I really recommend anyone flying a glider as a passenger (in Europe this is often possible on regional air shows run by the local aeroclub) it's totally different experience to engine powered aircraft!
It's much quieter than small general aviation aircraft so you can talk to the pilot without a headset, the only noise being the air flowing around the plane.
The whole plane is also usually much lighter and has better visibility, not to mention being very graceful. At least for me the experience felt much more direct and elegant.
And the experience of being powered pretty much directly by nature and the pilots skill in finding the invisible rising thermals is priceless! Its the perfect metagame, the pilot uses their extensive meteorogical experience to guess where the thermals are and flies there. If the guess was right you are rewarded by the sweet sweet positive altitude value on the variometer. If the guess was wrong the altitude budget is spent and you have to land and try again.
And lastly, it all feels so safe! Like, really - the aircraft has no engine that can fail and is pretty much built to land on any reasonably flat field. And the pilot is trained to always look for a landing area in case they don't find thermals and have to land early.
And what happens if a glider lands in a field ? Gliders have detachable wings so that they can be loaded on trailer dispatched from the airfield. In favorable conditions sometimes a tow aircraft can be dispatched to land near the glider on the same field and tow it aloft again.
Really, gliders are so much different than "normal" aircraft yet so fascinating! :)
It's much quieter than small general aviation aircraft so you can talk to the pilot without a headset, the only noise being the air flowing around the plane.
The whole plane is also usually much lighter and has better visibility, not to mention being very graceful. At least for me the experience felt much more direct and elegant.
And the experience of being powered pretty much directly by nature and the pilots skill in finding the invisible rising thermals is priceless! Its the perfect metagame, the pilot uses their extensive meteorogical experience to guess where the thermals are and flies there. If the guess was right you are rewarded by the sweet sweet positive altitude value on the variometer. If the guess was wrong the altitude budget is spent and you have to land and try again.
And lastly, it all feels so safe! Like, really - the aircraft has no engine that can fail and is pretty much built to land on any reasonably flat field. And the pilot is trained to always look for a landing area in case they don't find thermals and have to land early.
And what happens if a glider lands in a field ? Gliders have detachable wings so that they can be loaded on trailer dispatched from the airfield. In favorable conditions sometimes a tow aircraft can be dispatched to land near the glider on the same field and tow it aloft again.
Really, gliders are so much different than "normal" aircraft yet so fascinating! :)