I Very Much Like Flying
August 5th, 2007 in News.
Being an ECE student has it’s perks… The head of the department, Prof. Looft, sponsors a newbie gliding event every year with the gliding club he belongs to. There were about 25 random WPI kids out there, and we all flew. Very epic!
Once the tow rope lets go, the pilot (in the back) basically showed each of us how the controls felts and what a glider was like. For Dezi, my pilot, that basically meant instantly stalling then pulling a “rescue dive” (laying the thing over and spiraling) to make sure I was paying attention. Dezi was quite a charactor.
I flew for quite a bit without issue, since I’ve flown a few other small craft in my day. There were still lots of other people in line though, so eventually Dezi took over and brought us in about twice the speed one would like to be to land… he slid the plane back and forth about 50 feet off the ground to scrub off speed. Not really the method I would have chosen, but all’s well that doesn’t involve death.