Today was a day with lots of activity at the airfield: an inter-club cross-country competition, scouts flying, normal flying lessons, and… the relevant bit… lots of trial flights. We effectively had two gliders occupied by trial flights for most of the day.
Today the sky looked like this:
So, not a fantastic day – ideally we want blue skies with litte fluffy clouds – but not bad. There was definitely rising warm air, which is what gliders need to stay up.
However, we don’t normally do that during first flights. Staying in thermals means making very tight turns, at a very precise speed – very tricky for someone who has never flown a glider before. The instructor could take control and gain some height from thermals, but even from your first flight we want to get you do do as much of the flying as possible.
On the other hand, gaining some lift from thermals extends the flight and obviously gives the student a better experience — as well as a longer flight, they get to see that yes, these thermal things really do work! – so wherever possible I do really like to try to take a short thermal ride even in a trial flight. It’s obviously best of all if the new pilot themselves can manage to stay in the thermal – it’s extremely fun and addictive.
Today, especially during the latter two flights we got really solid lift and had nice long flights. The new pilots did a great job of eking out lift and staying in thermals – not at all easy today – the strong wind was ripping the thermals up. (It helped that several of our guests had done a bit of flying before, albeit not of gliders).
Ultimately though, the decision is yours if you’re coming for a trial flight! Lots of people want a nice chilled relaxed cruise back to the airfield. Others want the excitement and sheer addictive frustration of trying to stay in a thermal. It’s up to you! Come to our open weekend next weekend and you can decide what kind of flight you want.
