Before arriving to Truckee I wasn't sure what my sailplane experience would be like. I felt some apprehension because for once I wouldn't be pilot in command, plus, I wondered, are they safe? Turns out that sailplanes are quite amazing and becuase of their performance, like a L/D of 47:1 at 60kts, that they have huge potential to fly massive distances.
Darrly truely opened my eyes to this potential on our second flight. We departed Truckee at 11:45, almost an hour earlier than we did the previous day, and again we released into a thermal that took us to the moon. Today we followed the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and I remember at one point looking down on Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite excited that I had such a breathtaking view of the amazing peaks and spires from 15,000ft instead of from the surface of the earth. Actually before we were at 15k above Tuolumne we were pretty low looking down on the meadows contemplating whether the rangers would ticket us if we didn't find a thermal and had to land there.
Flying in a sailplane is beautiful, intense, calm, and very addicting. An interesting note is that when paragliding the thermals are small yet when in a sailplane the thermals are really big. I guess that when comparing a L/D of 47:1 at 60kts vs. 10:1 at 22kts and because the sailplane's sink rate is about half of my paraglider the thermals are going to feel quite a bit different.
We flew south to Mammoth Ski area before circling around Mono Lake on our way back north to Truckee. Sailplanes can bank it up to 60 degrees and really crank tight turns in thermals, and before this experience I naively thought they lacked agility.
A huge thanks to my friend Darryl Ramm for taking me flying in the DG-1000. I look forward to our upcoming tandem paragliding adventures!
