Ever since I was young, I wanted fly a plane. At
the age of twelve, I'd built several model planes. Somewhere along
the way that just became one of those forgotten dreams of youth.
For my 38th birthday my wife bought me a glider
flight, and now that I've had a taste,that dream is reborn! I
have always been fascinated by flight. It just seems so incredible
to me that gliders can stay in the air for hours.
On my first flight after we had taken off, I was
given control of the aircraft. Although shaky at first, flying
the aircraft was not as difficult as you would expect. (I'd spent
a lot of time reading up on flying gliders and flew on a simulator
on a PC).
The first time I flew into a thermal I was amazed.
I could feel a slight bump as the aircraft entered the column
of rising air. My instructor took over, he circled in the thermal
and the plane started to climb. He explained that one of the dials
in the glider measured how quickly the glider was rising. The
glider was going up at 4 knots or 400ft per minute!
I think the instructor must have been in a good
mood, because we climbed to 4,000 ft in the thermal then explored
the countryside. The view from the cockpit was amazing.
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