Since the first time I'd seen them, at Sleap, I'd been fascinated by gliders. The long, slim wings and low speed give them a grace in the air that nothing else comes close to matching. I don't remember how it happened, but shortly after I got my PPL I found that there was a gliding club (or commercial concern, I never quite worked out what the ownership was) in a village called Fuentemilanos at the foot of the mountains near the town of Segovia.
Where Sanchidrian had been aesthetically just acceptable, Fuentemilanos was quite delightful. It was usually cooler, too, and the drive to get there was easier in both directions.
Another difference between the two places was the airfield itself. Instead of the short, narrow, bumpy runway that I'd come to know and love at Sanchidrian, the one at Fuentemilanos was huge -- bigger than even the wartime bomber field at Sleap. As I write this, I wonder if it had perhaps been built as an emergency field for American B-52 bombers based in Spain. The club occupied a new building, which combined a hangar with an office and restaurant, and had three training gliders, a couple of single seaters and a Robin DR-400 tug plane. In addition, there was an old Citroen Dyane that was used as a ground tug, whenever it worked (the Dyane is a larger-bodied version of the 2CV with the "big" 600cc twin cylinder air cooled engine).
The facilities at the club were a little strange, in the sense that the nice new dining room was used only when somebody felt like making lunch, or somebody came up from the village to do it, and the building was in stark contrast to the beat-up ground tug. Although I had a few meals there, the lunch that I remember the most was when Billy, the tug pilot, emptied a bottle of brandy and a few cups of espresso into a tray and set fire to the resulting mixture. This is called a quemada (literally, a "burned") and you gently stir the liquid to the top of the tray until all the alcohol has burned off. The result of this is a (more or less) alcohol-free cognac flavored coffee drink that is quite delicious.
The nature of gliding makes it much more of a group pastime than powered flight. You need a tug pilot (or a winch operator if you don't have a tug) and somebody to hold the wings level until you begin to move. It's also nice to have a third person to handle the tow line. After landing, you need people to move the glider back to the beginning of the takeoff run, the number varying depending on whether the ground tug is running today. You can see that there's a lot more to be involved with than simply turning up, getting in and flying.
Although I'd wanted to do this for a long time, I was unreasonably nervous about my first flight in a glider, even though I would (obviously) not be solo. After all... In all my flying so far, the absence of a functioning engine was a crisis, and I was contemplating a flight here where it would be absent before I even left the ground. How could it be possible to get to the field engineless? And, having got there, what happened if you overshot? What about the single wheel? Not only do you scrape the tail along the ground, but you have to keep the wingtips up. What about flying in line behind the tug, in all the propwash? I'd already heard that tug pilots get very irritated if you drag them around too much.
As you can tell, I was turning this, in my mind, from a simple, elegant form of flying into a nightmare thicket of "what-if"s.
It wasn't like that at all. Nothing that I'd worried about proved to be a problem. Even the two-seater training gliders were so different from any powered aircraft I'd flown that there was never a momen't doubt about controllability, getting to the field, keeping the tug pilot happy or any of the other worries that I'd invented. After a couple of flights dual, the goal became simply to stay up there as long as possible.
A typical flight began before the tug was back from the last launch. You strap in tightly to the hard, but comfortable, reclined seat. Somebody else closes and latches the canopy, and you find that the pre-takeoff checklist is much shorter than in a powered aircraft (trim: none, throttle: none, carb heat: none, mixture: none, primer: none, pitch: none, fuel: none, switches: none). About all that you have to do is make sure that the control surfaces are free (much better to find out about that now than in the air), nobody's kicked in the few instruments and that you have your sunglasses. Oh, and the piece of wool fiber is still tied on the nose -- a simple and highly effective slip indicator. Flaps up, spoilers retracted. The tug purrs overhead, throttle closed, with the long tow line streaming behind it, lands long and taxis back.
As the tug turns, one of the ground crew picks up the glider end of the tow line and brings it over. Pull the big yellow knob a couple of times to verify that it works, and the tow line is attached. The crew goes to a wingtip and picks it up. It's more comfortable with the wings level and you settle back into the seat. Give the ready signal and the tug takes up the slack. The propwash gives you enough control to keep the wings level right away, the tail skid lifts after just a bump-thump or two and after an astonishingly short run, you're airborne. The tug is still on the ground, though, and your job is to fly straight and level a couple of feet above the ground while you stay alert for problems -- if Billy has a problem with the tug, your job is to drop the tow and fly somewhere out of his way. At about 60mph you're both airborne, climbing and accelerating. It's only about another 10mph to the best combined speed, a glider isn't meant to fly fast. You can relax a little bit now, because you'll have a bit more time to react to a problem.
