Magoo's Travels: Learning to Fly a Glider

Learning to Fly a Glider

After work today a group of us Paramount people set off from the office or places of work to meet at the South Wales Gliding Club in Usk for an evening arranged by Scott Hazeldine, our FD. This is a place I have known about for years and I have often wondered what it would be like to sit in one of these silent aircraft as they glide effortlessly over the countryside. Well, at long last I was about to find out as we finally arrived at our destination.

After parking the car and signing in I strolled around part of the airfield looking at the various planes and gliders that were just parked on the grass

Eventually all of our party had arrived and we made our way to the far end of the airfield and received our instructions from the guide pilots who would be with us during the flights. Then we were split into two groups and given our order of flying. We were issued with parachutes which we had to wear during the flight and, watching the first people to go off, these were to prove a little difficult when climbing in and out of the aircraft.

The gliders were launched by a winch which ensured that they reach a speed of 50mph in just two seconds before being hurled skywards. The photographs below show the various stages of take-off and landing of the people before me.

The Winch

Back down to earth

When it was my turn to fly I had my parachute on and climbed aboard. I received some last-minute instructions about the controls and we were being slowly drawn forward. Then suddenly we were launched into the sky by the winch and I could feel the speed generated by this method of launch when suddenly the winch wire was released and we appeared to be motionless in the air. The pilot sat behind me asked me to take control of the joystick and he showed me how to dip the nose for more speed, raise the nose for less and to climb etc. before he took back control and I sat back and admired the views of the Monmouthshire countryside.

After about 10 minutes we came in to land, quite smoothly near where we had taken off and the whole process began again, because everybody was to have two trips up in the air. At this point I must praise Ceri who has to take medication to travel in a conventional aircraft. She did the first trip and thoroughly enjoyed it, but declined the opportunity to go up again.

This time around, when we were in the air the pilot said to take control and upon his instructions I increased speed, decreased speed, climbed, banked right and left to turn the glider and genuinely felt in control of matters, although he did have a set of dual controls to take over should I do anything wrong. Then, all too soon he took back the controls and brought us back in to land. A truly memorable series of events.

Getting ready for take off

I'm up

Wynch has gone, were on our own

Gliding around

Preparing to land

And were back

Felling really pleased we all made our way back to the clubhouse to finish things off with a magnificent barbecue prepared and cooked by Shane. He really is good at this.