Casselton, North Dakota.

Before I go any further, here is my wish for a safe and happy 2022.

October 18 found me finally in charge of one of my favorite aviation activities, towing a glider. In addition to powered aircraft, Civil Air Patrol CAP uses gliders for both pilot training and to give aviation orientation rides to cadets. It’s far less expensive to use gliders than powered aircraft for these orientation flights, but CAP cadets get some of each before they “age out” of cadet status.

You see, it was one year to the day that I last was in our tow plane for the purpose of towing a glider. Once gliding shuts down in North Dakota for the winter, the glider goes into maintenance for its annual FAA-required inspection. During that inspection, a part was discovered that was out of tolerance and would need to be replaced.

The glider is a Blanik L-23 manufactured by a Czechoslovakian company. As you might imagine, with this year’s difficulties in getting virtually anything from anyone outside the United States in a timely fashion, our glider was out of service for almost the entire North Dakota gliding season. Sometime in September, the part finally arrived and was installed and while Lynn and I were on our fall #RoadTrip2021, the first glider activities of the season were accomplished.

Once back in Casselton, the “home airport” for our glider, there was one major goal, to get our glider instructor pilots recertified for another year. I was asked to tow for these flights, but to accomplish this goal, even though I am a tow pilot trainer myself, I needed to be recertified with three tow flights accompanied by a current tow pilot trainer. Once completed, I’d be back on my own with the empty co-pilot seat beside me acting as my desk for noting the count and duration of glider tows for the day.

After the first three tows with the tow pilot trainer onboard, being also a glider pilot, he needed three solo flights in the glider before he’d be current to carry passengers in the glider. He must have considered me competent to tow again as he was willing to get into the glider that I would be towing for the rest of the day.

About the photo: After leaving the tow plane, I was alone, engine off, waiting for the glider pilot to strap into his four-point harness and for the ground crew to ready the 250-foot (76 m) tow rope for connection between the two aircraft. While I waited for the “start engine” signal indicating the glider pilot was ready to go, I saw that if I adjusted the mirror I use to view the glider while positioning on the ground, that I could do a “selfie” of sorts. Just for fun, I decided to hide part of my face behind the camera.

Putting the camera in landscape mode, I was also able to include most of the panel instruments that in a few minutes would come to life again, and we would be underway on my first solo tow of the year. Once downloaded from my Samsung S20U cell phone, I cropped and tweaked the image in Lightroom. I finished a total of twelve tows, exactly 2.2 hours of engine run time in the process. Adding another 0.7 hours to position the tow plane from its base in Fargo to Casselton, I added 2.9 total hours to my logbook. To take a closer look at the image in 2K HD, select the image for viewing on my Flickr site.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge-response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment.

If you like the Sunday Challenge, check out Terri’s Sunday Stills challenge here.

John Steiner

I’m writing this on Saturday evening. Yesterday we brought our Civil Air Patrol glider from its home base in eastern North Dakota to Mandan, in the south central part of the state. Our plan was to give cadets in the western part of the state orientation rides, one of many benefits that cadets receive from being a member.

There are two ways to move a glider from one part of the state to another, disassemble it, put it in a trailer, and drive it across the country; or do what we did, hook the glider to a tow plane on a 350 foot (107 m) rope and tow it there. As a tow pilot, I’ve been in the tow plane several times on these long distance tows. This time, though, I was a passenger in the glider. I’ve been in a glider many times, even solo, but I never completed the rating to add to my license. I haven’t actually flown a glider more than a little bit in several years. Nor had I ever been in the glider on a long-distance tow.

Towing a glider, especially for flights that last upwards of two or more hours takes a lot of skill. The glider doesn’t just obediently follow the aircraft like a trailer. There was an expert pilot on the controls in the tandem seat behind me, and he expertly followed the tow plane even through some bumpy skies. The skies presented some interesting cloud formations on the flight and we even had to skirt a bit to the north to go around a collection of rain showers.

That red “string” is actually a piece of yarn taped to the plexiglass canopy and is actually a necessary flight instrument. It is the pilot’s job to keep that yarn pointed straight back like it is in the photo. If it were pointing to either the right or left, the pilot needs to apply corrective action on the rudder to make it vertical again.

About the photo: Captured on my Samsung S7, this image has been sized for web display. In most browsers, you can click on the image to get an enlarged, higher resolution view. The rule for Cellpic Sunday is simple, the image must be captured on a mobile device.

John Steiner

Scrolling through my images, I found very few where I actually used a window to frame the subject. I did some experimenting with some of my existing images that happened to have window frames in them, They even had a visible subject in the window, but I couldn’t make the leap from focusing on the original subject to focusing on an object that happened to be inside the window frame. Then I happened upon a folder of photos focusing on glider flying. The light dawned. Every one of the photos of pilots in the air or just landing was a portrait framed by the Plexiglas “window” canopy. A little judicious cropping resulted in a portrait of concentration as the pilot was either maneuvering to take off or land.

Glider canopies aren’t what most people think of as a traditional window frame. But then, most people don’t find themselves in or around a glider. In the opening image, John is a picture of concentration as he’s just touched down on the runway and is working hard to keep the glider straight and true while he rolls to a stop. In the image immediately above, Raul concentrates on his personal checklist copy as he prepares for his impending flight.

While a glider is capable of flight and of precision landings, they are not so good at taking off under their own power. If a glider isn’t shoved off the edge of a cliff to allow gravity to generate the forward momentum to support flight, a mechanical means must be applied. That means may be a winch pulling a long steel cable at high speed. The cable, attached to the glider accelerates the glider to flying speed and the pilot can launch the glider into the air. Another common method for launching is a vehicle tow where a long rope is attached to a vehicle that will accelerate down the runway, glider in tow. The method most used in our case, however, is an airplane tow. In the photo above, Tony had just returned from pulling the glider to altitude. After landing the tow plane, I captured his portrait just prior to his exiting the aircraft.

My final image in this challenge is a view from the rear window of a camera mounted in the rear of the tow plane. While not strictly a fully framed image, the reflections of the Plexiglas curves at the top and the actual window frame at the bottom allows me the artistic license to consider this image of the glider being towed to be framed by a window.

John Steiner

Casselton, ND

The ground crewman by the glider is assisting the glider pilot in readying the glider for launch. Another crew member approaches to help.

I specifically kept the items mentioned in the challenge in mind as I framed the photo in my mind. After several attempts during multiple glider flights, I selected this photo as the best of the group in applying the object points of the challenge.

From the challenge:

• Observe a scene first before lifting your camera to your eye.
• Ask yourself: What is the subject? What will you (not) include in the frame?
• Look for natural lines or frames in the shot to guide the viewer’s eye.
• Try different angles: Get low on the pavement. Look down from above.

Instead of finding myself parallel or in front of the glider, I lined up slightly behind both aircraft to direct the viewer’s eyes into the photo from the left.

The crewman walking toward the glider urges me to look in the direction he is looking, toward the glider.

The crewman by the glider is signaling the tow pilot to move forward. He is looking toward the tow plane, causing me to follow to see what he is looking at.

The low angle of the shot emphasizes the lines cut in the turf at the airport. Those lines draw the viewer to look toward the tow plane and the direction of the impending flight.

The low angle and rule of thirds help to give emphasis to the sky, where the two aircraft will soon find themselves.

John Steiner