KRONFELD ON GLIDING AND SOARING.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

2 KRONFELD ON GLIDING & SOARING
he can do to get it back on to an even keel amid the heavy
clouds that threaten to swallow it. He must seek a way of
escape from their embrace by making use of every favouring
current and avoiding the unfavourable ones. He had just
started when the storm broke. First he had a break-neck
race with the thunder-clouds ; then he flew before the
gale and often through its very midst. It was a wild ride !
his plane danced up and down, backwards and forwards,
like some car on a fantastic, crazy switchback, but at last
he won through, and now he has risen above the storm.
Like a proud eagle, he serenely wings his silent way to
alnd at length some ninety miles from his starting-point, still
laughing with the glee of his wondrous conflict and triumph.
Here is another vision for you ! Again a man hangs
beneath the sky, but if you will see him, you must have
good eyes, for it is pitch-black night. So dark it is that the
pilot cannot even see his wingtips which are swallowed
up by the gloom. Although the breakers on the coast
beneath him proclaim their proximity by eerie howls, he
dare ride no higher, for he must keep in view the faint
signal light at the turning point, which is his only visible
object in this thick darkness.
Thus he flies for hours. While all good citizens lie
wrapped in slumber, this silent ghost flits his rounds with
the regularity of a clock.
Often his wings avoid scraping the dunes by a hair'sbreadth,
and it is well they do so, for the merest touch
would hurtle him into the raging surf. Suddenly the
breeze freshens ; the machine gains height and sails
onwards until a grey dawn drives away the night.
These young soarers can do yet more. They wait on a
hilltop in their machines until a huge, magnificent cloud
rolls up ; then the thick rubber rope is hooked on to
the machine, and some sixteen to twenty lusty youths
tug at it. " Pull out! " x orders the pilot, and the sixteen
yards of cable are drawn taut.
" Run ! " now rings out the sharp word of command.
The rope crew shoot forward ; the machine, held fast
from behind, groans under the strain.
1 The English Instructions are : " Walk Run Release."