SIV is in my opinion a pre-requisite for flying any canopy that has been certified as performance and above. Some people will disagree with this but that's their prerogative.
SIV stands for Simulation D' Incidence en Vol. which the educated amongst you out there will recognise as a foreign language. Spelt pretty similarly, it means Simulation of Incidences in the Air. In other words self induced canopy deflation's and radical manoeuvres.
This course can be great fun or it can be a nightmare. Some pilots have no fear of anything, whether this is out of ignorance or bravery the result is the same, they will try anything, especially if the instructor says its OK! Other pilots like my wife are fairly sceptical of anything that flies that didn't first peck its way out of an egg and was fed bits of dead things that also once flew (see Birds of Prey elsewhere on the web). Consequently her participation in the course was with a little intrepidation.
We went with Dave Butterfly Botha. We thought long and hard over who it was we were going to trust our life to. We knew the pro's and con's of different instructors. There were those that like to give you the flight (or is it fright) of your life by telling you to do things to your canopy that turns it into a bundle of washing and doesn't come out again. Reserve deployments were common place with one particular instructor. This is OK if you desperately want to get soaked to the skin with salty water and then have to wash all your kit out and then dry, air and repack your reserve before the next days flying. But if you happen to want to learn to prevent certain departures from normal flying then you ideally want as much air time as possible to get the feel of a canopy that is about to stop flying, not sit on the beach whilst everything dries out.
Butterfly was a cool, calm and collected very laid back chap that has the best interest of his students at the forefront of his mind. Taking low airtime pilots to the limit of their abilities and to that of their equipment is a quick way to damaging one or the other, not to mention his reputation. Too many antics like that will quickly loose all potential customers. If you do want to have an adrenaline rush he will oblige but only if he feels confident of your abilities.
We went in the last week in May 1995. We took off from Gatwick airport at 23:30 on a Friday night and arrived at Dalaman just as it was getting light. I managed to talk our way into the cockpit of the plane and we stayed up front in the jump seats for the landing. That was an experience in itself. The Turkish government will happily let you into their country upon surrendering a non returnable £10 note. This was double what I was expecting since they had recently put the price up. We collected our gliders from the conveyor belt and assembled outside. We met up with 5 other pilots all booked with Butterfly. The 1 hour trip from the Airport to Olu Deniz was probably the most terrifying bit of the whole week. The roads in that part of Turkey are still under construction and the locals are all maniacs when it comes to driving. To overtake on a blind hill, on a bend, on gravel and not tarmac is the norm. The bus filled with dust and I had to try and breath through my handkerchief, an asthma attack was the last thing I wanted to start my holiday with.
We got to the hotel at about 8 am and found that we were in the annex of the largest hotel in the resort. All the flyers together. There was 1 other pilot already there since he was on his second week. After quick introductions Butterfly ordered us all to bed as we has now been up over 24 hrs. "We will fly this afternoon, get some rest". I said I'm too excited to sleep but he said "I make the rules on the flying" Fair enough, we all went to bed. I tried to get some sleep but paragliders kept on coming in over the hotel heading for the beach and I got even more excited.
After lunch, or was it breakfast, we got in the 4 wheel drive truck and headed up the mountain. It takes about 1 hour 10 mins. to get to the takeoff point. The normal one is 5500 feet amsl. and looks over the "Blue Lagoon" of Olu Deniz. It was here that the film of the same name was made. There were several inversions clearly visible when looking out to sea in the direction of Rhodes, which on a clear day can be seen. Caroline was nervous at this altitude, the beach and the landing spot that we had earlier inspected was a dot in the distance. Butterfly has a saying "Get High Stay High", Caroline has another, "Am High Get Beach".
