Gliding on a river of air
Two local pilots take home national honours at glider championships just south of Cambridge
ROCKTON — When Paul Parker and Dave Springford look up into the sky, they see more than just clouds, birds or the occasional plastic bag floating in the breeze — they see a river of air ready to transport them across the countryside.
“Some people see it as invisible air, but it’s really a river that’s rising and falling, and always flowing somewhere,” said Parker, a Conestogo resident and associate dean of strategic initiatives in the department of geography and environmental management at the University of Waterloo.
The two local pilots took home top spot in two of three categories at the National Gliding Championships at the Rockton airfield. It’s just south of Cambridge and site of the Southern Ontario Soaring Association, home base for the two pilots. It was Springford’s fourth national title, but the first time Parker competed in the 10-day championship that started Aug. 1. He also took home the Top Novice award.
Parker was one of a dozen racers in the Club class — featuring aircraft of varying capabilities and designs and uses a handicap system to even the field — while Springford, who teaches mechanical engineering at Conestoga College, beat eight other pilots to win the 18-metre glider class.
The competition was a race to see who could reach various predetermined waypoints — communities like Woodstock or Arthur, or landmarks like Conestogo Lake or Lubitz Flying Field in Plattsville — and return home the quickest.
There’s a maximum of 1,000 points on the line each day in the competition.
There’s a surprising amount of science involved in successfully navigating a glider through the air and maintaining enough lift to stay airborne after the tow plane releases the its cable.
Since a glider has no engine to help generate motion and lift, they’re always trying to fall back to Earth, so pilots need to recognize weather patterns and learn to observe the environment around them to locate columns of warm, rising air that make their flight possible, also known as thermals. Parker calls it “true solar-powered flight.”
Cumulonimbus clouds with concave bottoms are telltale signs of lift, so are rising hawks or eagles. Springford described those clouds as “stepping stones going across a creek,” and said even something as simple as a tractor moving across a farm field can stir the air enough to generate thermal lift in the area, he said.
“It’s a challenge like no other,” Springford said.
Parker also looks for parking lots, which are usually good sources of thermal lift since they tend to be hotter than the surrounding land, “and if you smell a manure pile while you’re 3,000 feet up you know that air is coming from somewhere,” he said. “It’s all about reading where there is rising air.”
The pilots managed to take to the skies on six of the 10 days of competition, but conditions on the first day were tough and the vast majority of pilots ran out of lift and had to land before returning to the airfield.
“Thirty planes launched, only two returned,” said Parker.
He landed his 225-kilogram aircraft with its 15-metre wingspan in a harvested wheat field, and a support crew came to help him disassemble the glider and load it onto a trailer, a process that only takes about half an hour.
“It’s designed to be taken apart and put back together,” he said of the LS-4 glider, a 35-year-old German-built craft — one of 10 owned by the gliding club. It can reach a maximum speed of 270 km/h in smooth air conditions.
Despite the lack of an engine, gliders are equipped with an array of high-tech accessories such as GPS, communications gear and other sophisticated computers, as well as a parachute.
Pilots seek to maximize the time spent in thermals by pulling the nose up and slowing the craft down, and they minimize the time outside of updrafts by pointing the nose down to increase their speed, Parker said. It’s a balancing act, because spending too much time in an area of lift can slow your progress and other pilots can pass by.
Springford, 54, lives in Waterloo and is a former army engineer. He has been flying gliders since his father introduced him to the aircraft when he was 12.
He’s accumulated thousands of flight hours since, and previously won the national championship in 2009, 2012 and 2015. He also holds three Canadian speed records and competed in the world championship in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014.
The Rockton club will also host the 3rd FAI Pan American gliding championship next summer, which will include about 40 of the best glider pilots from across North and South America, including Springford.
Gliders are towed to an altitude of about 600 metres by a tow craft then released, and Parker said he still gets butterflies when the tow cable lets go.
“Every time. Every flight is exciting because it’s always slightly different.”
jjackson@therecord.com