Reflections from a backseat glider pilot

I was fortunate as a kid in high school. I worked hard enough to pay for about 75% of the cost of getting my Private Pilot certificate and my parents rewarded good grades and staying out of trouble by providing the rest of the money I needed. They were also willing to drive me to the airport until a few months after my 16^th birthday. At some point, they decided that, if I could fly solo up and down the Tennessee Valley in a Piper Cherokee, I could darn well drive myself to the airport. Looking back, I see their point.

At the time, I had dreams of flying for the airlines. The airline industry at the time was in a down cycle and anyone without military experience was in for a long, slow road. I ended up getting an engineering degree in college, a choice I’ve never regretted. A glider add-on rating is fairly easy even for a low time pilot, so, during one of my spring breaks, instead of going to Florida like many of my classmates, I drove back and forth to the Chilhowee Gliderport in Benton, Tennessee and earned my glider rating. I soloed on my second day and completed all my requirements for the rating by the end of the week.

I soloed the glider on my second day of training.

When I came to Ohio, I joined a local glider club and eventually earned a Commercial Certificate added to the glider side of my license. The club offers glider rides to visitors, but to fly a paying visitor at the club, you have to have your Commercial Certificate even though you are not getting paid. Usually club instructors fly these guest flights, but on days when they are busy, it helps to have someone with their Commercial to take that extra load off the instructors. It is always a lot of fun and you meet some really great people.

Flying a glider from the back seat is easier in many ways than flying from the front. The canopy rails provide for a reference to the horizon and it is easier to tell if you are slipping or skidding with the long nose ahead of you. I have also found that I like to keep my eyes on my passengers from the back seat. Their head movement tells me if they are doing OK or if they are ready to land. I learned early on that long before a passenger asks to land, they do a head-bob that is unmistakable.

From the backseat, it is easier to tell if you are slipping or skidding with the long nose ahead of you.

There are a few passengers that stand out over the years. When I reentered the dating world after a midlife divorce, I asked a date if she would be willing to go up with me in a glider. To my surprise, she accepted. While she does not share my passion for aviation, she has proven to be a skilled copilot when we fly powered aircraft. I surprised her when I proposed to her at the Cloud 9 Café next to the airport in Prestonsburg Kentucky. To this day, I am glad she said yes, if only to avoid the awkward silence for the 90 minute flight home.

Flying experienced power pilots in gliders is always entertaining. Most powered aircraft do not need a lot of rudder these days. Gliders generate a lot of adverse aileron yaw, and you have to fly with your feet as much as you do the stick. One afternoon, I flew a gentleman that owned a Cherokee Six. Cherokees are wonderful airplanes, but they are not known for needing much rudder in the air. I let him have the controls of the Blanik sailplane we were flying and, as I had guessed, he needed some work on his rudder coordination. I then had him follow along on the controls to show him how much rudder is needed in the glider. Though he tried hard, he never did get the feel of it.

One afternoon, I was asked to help fly a group of Boy Scouts. I did about six flights that day in blazing heat. Staying hydrated was a real struggle and “pretzeling” myself in and out of the Schweizer 2-33 was no fun at all but, on the other hand, the kids were having a blast! They were polite, respectful, and appreciative. It may have been a long day, but it was one of those days you live for.

One afternoon a longtime friend and coworker asked if I would be willing to take his two teenaged kids for a flight. Seeing what the kids got out of the flights was interesting and caused me to reflect on why I enjoy soaring. His son was a typical gearhead. He couldn’t wait to get on the controls. He enjoyed doing wingovers, stalls, steep turns etc. and asked a million questions.

His daughter on the other hand had no interest in taking the controls, but she enjoyed the quiet and the beauty it. She was particularly thrilled when a hawk joined us in a thermal for a few minutes. She didn’t ask many questions. She was simply content to enjoy the experience.

My friend’s daughter had no interest in taking the controls, but she enjoyed the quiet and the beauty it.

What I learned that day is that the appeal of soaring for me is a combination of the two kids’ experiences. I enjoy the technical challenge of flying gliders, but there is also the aesthetic quality. Gliders connect with the air in a special way. They work with the air rather than against it.

At least twice, I have had the privilege of taking WWII veterans up for their first flights. One of them was a triage medic on Okinawa. He was on the beach on April 2, 1945. Interestingly, 25 years later I played on the very same beach when my father was stationed on the island.

The other gentleman that I flew with was an armorer on the aircraft carrier USS Essex. I first took him up for his 97^th birthday. After the flight, I casually mentioned that we should do it again when he turned 100. A couple of years later, his son called and asked if the offer for another glider flight was still good. Even at 100, he was in great shape. The only accommodation we had to make for him was to use a golf cart for him on the flightline. Taking these two gentlemen up brought my flying back to when I started to fly in high school. My original flight instructor was a C-47 pilot in North Africa during the war. All three of them had at least one thing in common: they were all cooler than any of us could hope to be.

There is one passenger who was by far the most memorable. A lady had brought her two daughters, a teenager and a child of about eight, to the gliderport for rides. The teenager was much like my coworker’s daughter, polite, respectful, a good kid. With the ballast, I was able to put her in the front seat of the glider, and we had a great flight. The problem with her younger sister was that she was a tiny child. Even with all the ballast we had, we would have been behind the back of the CG envelope with her in the front seat. The only way to fly with her would be to put her in the back seat where I couldn’t see her very well. Her mother and I talked the child through what was expected of her, what she could, and couldn’t touch, and by the time we’d finished, we were both comfortable that I could fly her safely.

It seems like once in a while you get a passenger that “gets it”. I could tell that she understood about flying when we were about 100 feet in the air on takeoff. From behind me, I heard this long drawn out “woooooowww caaoooooolllll”. Throughout the flight, I would ask how she was doing or what she thought, and the answer was mostly some form of “wow, cool, or neato”, always drawn out with a sense of awe in her voice. After the flight, she darned near hugged the stuffings out of me. I would like to think that maybe by now there is a lady flying F-16’s or a 737 for Southwest, who tells people about how she got the flying bug when her mom took her and her sister to a gliderport one day.

We are all familiar with the grand descriptions of flight by John Magee, or Richard Bach, or perhaps Ernest Gann. They speak as adults to other adults and they do a fine job of it. At its simplest, flight goes beyond description. Flight speaks to that inner child in all of us, full of wonder and amazement, the potential for untold adventures in a limitless sky. Just like the WWII veterans that I flew took me back to where I started my flying as a teenager, that child took me all the way back to where I began, back to when I first fell in love with flight.

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Bill Hunt

Bill’s passion for aviation started early in life following in the footsteps of two uncles that were USAF pilots, and as an Army Brat at numerous military bases in the U.S. and the Far East. After receiving his Private Pilot certificate in high school, he earned a degree in Aerospace Engineering and has 30+ years of service at Wright Patterson AFB as a civilian Systems Safety Engineer. He currently flies with Caesar Creek Soaring Club and Victory Aviation.

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• Reflections from a backseat glider pilot - May 31, 2023