Friday, August 21, 2009

The giant sucking sound

If you listen closely, you can hear a very faint sucking sound as Summer begins to run out and we enter Fall -and inevitably, the end of the regular flying season at Harris Hill.

It's gone by fast and the weather hasn't been very kind to us this year but nevertheless I consider it a pivotal year in my glider experience. I achieved all of my flight goals this year - to move up to the high performance ships in our fleet and to become comfortable flying them.

There's still the Fall to fly, so another 10 weeks or so of good weekends and Wednesday night flying will help lessen the anguish of shutting it down until better weather. The weather is generally pretty good and watching the leaves change over the weeks from the air is a special site that not many get to share. I'm going to make the best of it before preparing for my flying next year.

What will my goals be? I'm giving consideration to adding the commercial glider pilot's license to my ratings. That way, I can be scheduled to fly passengers on weekends, introducing them to soaring and adding experience to my resume at no cost. You need to be able to fly to a higher standard for the commercial rating and I'm not yet certain that I qualify. We'll see what I think as I begin to fly next year.

I'm also thinking of starting some cross country training. I have *plenty* to learn about good thermalling and flight technique but one way you can gain that is to fly with experts and our cross country instructors are the ones who can teach you what to look for.

Until then, I'm going to thoroughly enjoy the time left in the flying season and sharpen up those flight skills.

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