According to dictionary.com the word soaring means: “the sport of flying a sailplane.” One would think since it is an aircraft, it comes ready to fly. But a sailplane can be travel ready and portable and it doesn’t always mean “up” in the air.
Larry Lund stopped in the Herald-Dispatch office last week to place an ad for the Minnesota Soaring Club’s Annual Sleepy Eye Weekend.
It sounded intriguing and we chatted about the details of the upcoming event. Doreen was already busy with her own stories so I had the luck of the draw to find out more about the sailplanes when they arrived on Friday at the airport.
If you saw a few vehicles making their way through town with long, narrow trailers in tow, they were the Minnesota Soaring Club members.
I arrived at the airport mid afternoon on Friday with camera, paper and pen in hand. I wanted to see them actually assemble a plane from the beginning.
It was a bright, sunny afternoon almost to the point of being too hot.
The first thing was to get the trailer open and the ramp down.
Once that happened, the fuselage was carefully pulled out, tail first. With the body of the plane in one piece there were two peg-type pieces sticking out from each side just behind the cockpit. (I thought to myself, “Is that all the wings hang on to?”)
The body of the plane is set on the ramp, locked in position by a latch. Marilyn Meline, the object of my fascination and the pilot of the plane we were watching be assembled, took out two bright tennis balls. Hummm, tennis balls, wonder what purpose they serve. Remember the pegs I spoke about jutting from each side of the plane? The tennis balls acted as a shield on the pegs to protect the wings as they were carefully being pulled out from the trailer. There isn’t much wiggle room for pieces in the trailer and one wrong move could result in a wing being scratched or the latch peg being bent.
Each wing was almost as long as the body of the plane. Once the wing was out of the trailer, it was rotated to the correct position for being attached to the fuselage. The same process was done for both right and left side wings.
Assembling the sailplane is a three person job. As the wing was lifted to the height of the pegs, one person held the very wing tip and acted as the adjuster. The person who lifted, moved left or right, rotated forward or back, and pulled and pushed until the wing was in the proper position to then be latched in with a locking pin. The other two people were positioned next to the fuselage both in front and behind the wing to indicate what needed to be adjusted for the correct connection.
When each wing was connected properly, a stand was placed at the end to hold them up while the locking pins were adjusted to the exact position.
The seat was then adjusted back to the correct place and the canopy was re-attached. Marilyn was ready to take flight after checking her list to ensure all steps were completed.
Mark Cleare was kind enough to offer me the opportunity to soar and I didn’t need to think twice as to my answer. “I would love to go soaring! Thank you for asking.”
We walked to the two-seater called Puchacz which means Owl in French. After my instructions of what would take place, Mark helped me get the five-point harness on and waited our turn for the tow plane.
Jon Mattsson was our man. He held the wing to keep the plane level until he signaled the pilot we were ready. Two hundred feet of cable was released from the back of the tow plane before it was taunt and we were slowly moving, ready for our flight to begin.
It was a truely amazing thing to experience as the only sound you hear is air coming in the vents. The aircraft as you taxi down the runway and begin soaring has very little sound.
There is no motor and until Doreen mentioned it, I hadn’t thought about it. I don’t recall being told if there was a parachute in the glider either.
Whether you refer to the aircraft itself as a glider or a sailplane, one cannot appreciate it until you are actually in flight.
Christopher Cross had a hit song in the early part of the 80s titled Sailing. Some of the lyrics are: Sailing, Takes me away
To where I've always heard it could be
Just a dream and the wind to carry me
And soon I will be free...
There we were climbing to 3,000 feet in the air, behind the tow plane. “Pull that release lever,” Mark said. It was the release for the tow rope. We were soaring on our own...high above in the beautiful sky. We were free.