Sunday, May 13, 2007

Free as a Bird

No gardening this weekend - I've been gliding instead!!!


This was the Spring meeting of the East Pennine Association of Churchill Fellows, of which I'm currently Chairman. We usually go walking but fancied something more dyamnic, and one of the committee is a member of York Gliding Club, so off we went to Rufforth Airfield, just outside York.

Despite a weather forecast which promised heavy showers (and delivered them in Sheffield), gliding in York was excellent! Rufforth airfield is an old WW2 airfield, still in reasonable shape and used by the gliding club and various small-scale aviation outfits. Quite a lot of conventional gliders, a couple of powered gliders and an autogyro (which looked great fun).

Got a tow up to 2000 ft, behind a fairly basic plane,

then cast off. We found a thermal which took us up to 2500 ft and were up for about 25 mins. I flew it for a bit; managed not to pull the wings off or anything. Tremendous fun and would love to do it again.


2 comments:

Frankie said...

That would terrify me!!!

Gordon Mason said...

Oh it was brill; I loved it. I actually quite fancy wing-walking, where you stand on the top wing of a biplane, back against a strut (no sniggering please), while the plane does whizzy things through the sky.