From: sloubtin@dsg.cs.tcd.ie (Sylvain Louboutin)
Subject: Re: Silver 'C' Duration, Was "What to do on long flights?"
Organization: DSG, Dept. of Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 11:35:24 GMT

In <7SEP199210173677@vxcrna.cern.ch> cohler@vxcrna.cern.ch (Mike Cohler) writes:

>In article <gaynier.715824990@s1.elec.uq.oz.au>, gaynier@elec.uq.oz.au 
>(Ron Gaynier) writes...
>> 
>>I had my own long flight yesterday. My 5 hour duration flight for my 
>silver 'C'.
>lines deleted....
>>I flew into 8 knots up. So there I was caught with my pants down, harness 
>undone, plastic
>>bladder out of a wine box between my legs, trying to center the thermal.

>Congratulations !   The 5 hours is a difficult task, and I still suffer
>from bladder non-endurance, especially after a long time under a cold
>dark cloudbase !  I beleive those absorbant nappies {diapers for USA types)
>which were developed for the air force work ewonders.. they have a gel
>that stays dry after absorbing the wet... work wonders.   
>  By the way, have a look at typical flight times for those 300 and 500 km
>FAI badge flights, and you will see that the 5 hours flight is a beginning
>to cross country flying and not and end in itself !
>  Happy flying.
>Mike

not to forget a kind of portable loo (for male pilots only) which you
can find in any medical supply store (ask a MD;  actually ask a MD who
flies gliders,  there are a lot of them around, you will notice that
quite a few of them use this kind of system):  it is roughly made of
small bags connected to a sort of modified condoms (it's difficult to
describe but you can get the idea...)   

some figures (sorry if it look gross,  but it is definitely an
important issue when you fly gliders; disclaimer: I am not a MD,  these
figures come from experience and discussion with MDs;  I'd love to see
some specialists' opinion about this):  a bladder fills up at a rate
which is roughly between 200 cc/hour (when you have drunk a lot of
water) down to 50 cc / hour (but it's definitely not a good idea to
dehydrate yourself to that point);   let's say that 100 to 150 cc/hour
is OK.  The average bladder can hold around 450 cc (it starts to be
really uncomfortable earlier for most people);  some lucky people have
bladders twice this size (born to be glider pilots :-)  so,  if you are
an average person,  drinking a reasonable amount of water,  you can fly
comfortably for about 4 hours (I believe it can be really dangerous to
either dehydrate yourself to try to avoid the problem or to fly with a
full bladder,  which is not good for concentration).  So why is this
problem never mentioned to student pilots who are supposed to
eventually fly their Silver "C" duration (and later long cross country
flights????  Everybody hacks his/her own solution and I very rarely
heard anybody talking about it as if the problem did not exist...

Silver "C" duration flight question:  when I did mine,  the time was
counted between two low points on the barograph,  i.e. the tow time,  as
well as the time to go down from the where I was towed was not counted
i.e. I had to do 5 hours *soaring*;  I talk with someone who said that
what really counts is *gliding* time i.e. the time between take off to
landing.  What is right?

"long boring flights"?  the only long boring flights I can think of are
the ones you do in an airliner;  is such cases you can sleepm,  watch a
movie,  listen to a walkman,  play games on your laptop,  read,  talk to
your neighbour etc.  I fail to understand how this can apply to GA (may
be because I haven't got my power ticket yet?).


-- 
//Sylvain R.Y. Louboutin, fax: (+353-1)772204, e-mail: Louboutin@dsg.cs.tcd.ie
//Distributed System Group, O'Reilly Institute, room F.35, (+353-1)7021539 ...
//Department of Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin 2, -Ireland-  ASK-18
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