Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Gliders and Warplanes

My gliding club (SOSA) recently participated in the Canadian Aviation Expo held at the Hamilton Warplane Museum. We exibited one of our club single seaters, talked to visiting public and encouraged them to visit the field and try a glider flight.

As the show ended, we were putting the glider back into trailer, right next to the wartime airplanes that were parked outside. The contrast was too much to resist so i took a few shots of our club's trailer with the DC3 in the background.

Clouds

Being a glider pilot, I now pay more attention to clouds. I saw some interesting formations on a recent Calgary trip. Wonder if there was lift underneath those.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Catching Up

Between March and now, I have accumulated over 30 hrs flying time... as a passenger on commercial airliners. In between hopping on and off large airliners I also re-started my gliding season and already had some memorable flights, but more on those in the next posts and for now, some window shots taken during my April flight from Kitchener (YKF) to Calgary (YYC).

Kitchener is a small airport and the little Cessna's from local flight schools share runways with the WestJet's 737's. The little red structure in the first picture was a version of a windsock.


As the plane flew due West, early April's bare land in Southern Ontario gave way to frozen lakes and rivers over Minnesota and other frozen states in Northern US. Getting closer to Calgary, the snow disappeared again.



It was sunset time by the time of approach to YYC airport and the mountains on a horizon were tinted in pink and orange hues. The sun disappeared below horizon as the plane rolled to the gate.




The departure from Calgary was in the bright daylight and great visibility giving me a good view of the YYC airport.