Sweden beforehand. But it was not pos-sible to get there earlier, partly because the crews could not get away from their normal work for so long, partly because, as theteam had to pay most of its expenses, the extra cost would have been prohibitive for some members. I am sure that in any strangecountry where conditi ns are at all different it is essential to have at lea.-t a week's practice. One can go on thinking-up new excuses endlessly. Perhaps ifwe had had some height days, our pilots' experience "in blind flying would havr shown to advantage; if we had had retrieving carswith propci beds in them, as most of the others did, it 'might have helped But one thing is certain: our position in thesecontests is the long-term result of the attitude toward gliding in England. Our best pilots are fai enough ahead of. the home averageto appear really good, and so there is no incentive to improve technique; and. worse still, because there are so few of them, thereis virtually no competition to help push up the standard. We cannot go on decorating the bottom end of world champion-ship results. We must either withdraw and have our domestic gliding for fun, or we must get down to some hard work. We must get rif1 ot our vague, down-wind, cross-country ideasand realize that, although a line to Puddlecombe looks very pretty on the club map, its value compared with some short out-and-returnflights, in which the pilot slowly pushes his average speed, is negligible If we can adopt this new attitude, the cost of retrievingwill go down, the utilization of gliders will go up, and perhaps then we will riot be ashamed to enter the 1952 World Championships. THE LAST THREE DAYS AS stated last week (writes a correspondent), the fourth com-petition day was July 9th, with a speed race to Xorrkoping (95.5 km). Stability in the lower levels retarded thermal activityuntil the afternoon, and the British team got awav soon after •• p.m. (Concluded 111 foot ol next page)
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