Decided to go soaring last Saturday - haven’t been in a glider for about a year and a half, and the Rideau Valley Soaring Club offers intro flights in their German-made Grob 103, which is way more advanced than the Schweizer SGS-233A training glider I learned on.
I arrived mid-morning and helped the members there get a student up in a glider for a couple flights, then had to go pull out some cash from a bank because the club doesn’t accept credit.
The flight itself was terrific. We elected to release from the tow plane at a pretty high altitude, about 3,000’ agl, to give us the best chance at a long flight. Unfortunately, within about 20 minutes we had not found any decent lift and had dropped to 1,100’ agl. While preparing to land, though, we hit some nice lift and over the next 45 minutes had a fun time working the thermals. Ultimately we climbed up to about 2,500’ before heading in for a landing.
The flight was 1.2 hours in total, which was well worth the intro flight fee. It reminded me of how exciting soaring can be - the Air Cadets do not promote soaring itself, just the basics of gliding. I think I just might get a membership at the RVS club next year and see how far I can get :)