One More Time

I was going through some old photos and came across one of these blurry, faded ones that speaks to me. It was me sitting in a glider  in Benalla Airport (YBLA).

It was '83 or '84, would have been in the autumn or winter time.

The glider was fibre glass tandem 2-seater and the instructor would sit at the back. The aircraft had dual controls, of course, a stick for pitch and roll controls, rudder pedals, basic instruments and I am guessing artificial horizon, directional gyro, airspeed indicator, VSI, altimeter and a basic compass. No slip indicator instrument but just a yaw string. One can just see the string right in front of me, kind of where my left hand is, in the picture.

No flaps on this aircraft just air brakes. We were air towed to about 4000 ft and we would release the plane from the tow tug and bank left while the tug broke right. There we would try to find thermals to climb higher and it was not always successful. I remember the instructor took every chance he got doing some rolls and eventually I learnt from him to do a loop. Wow.

I remember it was so, so quiet up in the aircraft because there was no engine noise. One time the instructor said, "Hey look. Rainbow!". And there it was, a rainbow, up where we were flying, all quiet, only some wind noise, he and I; looking at this rainbow over our shoulders. It was one time that I felt like it was neat. Just point the stick and the glider would fly to where I pointed. Like it was part of my body.

I clocked about 5.5 hours dual on it over 2 or 3 days. I did the flying with some of my aeronautical engineering class mates but I was not good enough to go solo. From memory there was one natural pilot amongst the group and he actually did go solo in that time. 

This has got to be one of my favorite photos in that it shows a young me some 30 years ago doing a course that I liked but every one said was crazy. The gliding we did was also the first time ever that I piloted an aircraft.