AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2016 - 62

ARIZONA SOARING in
Maricopa, Arizona (below)
provides glider training
from primary instruction
to aerobatics. U.S. Air
Force cadets of the 94th
Flying Training Squadron
on tow at the 2015 U.S.
National Aerobatic
Championships (left).

The pilot spoke sparingly, working his way through combinations of loops,
snaps, and rolls-including one particularly memorable push (here come the
negative Gs) from inverted to a vertical upline that tested the strength of the
safety harness, then back down into a tailslide that tested the strength of the
tail. The pilot might have hummed a little, seeming relaxed, almost casual as the
G-meter swung to and fro. I knew without turning my head that he was consulting, on his cellphone, a diagram of the International Aerobatic Club's 2015
Unlimited Glider Known program, which he had not studied much, even though
the national championships were just a couple of weeks away.
As a fledgling aerobatic pilot in powered aircraft, I'm used to calling out each
figure (maneuver) as it comes up, speaking out loud in part to keep the mind
focused and in part to avoid flying the wrong figure. Jason Stephens, the most
accomplished American competition aerobatic glider pilot of his generation, dispensed with all that talking. It made each push, pull, roll, and loop a lively surprise.
Perhaps the greatest of these surprises was the silence. A glider makes more
noise than you might think as it slices through air at speed-but as we climbed
on a vertical line to the point where kinetic energy was exhausted, and then
slipped backward into a tailslide, there was, for an instant, simply silence. At the
apex, with a vista of mountains and desert etched by countless tiny, dry riverbeds below, not even a creak from the airframe nor whisper of wind was audible.
The relative quiet of the cockpit even when a glider is moving at speed is the
most obvious difference from flying aerobatics in a powered aircraft, although
there are subtler differences, too. Stephens pointed out some of these later, after
demonstrating a hammerhead with the altitude left over when the competition
sequence was complete. A Super Decathlon shudders as it reaches the top of a
vertical upline, signaling the critical moment when the pilot must use the rudder
to begin the hammerhead pivot or risk a dangerous (for a Decathlon) tailslide;
the glider seemed to offer no such clues.
It is different for a practiced ear: Stephens said he can tell when it's time to
kick by the sound.
"It's talking to you, but in different ways than a Decathlon would," Stephens
said after the flight. "With the glider, it's more about the sound."
A RARE SKILL

Perhaps no other flying discipline requires such singular focus on subtlety. The
pilot is tuned to the moment, taking in the smallest vibrations, stick forces, and
the sights outside, and managing carefully the exchange of energy between potential and kinetic. There is no room for waste. Stephens said that although many
judges favor tight turns and arcs, he is wary of pulling more than 5 Gs, or pushing more than 4; the price paid in energy is too great.
Stephens soloed a glider at age 14, taught in his high school years by Les
Horvath, a Hungarian immigrant who won national titles in aerobatic and other
glider disciplines. In 1969, Horvath founded Arizona Soaring, a school Stephens'
62 | AOPA PILOT July 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2016