It’s been 52 years since I first went solo, but on Sunday, another kind of “first solo”. Although I’ve been flying powered aircraft fairly regularly, it had been a long time since I had soloed a glider. This was partly due to where I was living and also due to, ahem, a W&B problem!
The latter problem is now solved so on Saturday, I did two required checkflights - a 2000’ tow to confirm I still remembered how to fly a glider and then a 4000’ tow to do stalls and spins. After the spin practice, we found a good thermal and regained all our lost height. At this point, my instructor, who is the most experienced mountain pilot in the club, said “Do you want to go to the mountains?” “Sure”, said I. So we headed west towards the Rockies, about 50 km away. With about 10km to go, we were confronted by a large shower cloud that was threatening to turn into a Cb, so we headed back to the field, where I landed and was signed off.
On Sunday I flew solo, for the first time in 13 years! Like most first-solo pilots, I noticed that the takeoff run was shorter and the annoying whine from the back seat had disappeared (just joking!). A 1.1 hour flight, again cut short by a threatening storm, but fantastic fun in a 20 m DG-1000S. 45 to 1 glide ratio at 50 kts and about 12 to 1 at 100 kts!
Here’s the shower that shut us down:
