There comes a time in your gliding career that to progress to an internationally recognised level you need to turn your back on those oh so comfortable and familiar surroundings that is your home airfield. You’ve always landed back there and wherever over the surrounding countryside you’ve been soaring you have always been in gliding range of home. So it’s not an easy thing, to head off on track to your destination, most likely another gliding site, over 50 kilometres away. And that’s not all, even if you get there and follow that with the obligatory successful landing there are other tasks you need to have completed before you will be awarded that gateway Silver C badge. Why gateway? Well, it opens up more gliding opportunities: to be allowed to enter gliding competitions and to train to be a gliding instructor.
One Lincolnshire Gliding Club pilot is hoping to achieve Silver C this season and he’s put a lot of hard work into his attempt already. That pilot is the LGC secretary, Tom Robinson. Tom is one of our younger members and is actively involved in most aspects of the gliding club. It’s Tom you’ll speak to about your Air Experience Flight and he may even be driving the winch when you take that flight.
So, what tasks do you need to complete to be awarded the Silver C? There are three. They can be done in any order or all three can be done on one flight. Mix and match. The categories are, duration, height gain and distance. For duration you will need to stay airborne for 5 hours after release, for height gain you need to climb 1,000 metres above your previous low point and for distance you need to fly a minimum of 50 kilometres from your release point as the crow flies. There’s another little stipulation about the distance but I’m not going to confuse people with it and if taking a winch launch from Strubby Airfield at 47 feet above sea level this doesn’t come into play here. Nowadays the powers that be have decided that you can fly 50 kms away and then come back and land at your home airfield and that will qualify for your Silver distance. (Personally I think it’s more beneficial for your confidence to land away from your home airfield but what do I know? Ed.)
So far this season the weather hasn’t presented an opportunity to try for any of the Silver C legs from Strubby but watch this space as Tom’s Silver C journey unfolds.
