All right guys! The wind is super strong. How am I going to stay in control in these
conditions? Maybe you're struggling with your ground control … join me for this session
on how to dominate in strong wind conditions. Choose the piece of slope where you don't have a
venturi, so that the wind isn't accelerated even more. I'm on a slope that's facing into wind,
it's got a slight slope on it. That helps with your ground handling. The second thing is the size
of the wing: most of the time pilots are getting completely overpowered because their wings
are very big. Particularly if you're flying an EN A glider, the design means that the
square metres is going to be really big, particularly if you're a woman or light weight
you're going to find that the glider that you fit into on the weight range is going to be
(relatively) way bigger than somebody that's on a large. Let's say a 100 kilo
pilot has got a 26 square meter glider (flat area) and you at 50 kilos are not on a
13 square meter wing, you're on about a 20. You've got a huge glider (relative to your size)
so the only way you're going to get into control in that sort of situation is to fly in less wind,
kite in less wind or have very good technique. How do you develop that technique? Well I'm going
to show you. But the key factor is to use the right tool. Sometimes you'll see second-hand
gliders going for cheap for ‘ground handling only’ and what you're getting there is usually an
EN A or a low B that's knackered. It's at the end of its life, so that means that the glider will
tend to stall, it'll tend to drop back into the spinnaker position and that'll just give you
a real difficult time. It's not the right tool for the job. The right tool is a 12 square meter
glider that's designed just for ground handling and that is the Wallendair Play. Let
me show you what you can do with it. Firstly if the wind's strong you're most likely
going to end up in this position, with the brakes right back and the glider yanking, yanking like
this. The first thing to do is to take wraps on your brakes. Wrap and as you do that, you step
towards the glider, wrap, and you'll get rid of the power somewhat and now you go for your back
risers. Get your back risers in one hand. Make sure you get the back risers and the brake lines
all together then you can get rid of your wraps on both sides. I'm holding the risers on
the maillons and giving a kink in the lines and that way you're not going to get a line burn.
You should really have gloves for ground handling, but if not, make sure that you don't hold the
lines ever in a way that they can slip. You hold and twist your wrist so that you've
got a good contact on the lines. Right so that's to control the power. Now
if you are getting pulled and dragged the best is always the back risers but if you
lose control and you're getting dragged across the ground, what you want to do is take one
break and just wrap wrap wrap wrap on that side just keep wrapping on that one brake and you'll
end up with a glider that's pretty disabled. If you want to control the glider
on the ground, get over to the wingtip, the one that's upwind, and just stand on
it (gently) and fold the wing up from that side. If your glider is upside down and you
pull the brakes it will backfly. When you release one side the glider will turn over one
way or the other. so if I release that side, the glider will tip over this way. A very neat way
to do that, if you've got the glider on its nose, like that … if you go towards it you get rid of
the power and then you can take just one corner and fly that corner across
with just a little bit of brake and you can do a cobra launch to get it up. If the glider is up and you want to
kill it, the best way from this position is to get your back risers. They are at the
back, they are here, you come this way from the back and you pull it down then the glider
settles nicely without too much power. A better version is to put the glider over to the side.
If you kick it over to the side like that it gives you time to see where the risers are … back
riser, back riser, and pull it in from the side. It then has less of an impact. Okay so
that's keeping the glider controlled. If you're going to pull the glider
up and you lean back into wind and pull up … wow! It comes up really quickly. To depower the glider when the wind is strong what
you want to do is run at the glider. I’m going to do a very gentle little pull on these but I'm
going to run at the glider … watch the difference. Very little power.
