Well new things are always good in flying.... and one way of getting a bit of useful airtime during our end of summer wet weekends was to think different...so i decided to book an SIV course ..... my first in 10 years of flying so some would say a bit overdue. Grumpy bob almost came too but was too busy serving pints but trias was more than willing to test out his new Mantra M3 - hopefully we will hear his own story soon.
I have now flown my Avax XC2 for more than a year including some very strong conditions and only had one serious departure from normal flying (crushed by the cold outflow from a glacier spilling over onto the sunny side of a spur i was flying) so i was more than ready to find out a bit more about what happens when you get a 6.4 aspect ratio EN C wing with skinny lines out of shape.
We booked up with Flyeo in Annecy who are not the cheapest (420 euro for sat/sun/mon) but very well known for their SIV expertise and their operation is slick. On their form I put down active flying and xc flying as my strengths and never spun/stalled/always avoided dynamic flying as my weaknesses. Annecy is not the biggest top to bottom venue for SIV as take off is at about 1250m and the lac is at about 450m. However, the road up is good and you can get 3 or 4 flights per day plus lots of time for briefing before and after. After the flying they take you back to the shop to watch the action on video and you can learn lots from watching others experiences as well as your own. This year there is a new SIV landing field right on the edge of the lake beside Camping Nubliere which lets you keep throwing it around until a bit lower than previously. Our group of 5 was mixed both in terms of wings and abilities so we got to see a bit of everything (Jean-Luc on his Golden on his second SIV, Miltiade on his Aspen 2 on his third and Claude on her Bright on her first).
Day 1 - three flights
I spent most of the day doing spiral dives aiming to get "facing the planet" after two turns holding for another couple to let the speed build up and then exiting. For the first flight the exits were gradual aiming to dissipate the energy over another couple of turns with little in the way of surge but then we moved onto a much more dynamic exit with the aim being to come out as fast as possible straighten up to straight course and then ride out the "chandelle" where both the leading edge and and the pilot are facing directly up before the pilot falls under the wing again and you check the surge and fly away. It took a bit of practice to get the outside weightshift and outside brake input right to fly straight immediately after exiting and one off-centre chandelle provoked a small tip cravat which took a bit of fiddling to clear. I almost overbraked the surge after the chandelle once as well (too early and too deep on the brakes) and the wing arced back close to stall. We would finish each flight with wingovers and instructor Christophe tried hard not to show his distaste for my badly timed efforts!
So nothing too scary or radical for the first day.
Day 2 - three flights
Most of the second day was spent on accelerated collapses which i had wanted to spend some time on. You would enter by starting via a pitching exercise (tangage) and then as the wing was diving out of the last swing at maybe 30 degrees nose down you drop the brake handle, reach high, and haul in a good armful of a-riser and hold it in at hip level.
On my wing this generally created a pretty big collapse of 70% to 80% which required instant countering on weightshift and brake to stop it winding up but if you did then you could steer away from the collapse without a problem and do some lazy circles before releasing the collapse. The later version was to deliberately fall into the collapsed side (still holding the collapse in) and accept the big g's that would quickly build up putting you into an auto-rotation (just like a SAT you are going backwards and the wing is going forward).
I found the speed and G's of these manoeuvres quite intimidating and I had an exciting ride on one go when i released the collapse (due to fear) just as the flying side had maximum energy (going nose down on its way into auto rotation). The followig shock inflation of the collapse combined with the slight outside weightshift and brake I had already started to apply caused the wing to immediately dive below me the OTHER way and flicked me side ways before the wing collapsed sideways and i fell past with slack lines and returned to more level flight with a cravat to sort out. I overcooked the spin designed to release the cravat which ended up with two cravats...
We were all pretty tired by the end of the day.
Day 3 - four flights
On to the famous full stall which I had seriously wanted to learn as a way of clearing cravattes which are a potential for pretty much any high aspect wing I think. By this time i had listened to multiple briefings on how to do it for others as well as myself and was feeling pretty confident of the procedure..... Lock the arms and keep them locked until you fall back under the wing... then raise your hands to the "back fly" position recognisable from its little forward pointing ears where you can do weightshift turns if you want before releasing symetrically and checking the surge.
My first go went smoothly and in some ways is a lot easier to cope with than the high-g manoeuvres. My second one was not so smooth as i released with hands too low and the forward pointing ears of the back fly were caught as cravats on the release
This left me with less glide angle than i needed to make the beach but a stabilo fiddle cleared one and a small spin (making the cravatted side fly backwards for a quarter turn by a deep 1 second pump) released the other and i made the little peninsula sticking out into the lake with a couple of metres to spare and a cheer from the other SIVers as I kept the wing dry.
stall with cravat on exit
the last of my 7 full stalls
For the first two I did it with legs outside my pod harness - the instructors are very keen on sit up non-pod harnesses for stalls and wingovers! Later I kept my legs in the pod but tucked well under my bum which worked fine and I got a bit better at judging the correct hand position for back fly and a bit faster at transitioning between the stages. So seven stalls completed and its definitely something I would use in the real world to try to sort the wing out before throwing the reserve. Releasing the back fly from a hand position which is slightly too low will result in small cravates on my wing so its better to find the limit of back fly with only small forward pointing ears before releasing.
For the last flight I did two SATs which again went smoother than expected With left hand on the top of the riser, brace away and pull hard on the inside brake just as the wing drops into the spiral to "face the planet". The first one had a flappy outside wingtip but the second one was cleaner. My wingovers were also getting better and I may have done some worthy of the name (actually getting above the wing).
my second sat
wingovers still pretty dodgy!
So overall a very positive experience and one I should have done a long time ago. It gave me a healthy respect for the speed and g's that a big collapse can generate but a lot of skills and understanding to deal with it.