If this is your first glider flight, you'll be surprised at the lack of noise and vibration. All that you hear is the loud rush of air from the slipstream. When you get to the agreed height above the ground the tug levels off, you reach forward to the big yellow knob, pull... and everything changes. As soon as he feels the glider release Billy points the nose almost vertically at the ground (he's a bit of a showman) and you pull the stick back gently to trade that extra 20mph for more height.
Back at the 50mph best glide speed the noise reduces considerably, it was a nice ride up but it's good to get some peace when the tug's gone.
On the way up you were looking around to see if there were any soaring birds that had found a thermal, and it looks as if there's an eagle in one just over there. Go over and join her. Fly a few circles together. She looks over her wing at you, you look over your wing at her. It's not much of a thermal, but it keeps you at about the same height for a while. It's getting pretty late in the day, so there's not much going on, anyway, and there's no wind up here so there's no point in looking for any wave off the mountains. So... this is going to be a fairly short sightseeing flight, and none the worse for that.
You have plenty of height for a short cross-country, so head on over to Segovia. This old town still has its water delivered by an aqueduct built by the Romans, already old when the medieval castle was built. From the ground, it's a fairy-tale castle with pointed turrets, and sheer cliffs, but from up here you can see how it perches, far above the town, on a rock shaped just like the prow of a giant ship bursting from the surrounding mountains. Fly a few lazy circles in the evening air above the town, with the sun going down over the plain that stretches to the Portuguese mountains.
You've been aware all the while of your height and vertical speed. It's time to go (you really don't want to be the one who has to land in a field). Follow the road at the foot of the mountains, whose tops are now above you, back to Fuentemilanos, the third village. Time for a little more hanging around, it would be nice to stay up longer in this sunset cockpit euphoria but without any rising air... "Gravity: Not just a good idea, it's the law!". There's nobody else up here, so make an abbreviated join on a (somewhat sloppy) base leg. Turn finals over the village. Time to concentrate and make sure that the shape of the runway looks good. Sweep silently over the threshold, but don't pop the spoilers yet. Just fly a couple of feet above the runway until the hangar, about halfway along is near. Back with the blue spoiler knob and feel the lift lessen to lower you onto the single wheel. Left into the parking area with just enough speed to get up the slight incline and stop a few feet from the hangar door. It's only as you come to a complete stop that the control is gone and a wingtip settles back to the ground.
Loosen the harness, swing the canopy back and sit in the silence for a delicious moment.
Not all flights are quite that enjoyable, of course. A couple of times I had to avoid sheep on the runway (one of the local shepherds never seemed to understand that he should keep off) and one afternoon something really strange happened to the weather: Although totally calm at ground level there was so much turbulence at a few hundred feet that, despite his harness, Billy bruised his hand against the roof of the tug holding himself in place when we first got into it. Imagine driving along a dirt road full of large, deep and invisible potholes. As soon as we hit the turbulence he leveled off (as much as possible) and waggled his wings to say "go!". I didn't need telling twice, and felt like kissing the ground when I got back down. No more flying for anybody that day. Wind affects a glider proportionally more, of course, because of the low speeds. If it was blowing reasonably strongly you could really make the landing and launch easy by coming gently over the threshold, pop the spoilers a little earlier (and more gently!) than usual and lower it onto the ground at hardly more than a walking pace. That way, nobody had to move the thing around on the ground.
One weekday I flew the tug. After a short dual familiarization, Billy let me loose on my own, and I have to say that the Robin DR-400 is the nicest aircraft I've flown. It has plenty of power, of course, but it also has the attributes that enjoyed with the Rallye Club. I realized that perhaps Billy wasn't really hot-dogging it after all -- the Robin feels perfectly happy with its nose pointed at the ground and generally just feels right. The canopy gives a better view than anything else I've flown (except for the gliders). There must be a catch somewhere or this is what everybody would fly, but I certainly didn't find it. I wanted one!
Unfortunately, I never finished my glider certification because I left Spain. This meant that I never got to fly one of the small, sleek single seaters. But I dream about that sometimes, even now. And if I miss flying, gliding is the flying that I miss.