Saturday we were gliding out of Vulcan. It was a little bit of a cold day with lots of low hanging cloud and a good clip of wind. Around the time we packed up and finished for the day the big ball of bright light in the sky finally showed up to the party. Seriously- I spent the ENTIRE DAY in my winter flight jacket! But we got all of the cadets flown, and that's all that matters.
On Sunday, I got to put my power fam upgrade to use! I flew 5 cadets in two shifts that resulted in 2 hours of free flying time!! We flew from Okotoks to High River and to AJ ranch and back. The weather was absolutely great in the morning and then come afternoon the convective activity had increased and it was a little bumpier. Man I wished that I had of been gliding! Once I was done power flying for the morning, I found my way to Vulcan to do some trailer driver training. I was a little bummed, because I was expecting to be tested in order to receive my trailer endorsement on my military drivers licence........I didn't do so hot however...in fact, I had never even DRIVEN anything hauling a trailer before! AND THIS WASN'T NO DINKY LITTLE TRAILER! This was a 30 something foot tin can! And Greg (the examiner/instructor) decided it would be best to go into town and make left and right turns on basically one way streets......needless to say I was hyperventilating a little... ok, a lot..... I may or may not have broken down into tears. Only after I drove the tin can back to the airport though.... I fought back the urge to call it quits DURING the trip though. Or, I also thought about just pulling over and making Greg drive it back. I got better though....apparently. I eventually stopped hitting the curbs.... Not before town-folk got their comments in..."you know the airport is THAT way right?" or "You folks LOST?????"......yup.....that happened..... So then I went back to practice backing up with said 30ft tin can. That too got better and better. Eventually I got the trailer backed up 90 degrees, unhooked it and then hooked up the "DINKY LITTLE TRAILER" I mentioned earlier. That too took a few(x10) attempts, but I did get it backed up 90 degrees too. That escapade concluded the day.
TODAY! I went out to the Cu Nim gliding club. This was all in prep for our Chics Take Flight event this summer (http://www.chicstakeflight.ca/). I've never previously been to a civilian gliding club before. Back home, there were only ever two in the region, both of which were/are in Nova Scotia. So I never got to fly anything other than the 2-33. Today, that all changed!! I bought a tow ticket and got towed to 2000' in the ASK-21with an instructor strapped in behind me. It was the first time in God knows how long that I've flown aero tow- so that was a little on the weak side..... And then we thermaled! It was great. It was the first time that I've ever really done any amount of thermalling. We don't really encourage it in the air cadet gliding program because it doesnt really go hand in hand with an efficient operation. So this was an awesome experience. I flew the K-21 from take off straight through to landing it!! They were even working on me pretty good to take up membership there and come out to fly...we'll see!
Here's a picture!
All in all, it was a great weekend filled with flying, flying and more flying and I loved every minute of it!!!
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