The same method works when the wing is over to the side. Move your body more than using the
brakes because every time you use the brakes you pull the glider back into the power zone. If I'm
steering it across, it's in a powered up position. If I move my feet rather from that position
there and I move my feet, the wing stays flying quite far forward in the wind window. So that's
nice and speedy. As soon as you pull the brakes and you fight with the glider you're
getting all the power. You don't want that. So remember when you're pulling it up, go
towards the wing to get rid of the power. When the wing is up overhead don't let it
overfly you and start lifting you like this. This is where pilots lose control and lose their
balance! Turn through. Get used to turning through and in strong wind you want to be flying with your
weight nice and low it's all about getting your centre of gravity down. If you're running like
this, if you're standing like this and you're trying to control the power as you run forward it
lifts you off your feet and you've got no traction so you end up in this position with a glider
slightly behind you and no control. What you want to do is put one leg in front, sink down and
put your arms higher and through the risers like that. Now I've got my weight on my chest strap so
all of my body weight is in the glider which means the glider is going to fly faster so immediately
it makes it easier and now it's forward and wanting to go that gives you much better control
and if I get lifted I'm in a flying position. A critical thing to practice for strong wind
launches is your turn because pilots sometimes get pulled off their feet and then
they turn the wrong way like that. So practice that by turning the wrong way
then turning back out, and getting used to turning either way. It doesn't matter
which way. Get used to flying the glider over like this or like that and it builds up
an awareness that this hand (left) is that part of the wing (left) and this hand (right)
is the right part of the wing. That's critical so when you're flying if I'm thinking with the
wing I know that left side is this left hand and you need to build up that muscle
memory so that when you are lifted off the ground you don't panic and pull the
wrong brake. So that hand is that side of the wing. If I turn around, I can still fly the
wing perfectly. Left is that side, right is that side. But now what has happened is my lines
have actually jammed up (from a full twist)! So it's very important to practice turning out by
looking at the risers and looking at which one is on top. So this is on top, I'm going to turn to
the left. So if I see that when my glider comes up, I know I must follow it around like that.
Practice that … so see that, turn this way, see that, turn this way … and the more you can
practice that turn, the more it becomes just absolutely hard-wired. You see the riser on the
top, you turn this way. Turn through nice and quick and keep your weight low and centred
so that you're not lifted off your feet. When we come to kill the glider, I've
got a special video about killing it, have a look, click the link and check that video
out, it might save you a bit of a dragging. But in brief the most important thing about
killing the wing is to not pull the brakes and then run after the glider. What you want
to do is run after the glider (use your body) and then pull the brakes (or back risers).
And that way you take all the power out of it. Even if the wind is really strong.
Remember the more that you can run, the speed that you run takes that speed away from
the wind speed that's going over the airfoil. So if you can run at 20 kilometres an hour and
it's blowing 40, your wing is only feeling 20. The key thing about this wing is that
it's designed just for ground handling so it has elements in it that get rid of the
power. You can see the billowy cells, the trimming is particularly stable, it's very
difficult to front collapse it, which means that you don't have a front tuck
while you're still learning ground handling. It's got the trimmers to increase the speed
and the feeling is very much like a paraglider, it's been trimmed to give you the exact muscle
memory that you need so this is an exceptional tool for developing skills for when you're
going to be doing strong wind ground handling and it puts you in that strong wind so you can
learn the feeling of that gusty nasty strong power that you get without getting dragged and losing
control. So it gives you time to develop all of these techniques. Now to be sure this wing is
fast, it's going to go left and right, it's going to have quite a bit of quick roll movements
which will develop your reaction time and speed so you that's unavoidable
with a small wing but this is the slowest that I've come across in terms
of reactions, reactivity and ease of control. The abilities you build with a trainer wing
like the Play you can transfer straight over to your main wing and have an easy time in strong
conditions. So click the link to find out more, get yourself a play and start learning to
become a master at strong wind ground control. Hey guys here's a bonus hack for you! One of the
best ways of laying out your glider for strong wind launches is the bunched glider. Put the
glider down like that and that's how you launch. Don't lean away from it and fill it up with air, leave it nice and floppy and when you're ready
to launch you've got your A’s so you're ready, you pull it up and run towards it … and you've got
lots of time because it comes up with ‘big ears’. The joy of having a wing like
this is it's not made for flying, it's made for ground training so it really excels
at teaching you these sort of skills and being able to control the power on the ground without
getting dragged around and getting overpowered and then not enjoying your ground
handling session. This is just fun! Hey guys I hope you enjoyed learning
how to dominate in strong wind ground control. Get yourself a
play and go out and practice…
