While attending Colonel White, I was working on my power and glider pilot licenses. Several of our class mates were brave enough to fly with me at the Soaring Society of Dayton flight facilities then located in Richmond , IN and Waynesville , OH . Dagmar Taudine and her father, who flew gliders in Germany, were among my first victims. Paul Gustin, Steve Dohme and Jack Wegledge flew with me on several occasions. Looking into my old log book, I see we had some great flights.

I wound up going to California State University in Sacramento and continued my gliding experiences in the high Sierras. There are a number of forms of lift in gliding and all are present in the Sierras.

Thermaling is circling below cumulus clouds hopefully in lift. Most people have seen this done by larger birds and even in Ohio I have joined birds in a thermal. It would become exciting when several chicken hawks would start diving at you to try to drive you off from their thermal. I guess they did not like flying with a bird that was bigger than them. In Ohio , rising 400 feet a minute was a good day. In the Sierras, 800 to over 1,000 a minute, was common and the lift really pushes you into your seat. It was not uncommon to reach 16,000 to 18,000 feet over the Sierras in a thermal. Yes we fly oxygen equipped.

When the wind blows against a mountain side, it creates a form of lift known a ridge soaring. Many of you have seen sea gulls using this lift while soaring the shoreline and almost becoming suspended as they use the lift and their forward motion in equal proportions. Working this kind of lift brings you close to the mountains and allows you to cover a great distance in a short amount of time.

With out a doubt, wave soaring is the most exciting thing I have done. If you have been to a river and seen fast moving water roll over a rock, you will notice that the water drops down over the rock and then goes back up even if there is not a second rock to push the water up. Now take that same principle and add a storm front and air mass hitting a mountain range and you have wave soaring. Getting into a wave usually takes place behind a tow plane and staying in formation is a challenge due to the rough air associated with the edge of the wave. Once you are in the wave it is a s smooth as glass with lift taking you up at over 1,000 feet per minute. I was in a wave over the Sierras and went to 23,500 feet and had to pull out of lift due to my oxygen equipment restrictions not allowing flight over 24,000 feet.

Three summers had passed from our graduating from CW when I had a great flight in Switzerland flying through the Switzer Ural Alps . Flying formation with two other gliders, we flew through mountain passes and landed for lunch at a glider port before starting back. I did become a bit concerned when the guys I was flying with had a beer with their lunch. No big deal to them. It is an extreme violation of flight rules here in the US . It was the highlight of my 21 st year and a summer in Europe . The picture below will give you an idea of what the flying was like. We would all call to each other on the radio when lift was found. I would never have attempted the flight if it was not for my German and Swiss friends that I was flying with.

I discovered a new form of lift when flying in the remnants of Hurricane Charley last year in NC now my new home. We took off and the ground air was dead still. It was overcast and I expected no lift and just a sled ride back to the airport. As we neared the clouds, I could see that they were boiling and I was in lift. Normally this is not the case. I talked to several weather guys and the only thing we could figure out was that Charlie's cold air was pushing down on the warm ground air resulting is a massive uplift of air.

I hope to see all of you at the reunion.