Effect of Controls: Ailerons

The objective of this lesson is to demonstrate the primary effect of the ailerons and how we roll the glider.

Learning Points

The ailerons are controlled by the sideways movement of the stick, and cause the glider to roll. Rolling will cause the glider to change direction, so before we roll, we must always lookout to avoid meeting another glider! This is a priority in real life, and remains important in Condor if you are flying with others.

When looking straight ahead over the nose in the normal attitude, the horizon will be symmetrical with the edges of the canopy. This tells us the wings are level, and confirms we are flying straight. If the wings were not level, the horizon would not be symmetrical on either side of the canopy, and we wouldn’t be flying straight.

So to roll left, we firstly check it is clear, then look ahead over the nose of the glider, and then move the stick to the left. As the stick is moved left, the left wing goes down. It will continue to go down until we centralise* the stick again. The glider will now be banked, and therefore turning, even with the stick centralised* as in level flight. As we bank, the nose will tend to go down a bit. We therefore need to apply a gentle back pressure on the stick to maintain the attitude, ideally as we apply the bank.

*Note: Whilst “centralising” the stick is easy to visualise, in reality we move the stick in the opposite direction (to the right in the example above) enough to stop the roll. The steeper the bank selected, the further beyond central that will be.

To return to level flight, we must raise the (left) wing, which we do by moving the stick towards the upper wing (in this case, to the right). We centralise the stick as the wings come level. As they come level we also need to ease off the back pressure on the stick, to remain in the correct attitude.