A bird's eye view

Louise Gilbert has already viewed Scotland from a balloon. Now she's upping the ante and taking to the air in a glider.

The command to bail out of the glider is “Jump, jump, jump,” the instructor tells me. My parachute is strapped on and I'm listening intently. “You must be clear about this. I will not repeat it. I'll jettison the canopy and I will be out before you can blink. Then you must follow me.”

OK, I'm clear on this but I'm starting to wonder if I mislaid my senses the day I agreed with the editor to do this story. I'm not meant to be parachuting. I'm here to sample the delights of powerless flight at the Deeside Gliding Club and I have no intention of hurtling towards the earth at 200 kilometres an hour, which by the way, my instructor assures me is the reason my parachute needs to be strapped on so tightly. Hmm, a comforting thought... Wojciech Schiller has been gliding for 20 years and his experience shows. In addition to the full safety brief, Wojciech gives me a detailed guided tour of the glider, explaining how it works.

“The glider is called Puchacz, which is Polish for owl, a soaring bird.”

I'm glad about this. There would be nothing worse than it being named after the ostrich.

Wojciech also points out a variety of instruments within the cockpit, “compass, altimeter, accelerator, rudder.” To a novice like me it looks complicated.

“Not at all,” he replies. “It's much easier to fly than it is to drive a car.”

Soon the tug aircraft, a Piper Pawnee, pulls across the field and lines up in front of us, a rope is attached to the nose of the glider and on...

To read the rest of this article you can do any of the following.

• By : Louise Gilbert
• In : Outdoor Scotland
• Issue : 11
• Page : 32
• Words : 1,416