Butterfly took off first to test the air and to be on the ground before us to talk us all in. We all had radios so he gave us a commentary of the flight. It was thermik but they weren't that strong due to the inversions. We all took off and basically the brief was to fly straight out and get used to being so high up with such a big mountain behind us. "When the bushes look like trees" Phil told us "you are too low, because they are trees". The flight down top to bottom was 25 minutes, this was flying straight through any thermals we found. Up until now I had never encountered a thermal and was surprised with how rough the flight gets as you transit into and out of the rising air. Butterfly was on the beach and radioed me to get me to do a few simple manoeuvres to satisfy him that communication was good and that I understood what he wanted me to do. Pull "big ears" he said. "Oh that's not very good is it" was the next transmission, "we will have to work on them". Because my "Ear Talker" had fallen out of my ear I could not tell him that I had a video camera in my right hand and was filming the whole flight. This was the reason I couldn't reach high enough to properly pull the outer 2 A lines out and down. I landed on the beach about 100m from the landing spot. I completely messed up the approach. I came in without concentrating on where I wanted to land, the beach was so big, anywhere would do but a designated landing spot is where I should land and so all subsequent flights I paid more attention to the approach. I got the spot (big as it was) on nearly every occasion thereafter.
Over the course of the week we flew twice a day and depending on what we the students wanted to do depended on whether Butterfly swam (more going through the motions !) out to the boat to talk us through SIV manoeuvres on our way down. On days we wanted to improve our thermal flying skills he would come up the mountain with us and be in the air at the same time giving us helpful hints as we struggled to find these elusive thermals. It took me a long time to get confident in flying close to the mountain. The sheer scale of the thing made distance calculations difficult and it was a few days before I was properly coring thermals up the mountain ridges. There is so much to learn having just been signed off as a Club Pilot. Getting into the core of a thermal, staying there, avoiding the other pilots in the same one, allowing yourself to drift with the thermal, not going too far over the ridge because of the invisible rotor, looking for the next thermal to take you higher, looking out for the idiot who isn't looking where he is going, having your concentration shattered by a German pilot shouting at you to get out of his thermal, having time to look at the fantastic scenery, wondering if the food you ate last night is suddenly going to want to be free again! All these things have to be controlled and Butterfly is normally telling at least one of his students something that you too can take in and use to your own advantage. All these things came together on one flight of 2hrs 25mins which was my best to date, (since been increased to 5 hrs in Crete)
The manoeuvres I performed out over the water were fairly tame compared to what is possible. I was not looking forward to pulling down on both A risers . The work up to this was big ears, asymmetric tucks by pulling on one or the other A riser to collapse that side of the wing, then leaning into the collapse to make it more difficult to control and then finally a good hard pull on both A risers. I was expecting to fall like a stone and have to opportunity to taste my breakfast again, but it didn't happen. There was no free fall, the canopy just tucked under at the front until the openings came into contact with the B lines and then I pushed the A risers back up and I was flying again. I had to input a little bit on the control handles to stop the oscillations but that was about it. We then went through the slow flying routine. Slowing down the canopy gently to the point of a stall and then recovering the airspeed without too much surging back and forth. Then slowing down the wing to the point of a parachutal stall where you begin to sink down rather than fly through the air. The moment you are aware of the stall then you recover. Butterfly was more aware of it than I was and he was 3000' below me. I asked him over the radio if that was a parachutal stall because I thought it would be a greater sink rate. He asked what my vario was telling me, I said 10 down (1000' per minute sink rate). "Well how much faster do you want to drop at". Because the acceleration into the fall is gentle you hardly notice it. That's why we have instruments to tell us what's happening. We also have ears for listening to the flow of air past out faces. If it all goes quiet then you can be fairly certain there's trouble ahead and that something should be done about it.
Butterfly didn't take me to the full stall. This is where all the pressure in the wing has been lost due to lack of forward airspeed and the wing collapses such that the wing tips fold back and the canopy takes on a crescent shape. The recovery from this can be a pig to achieve depending on the wing. Some canopies come out on their own. I was told to full stall a 9 celled canopy that I learned to winch launch on. This type of canopy was more like the free fall canopies with much thicker lines, large openings in the front and are basically designed to open on their own. My one did from a tip to tip crescent shape but not before it had rotated through 90 degrees. Its this rotation that can be particularly dangerous. It is quite possible to enter a spin when you stall a wing. When I landed the instructors said to me "usually when we get a student to do that we say well done or we laugh, in your case we laughed". Whilst over the water in Turkey I did try to spin the canopy under Butterfly's instruction but I couldn't get it to go. There are possible 2 reasons for this; 1) having done a spin in the past, by accident when test flying a wing for which I was not experienced enough for, I was subconsciously trying to prevent the entry into the spin, 2) I was at the bottom end of the weight range for a large Airwave Jive. Jeff who was also on the course could get his to spin either, He was light on a medium Jive. Caroline was heavy on a small Jive and she spun it well and good. It frightened her so much she was in tears by the time she had recovered it and landed safely on the beach. She had the afternoon off with a bottle of red wine that Butterfly gave her to steady her nerves. She flew the next day to regain her confidence and was awarded "Sky God of the week" certificate for determination.
