A Pedagogical Day at the Strip

  I hadn't had my hands and feet on the controls of a glider since April 2007.

After that, for some reason, I lost my WILL TO DIE ; and hadn't flown a glider since then.  However, I remain Secretary of the Gliding Club.

BUT...last Saturday I was at the strip at 09:02 ready to go.

It was a "To Hell and Back" day for me.  Overconfidence - like "Hey I know how to fly this machine!" Tiredness  (I had been at the Casino until 4am).  Age - I'm nearly 60.  Or, maybe somebody was sticking pins into a Voodoo doll.

Whatever it was, everything seemed to conspire against me.  But who wouldn't think like that if they have a slight tendency to paranoia.

The day began with Simon doing the first take off, finding a nice thermal which took us to 10, 000 feet where we enjoyed the "Cool, Cool, Cool of the Elevation". 

You see you lose about 3C for each 1,000 feet you climb above the ground.  Our strip is at 2,400 Above Sea Level so at 10,000 feet the temp outside the aircraft is 22.8C below that on the ground - and on the ground it was well into the 40s.  17C in High Summer in Centralia is just soooooooo comfortable.  We found the first cool spot at around 8,000 feet and Simon said:

"Your aircraft"

"My aircraft", I replied.

I just wanted to fool around and get used to flying again with no particular task in hand.  However, Simon was intent on pushing me to learn more.  He began gliding after I did, and went solo before I did, and he knows exponentionally more than I do about gliding.

But hey, he is 15 years younger than me!

I managed my first landing with the comment from behind - "Perfect".

Well, something like that can't help but boost ones confidence.

The next flight was a disaster.  I was too low on final and Simon had to take over to allow us to clear the mulga which would have ripped the plane apart, as well removing, at a minimum. both of our rear ends, which are very close to the ground in a glider.

Simon is a brave man.  We went up for a 3rd flight.  I took the launch; but we didn't get much height and didn't find a thermal.  I was forced to turn back to the strip and do what is call an alternative approach. Rather than landing from the western end of the strip I had to turn in early and land on what has been described as "our aircraft carrier" about mid-deck.

I thought I was going to get a rollicking about that flight - but Simon's first words were: "Perfect. You made all the right decisions - you had no height, no thermal, and nowhere else to go, so you chose to do the only sensible thing and land the aircraft with a perfect final turn and a perfect landing."

This gliding business surely does bring some pleasures.

Comments

[Justin]

That's an inspirational piece of writing, TJ.
Lovely photo, as usual.

[kim]

just the presence of it is inspirational, and grand.
i'll try to actually read, and maybe even write, in the next day or 2. meantime, please just know that it's great to see you again.

[thingfish23]

This may sound ignorant, but how do you get it off the ground?

Great job otherwise - you know by now that we learn a lot more when things don't quite go as planned...

[Tjilpi]

Thingfish - have a look here - we use an American made motor!

http://tjilpi.typepad.com/tjilpi/2007/05/badger.html

[kim]

time to get out of thepool.