Volume 16 No 1 Feb 1965.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

TRUE FLIGHT-A FABLEBy M. BIRDOOKING back at it, it was strangeL that it should have taken Fred solong to switch from power-flying togliding. At his old flying club he alwaystalked about .. Man's age-long dream offlight ", .. imitating the birds" and allthat sort of guff, in an obsessional waywhich even the keen pilots thought ratherunhealthy.Anyway, one afternoon he put hisGemini down at our site, took a joy-rideand that was it.This was .. true flight, the real, naturalthing ". Nothing unusual in that, butFred said it with an intensity that no onehad seen before.In a week he had sold the Gemini andordered one of those breathless Continentalsailplanes with retracting undercarriage,radio, flaps - the works, jnfact.. He was pretty intolerant of beingtold how to do thmgs and we all predictedhe would break his neck in notime.But no. Fred winded us all by gettingtwo diamonds and a fistful of recordswithin the year. He was a natural-bornflyer or something. He seemed to beenjoying himself all right, but towards,the end of the season he started grumblingthat this was not .. true flight "... Too artificial ", he said. All thoseinstruments and gadgets, the enclosedcockpit - it was unnatural. ,. I want thewind in my face, flying by the seat ofmy pants ", etc. He was off again.We weren't at all prepared for hisnext move. He could I;eTtainly affordsomething better than a Cadet, but heinsisted that this was just what he waslooking for.It had no instruments - none thatworked anyway - and flew just like aCadet. Fred was delirious. The realthing, at last! He strapped himself in.declared Glasgow, gave .. All Out!"and was gone.With his third diamond out of the waywe felt that he would surely settle downto enjoy his glidin,g like a normal chap.Yet the old restlessness seized him beforelong. Why must he sit cooped up in ;'1box, a barbarous mechanism of wiresand pulleys between his muscles and theair? Downright unnatural. Not realflying at all. He knew just what wasneeded and shortly set to work.• • •The Committee were adamant. No,Fred would not be allowed to jump offthe Bowl hanging from his Pilcher­Lilienthal thingumajig. Look whathappened to Pilcher and Lilienthal, theysaid. Which for anybody but Fred wouldhave beeb a convincing argument. Hetook Umbrage, High Dudgeon andworse. He resigned his membership onthe spot, packed his bamboo and canvascontraption in a rucksack and marchedgrimly out of the gates. The same dayhe was sighted heading north at c1oudbaseafter successfully lau.nching himselfoff lvinghoe Beacon. It was the last anyof us saw of him.From time to time climbers in mountainousparts would tell stories of agreat winged figure swooping silentlyout of the mists and vanishing assuddenly as it appeared ...That wasn't quite the last news ofFred. Last year one of the Skylark 3pilots in the Caledonian Competitionswas nibbling cautiously at the edge ofa vast cu-pirnb when a lean, leatheryfigure flashed contemptuously past. Aslender web of feathers, stretchedbetween his outspread arms and feet,formed his entire means of flight. Heflew straight to the dark f;entre of the upcurrent,wheeled sharply and soared upinto the enveloping mark, uttering aneerie cry of triumph.The ~ransfonnationwas almost complete.NOTES BY AN 18thCENTURY BALLOONISTR. J. w. S. Pringle, for many yearsD president of Cambridge UniversityGliding Club and now Linacre Professorof Biology at Ox~ord, sends the followingextracts from the second editionof the Encyclopaedia Britannica describ·ing a balloon ascent by a Mr. Baldwinfrom Chester in 1785:-55