Soaring Down Under

"Yep", I answered. "That's her."

The shiny white plane was nestled in amongst her hangar-mates, wing tips down and loaded sideways into the Quonset hut. Because sailplanes have longer dimensions wingtip-to-wingtip than nose-to-tail, it made great sense to stack them into the protective Quonset hut sideways.It's just that it made getting them in and out more of a chore. Unlike a regular plane backed-in to a T-hangar, these birds were packed in one to another side by side.

Together we gingerly removed the two planes blocking my chosen one. Each move required placing a small wheeled dolly under the craft's main landing wheel. Then we rolled the planes out onto the ramp, one at a time until we got to mine. Then we reversed the process, putting back the un-needed ones. Eventually the Schneider was alone on the ramp, awaiting its roll-out to the taxiway where the tow plane sat.

The tow line, a two-hundred foot rope, was stretched out behind the tow plane, a yellow Piper SuperCub. Come to think of it, most cubs are yellow. Why is that?

I climbed into the Schneider's none-too-ample cockpit and strapped in. Two shoulder straps and a lap belt were securely fastened. The instruments were checked. Altimeter was set to match the field elevation painted above the hangar doors. Tapping the airspeed gauge made the needle jumped downward a bit to read less than five knots. Everything looked okay, so next I checked the motion of the flight controls. Surfaces moved in the proper fashion and there was no binding or impaired movement. Looked good to me.

As I started to close the side-hinged bubble canopy, the lineboy attached the tow rope to the hook below the nose of the craft. He pulled it taut and I reached for the billiard-ballsized release knob to check the mechanism. The hook quickly freed the tow rope attachment.

"Looks good", I shouted. "Okay, let's hook 'er her up again. I'm ready."

The line boy moved over to the left wingtip and lifted it up to level the wings. The tow plane pilot revved up his engine and a cloud of dust swept back towards my sleek sailplane, forcing the line boy to turn his head. Soon we were slowly taxiing onto the runway. When I was ready I quickly pushed the rudder pedals to move the tail surface left and right full swing. That was the tow pilot's signal to start the takeoff roll. He watched me in an over-sized rear-view mirror bolted to his left wing strut.

We went barely fifty feet before the airflow over my wings was enough to enable me to keep her level. The line boy ran along a few more steps and then let go, turning his head away from the propeller wind blast. I accelerated quickly behind that yellow cub.

I reached lift-off speed before the to tow plane did and easily rose two or three feet, while staying directly behind the cub. In just a few hundred feet the cub too was airborne with me in tow. I kept as even in altitude behind the plane as I could, not wanting to make the cub's job of getting me aloft more work than it already was. If I climbed too quickly above the tow plane that would make the pilot's job more difficult. If I lagged just a little below, before we got to a hundred feet or more, the turbulence of his propeller wash would give me a bumpy ride and make precise control tougher. So I stayed about even with thecub for the first few minutes.

Then I dropped into what they call the "low tow" position. That is where Australians prefer the glider pilots to stay whilst on tow, unlike the way they do it back in the states. Down Under, and here I mean in the land of Oz, the normal position for the glider during tow is straight aft and below the tow plane, keeping the glider just under the wash turbulence.

In the states they tend to prefer "high tow", a position where the glider stays aft and slightly above the tow plane. I guess both methods are okay, but I much prefer high tow where it's quite easy to imagine staying on an imaginary line with the top of the tow plane's rudder and the pilot's head (or where you think that is, because you cannot really see him). Low tow keeps you much closer to the turbulence and downwash of the plane pulling you aloft. High tow is much smoother and, for me, easier to maintain proper formation position.

We quickly reached 1500 feet and then 2000. I saw the tow plane abruptly rise up ahead of me as he passed through a thermal, a bubble of rising air. "Boy. He's good", I thought. "He's taking me right into the first thermal."

At 2500 feet I reached down and pulled the tow line release, and immediately turned off to the side so the tow pilot could see I was clear. He banked sharply, descended and turned back to the airfield, leaving me up there in the silent bliss.

Soon I found that thermal again, noting that the sensitive rate of climb indicator revealed a good thermal. The rising air lifted the Schneider quickly. I banked tightly to stay within that column of rising air. Of course I was actually decending relative to the air around me. Gliders do not climb on their own. They need air that is rising faster than the decending glider to increase altitude.

Purists argue whether or not to call these airplanes gliders or sailplanes. The names are often used interchangeably. The high performance gliders, those with good glide ratio numbers get to be called sailplanes. Poor performers are simply gliders, but in truth they are both gliders. Some are just much better than others. The good ones sail or soar like eagles. The lesser ones barely stay aloft.

Conditions were not great for "thermal-ing" that day. I found a few and managed to gain four or five thousand feet a few times, but soon the cloud cover shaded the world below. The bubbles of warm air ceased to provide the lift that I needed. The puffy cumulus that I used to guide me from one thermal to another disappeared into a flat overcast.

Soon it was time to head back to the airfield. I never really got more than eight or ten miles from the field anyway. Conditions didn't warrant straying too far. One really prefers to land back where the take-off was made, rather than in some remote field that means both irritating the owner of the plane and the line boys needed to help disassemble and trailer the stranded bird back to the roost. You can wear out your welcome very quickly by failing to bring the plane back home.

I managed to put the plane down in the right spot and roll-outright up in front of the Quonset hut. That meant we'd only have to push the plane back a few yards, before the sideways return into the hangar for the night. The smiling line boy indicated that I'd done it right.