Two Words - Mind-Blowing!

I went for Gliding today, and we spent almost the whole day at the airfield. After a very small intro talk to the basics of the various parts of the glider, we were ready to fly. I was the second person to fly, and after seeing the first glider go flying into the air, I was quite anxious to try it out.

The gliders are propelled into the air by means of a cable attached to a winch, and once airborne, the cable is released. The time spent on land is hardly any time at all, the glider is almost instantly in the air and in a few seconds, at a steady altitude of more than 1000 feet. The feeling you experience in those initial moments is something that words cant describe, its just amazing.

On the first flight, I was run through the basics, and I was given control of the glider for about a minute or so. The glider was very responsive even to the slightest movement of the control joystick and pedals. It was fun having the whole glider under my control, I played around for sometime before the instructor took control again. The second flight was exclusively for taking photographs so I was happy clicking away to glory while we did a good round of the whole airfield.

I took a break after the second flight, and had lunch before the third and final flight. The third one started off like the others but once we stabilized, the instructor asked me ‘Do you want to have some fun?’, and I think I said ‘yes’ because right after that, he said ‘Okay, hold on tight’ and nosedived. We were at around 100 knots, which is about 140 miles an hour, rushing towards the ground when he suddenly pulled out of the dive and took a steep left turn. The turn continued into a circle, with the left wing facing the ground, and the glider was at a right angle to the horizon. It felt totally crazy but great at the same time. After landing, the instructor told me that we were facing around 4.5Gs during that crazy maneuver.

This was all in an army base, I managed to get quite a few good photographs of the place and the gliding and the great sunset. I had a wonderful experience, I’m already looking forward to the next gliding trip.

I’m feeling tired now so I’ll upload the photographs tomorrow.

UPDATE - I have uploaded the photographs and you can view them here.

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