Follow the Dream

By Jamie Sheehan

I was an Australian outside of my comfort zone working on a NZ power station in Stratford when one day on my way home from work I noticed a sign on the side of the road. “Glider Flights.”

An almost forgotten dream flashed to the front of my mind. I set myself the goal of achieving a Solo rating before going home, which only gave me a couple of months and I only had Sundays off.

I had circuit after circuit, with an occasional joy flight to keep reminding me what it will be like once you head off by yourself. Even when I was not happy with my progression; the encouragement for me was always there. Berwyn Wisnewski was always telling me keep at it and all of a sudden it will click. Well to my surprise it did.

I was dreading stalls and spins, putting the ship into a situation that is not normal for a glider and definitely not normal for me. Kevin ran me through the first stall. She didn’t want to do it. The Blanik probably had a little too much ‘ballast’; the ship had a tendency to go into incipient spin. When it was my turn I felt the shuddering and the nose dropping into the incipient spin. My response was immediate without consciously thinking about it; stick to neutral opposite rudder, when the ship stops spinning, stick forward to gain air speed, ease back gently into straight and level flight. Amazing it actually worked.

This for me was the turning point in my tuition. Kevin put me through a few more stall/incipient spin recovery exercises and my fear disappeared and confidence grew.

Having my instructor’s confidence enabled me to have two fantastic experiences that I would imagine all glider pilots crave; soaring in mountain wave. In the space of a week I was in mountain wave twice. The wave for the Norfolk area comes from the ranges on the north-west side of Mt Taranaki. On one flight Kevin Koch piloted the Blanik into the wave at 3500 ft; we rocketed up to 10,000 ft in no time. We did not have oxygen and would need to stay below 10,000 ft for this flight. We had to work at staying that low. We put air brakes out and just about had the Blanik on its nose at times. The disappointing thing was that I needed to get to work, so one and a half hours in wave was all we could do for the day.

The next Saturday (24 May) the forecast was extremely good for wave. I was the first to the field and ‘keen as mustard’ to get going. It took a couple of attempts but Kevin and I made it into wave that day too.

This was the best wave flight I have had to date. Fellow pilots Clinton and Steve got to over 15,000 ft. The scenery was incredible with low cloud being pushed down over the mountain and booming

Photos from my fantastic wave flight over Mt Taranaki.

vertically to above 15000 ft on the other side. It was one of the best days gliding I have had. And the fact that we shared it with some mates from the Stratford gliding club was the icing on the cake. I have posted a video on youtube of this flight (http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=R_2PGthcEwo)

The next weekend was another great milestone, I went solo; it was scary and exhilarating all at once. On the downwind leg I could see everyone watching from the club room, I ran through my checks, turned onto base, picked my landing point and came in for a soft landing (although a bit low on base for the first bloody time). I really can’t put into words the feeling I had when I completed my first solo, I am sure the pilots reading this will understand what I mean.

I am now back in Australia but I can’t thank the Norfolk Aviation Sports club enough for helping me realise my dream.