Why gliding?
A sport you never finish
Gliding is to powered flying what sailing is to motorboating. With an engine, the flying serves the trip. In a glider, the flying is the game.
The game
There is no throttle, so every flight is a puzzle: find rising air, climb in it, decide where to go next. The sky changes by the hour. Some days it gives you 10 minutes, some days 10 hours.
And then there's racing
Cross-country gliding is also a race: fly a set course around turnpoints, and the fastest average speed wins. Any flight can be scored online and ranked against pilots around the world.
Always a next rung
- First solofrom age 14
- An hour aloftyour first real soaring flight
- Cross-countryleaving the home field behind
- Silver badge50 km, 5 hours, 1,000 m climb
- Gold badge300 km, 3,000 m climb
- Diamond badge500 km, 5,000 m climb
Figures
- 632 kmthe longest cross-country flight out of PAGSC
- 7 hoursaloft on a single flight out of PAGSC
- 3,008 kmthe world distance record
A sport for decades
Gliding rewards judgment more than strength, so a 16-year-old and a 70-year-old fly the same sky. And nobody launches alone: it takes a crew, which is why it works as a club.
It makes better pilots
Gliding builds stick-and-rudder skill and energy management like nothing else. The captains of both the “Miracle on the Hudson” and the “Gimli Glider” were glider pilots.