Gliders certainly have a mystique around them. Used for training, for the enjoyment and sport of flight, and even in combat operations too. My interest was piqued when I flew the Waco glider as part of the Aeroplane Heaven C-47/Waco combo pack that was released several weeks ago. Now I want to learn more and I’m doing my first training and free roam flying with the included gliders in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Here’s how it’s going!
Always flying with a goal
I always like to have some sort of long term learning project on the go. Years ago it was learning modern combat jets, then it was learning how to fly helicopters, then I decided to dive into airliner operations, and now that I’ve learned quite a bit about each of those I decided maybe its time to try and learn how gliders work.
Embarking on a new goal doesn’t mean that I’m stepping away from anything else. Every time I fly a fighter jet in DCS or a helicopter in X-Plane or an airliner in MSFS I’m learning something new and honing my skills. There’s so much to learn with all of these categories that I’ll never ever be done. But I do feel like I’ve reached a plateau with my airliner flying where I’m feeling mostly confident in hopping in and having a pretty good flying experience. I do need to continue to get better with my airliner landings but those have been improving!
Now, however, I want to get into something new and gliders have been calling out to me for a little while now. Since the 40th Anniversary release for MSFS which included gliders and glider functionality, I’ve wanted to try them out and just haven’t had the time. Now is the time!
First experiences
Jumping into the glider experience in MSFS is really easy. A series of basic tutorials guide you through the basics of flying gliders in the sim. I do think that they skip over a few details which sometimes means you need to repeat the sequence to get a better sense of what’s going on.
I scored Bs and Cs in my first efforts because I wasn’t really sure what I needed to do when and the briefings, though well written, make a few assumptions. I’m intending to go back over all of the training sessions and get an A in each of them before I feel like I’ve really started to gain some good knowledge.
Jumping into these sessions really revealed to me that there’s a whole world here that I did not have a lot of knowledge about. I knew about tow plane operations and had even managed to do it with the Waco glider so that part wasn’t new but the tow winch launch system was a new concept to me and it has quite a bit of the fun that a carrier catapult launch system has with the rapid acceleration and climb into the air. Fun!
MSFS also has a spotter on the wing holding it up until you’ve got enough airspeed to keep the wings level which is a nice bit of immersion.
A few aircraft can be used for the tow plane and the AI driven aircraft will generally takeoff, climb, and do a half circuit around the airfield until you release the tow cable. I learned very quickly that a tow cable release button on my stick was a better thing to do than trying to click the clickspot while also flying. There’s a bit of a shift in the aircraft’s flight path once released so its better to be right on the controls at release.
I also learned that the air brake is almost like a throttle back on a propeller plane where you use it to gain and reduce speed as necessary. Gliders manage to keep up a surprising amount of forward speed despite not having an engine. I know the basics of the weather physics involved and the usage of thermal lift off of natural land formations to gain lift and speed but actually flying it in the sim is just adds to the understanding.
Once you’re up there gliding its quite a bit of fun to just soar around and take in the scenery. One of my goals will be to go and find some of the more scenic spots in the world to go gliding and maybe even do a bit of a journey across a region with one of the gliders.
Some gliders are even self launching with their own built in engine which then retracts into the aircraft and gets out of the airstream so that you can go about the process of gliding. There’s different ways to do this and different propulsion systems with batteries and fuel used on different models. It’s all quite fascinating and I’m looking forward to getting into this some more!
Microsoft Flight Simulator is the beginning for me with this project but I know there are good gliding experiences in X-Plane 12 that I’ll be seeking out. IL-2’s Waco Glider is also calling to me to check out and review that in a combat flight simulator. I also know that some folks are quite a bit of a fan of Condor, a sim dedicated to gliding, so I may have to check out that too. More to come!
Stormbirds 
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