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, North Dakota.

This week, Jen H. shares a quote from H. Jackson Brown, Jr. He says, “Enjoy the satisfaction that comes from doing little things well.” With that, we are challenged to share something that brings satisfaction. You can read the entire challenge post here.

July 15, this year, marked the 20th anniversary of my receiving a license to fly single-engine aircraft. In the last two decades, I’ve experimented with flying gliders and even once had a lesson in a weight-shift, flexible-wing aircraft. I also added an instrument flight and single-engine seaplane ratings to my license. I enjoy the freedom to put myself in an aircraft and, as John Gillespie Magee Jr. put it, “slip the surly bonds of earth.”

This challenge got me to thinking about what I find the most satisfying about my various flying activities. There is something special about landing a floatplane on a Minnesota lake, and especially satisfying is the “chirp” the tires make when I land softly on the wheels and the tires go from a dead stop to rolling at 75 miles/hour in but a split second. The task I find most satisfying, however, is the duty of glider towing. Most of my flying these days is for Civil Air Patrol (CAP), and one of our missions is Aerospace Education. Volunteer pilots provide orientation rides to our cadets, five in a powered aircraft and five in a glider. Glider operations require a tow plane to pull the glider to an altitude that provides a 20-30 minute flight experience for the cadet.

That brings me to the opening photo. The aircraft pictured is the one I fly most often when towing. It’s the only tow plane that North Dakota Wing CAP operates. The major difference between a tow plane and our typical CAP aircraft is the installation of a tow hook and release mechanism, and two rear view mirrors that allow the tow pilot to view the glider in tow. In the image above, if you look carefully, you can see the tow rope descending down from underneath the tail.

In the image above, one of our glider pilots is being towed solo for the purpose of currency and proficiency. The glider reaches flying speed several seconds before the tow plane. The extra weight and aerodynamic drag on the tow plane and a requirement to not exceed the glider’s design top speed means the tow plane must pull a heavier load and fly at slower speeds than normal. Neither of these parameters is problematic from a safety standpoint, just more demanding of the engine and pilot workload until the glider releases.

The image above was captured from a camera mounted in the tow plane’s rear window. A typical glider tow is to somewhere between 3,000 and 5000 feet (900-1500 m) above ground. During that time, airplane and glider are flying a rectangular pattern always within gliding distance of the departure airport. If the tow rope should happen to break, the glider pilot is always in a position to land safely back at the airport below. A typical tow lasts around 10 minutes and it’s up to the glider pilot to pull the handle that disconnects the rope. It’s then that the fun begins for the two pilot. By convention, the glider turns to the right and climbs while the tow plane turns to the left and descends. This convention ensures a safe separation with virtually zero chance of collision.

A quick descent to the airport helps keep flying costs down. The quicker we get down and shut off the tow plane’s engine, the cheaper the glider flight. The tow pilot cannot just land the aircraft, however. The aircraft is still dragging a 250-foot (76 m) rope behind. It’s the pilot’s job to fly high enough over the runway to drop the rope safely at the runway edge as close as possible to where it needs to be for the next glider flight. From that point, a quick descent and landing using textbook short field landing procedures is called for. The only exception in the textbook procedure is that only enough braking is used to ensure the plane rolls to the end of the runway. From there, a taxi back to the hookup point, then engine shut down to await the glider’s next flight.

If gliding conditions are right, the glider could stay aloft for an hour or more, but usually a batch of cadets are awaiting their flight so we typically limit flight time in the glider to 20-30 minutes. It’s during that time that the tow pilot can bask in the satisfying glow of that perfect landing… or fret and stew about how that last landing should have been improved. Tow pilots, by the nature of the task, get to be quite accomplished at landing their aircraft. In a typical glider day, 15-20 take-offs and landings are average when a couple of tow pilots share the day’s towing schedule.

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