The afternoon that Caroline spent with a bottle, we all flew from the mountain and went off and landed in Butterfly Valley, so called because of a particular species of winged insect, nothing to do with our instructor. The picture (right) shows the view with two pilots about 800 feet below me flying over the water loosing height for their landing. The landing spot was anywhere you liked The beach which was about 300yds wide between 1000 foot cliffs. We flew in but we had to wait for the boat to take us out. It was a surreal place. So quiet apart from the splashing of the waves on the pebble beach, a bar completely overgrown with vines, topless young ladies sunbathing looking up at us as we came into land. Mustn't cock this landing up or I will feel a right fool. One pilot did, he was too high on his final approach and was heading straight for the cliff. He was told to control handle really hard to increase his rate of decent but it wasn't enough, the final instruction was to fully stall the wing and drop the few feet remaining to the beach. He managed this and landed in a heap but was unharmed. He did however prevent his canopy flying smack into the cliff walls though.
I managed to fly on all 7 days of the holiday and logged 10 hours. One day was a bit iffy. There was oragraphic clouds over the takeoff and there was some debate as to whether it would clear. Then it did, then it clouded up again. We had to be ready go immediately. Those of us that were willing to fly got set up, Butterfly was ready and he said once he goes no one else can. They will have to go down in the jeep. Phil got away first and then Clive, they radioed to us that the rest of the mountain was clear and that there was a prevailing wind onto the ridge that was making it soarable. There was no sun that day on the mountain and hence no thermals. The cloud cleared and I launched, closely followed by Butterfly. That's it 4 of us only in the air. I radioed to Caroline "see you on the beach". I went round the corner of one rock outcrop and saw Clive high above me. I got in close to the cliff and picked up a steady 2 up, which I was impressed with so I told Butterfly where the lift was and that I was well above takeoff. "Bastard" he replied. "all I'm getting is sink and I'm being chased by a wild pig". Thankfully this one couldn't fly and he eventually landed on the beach. Meanwhile Clive and I were doing fine, but the cloud was reforming so we headed off to the beach. We couldn't actually see it because we were above the cloud that had formed below us. We were happy though that we knew were we were. We could see the mountain poking out through the cloud like an iceberg in the sea, and we could see the blue lagoon. We descended through the cloud flying within sight of each other and quickly picked up the beach. It was still in the same place! I landed first as Clive was flying a far superior glider and sank at a slower speed than me. This flight was the most memorable of the whole week, It was so quiet above the cloud. Just the wind whistling through the lines and the voices of ourselves shouting to one another across the small space between us. We were the only 2 in the air and it was all ours.
Breakfast was in the main part of the hotel and consisted of all sorts of different breads which could be toasted by us in a big grill. There were fresh tomato slices the size of melon slices, cucumber, cheeses, eggs and meats. You could basically eat as much as you like. Lunch was normally a pizza by the landing spot. Whilst we ate and drank soft drinks in the shade the locals would repack our canopies for 100,000 Lira (about 80p at that time) We ate in different places every night but spent 3 nights in one particular restaurant, Dippy Dollies, the octopus is superb, try it if you ever go. We both managed to avoid the Bums Rush syndrome probably by cleaning our teeth in bottled water and not eating from kebab stalls on the beach. The beer is all bottled and cold & fizzy so any discerning beer drinkers out there are in for a poor time. The wine is very good and is also cheap.
Butterfly is running 2 Turkey trips this September the 17th for advanced pilots only, and another for newly qualified pilots in the first week in October. Contact him direct butterfly@pro-net.co.uk Phone/Fax 01983 731611. Checkout his web site