There is something reassuring about an airplane pilot who doesn't really need an engine. In addition, Sami Rintala confides, he just got married. More reassurance. He may realize he has a lot to live for. He may be extra careful. On a clear day, with such auspicious signs about the pilot, you can convince yourself to go soaring.
When you do, you will understand the simplicity of flight.First you'll discover that a glider - or sailplane, as they are also called - has a tiny cockpit. If you weigh more than 250 pounds, you probably can't ride. (But if you weigh less than 150 and are flying solo, you'll have to carry weights in the cockpit to keep from being tail-heavy.)
Next you'll learn that the tow plane doesn't really tow a glider, not like a boat tows a waterskier - with the engine racing and the rope taut. Not at all.
In a glider you rise by yourself. As soon as the tow plane begins to move down the runway, the glider soars. (It is actually possible to launch a glider with a car.) "Hey," you'll say, amazed, "this is going to be all right. This thing really wants to fly."
From the seat behind you, Rintala will explain the dials on the instrument panel. Then he'll point out the most important instrument of all - a piece of orange yarn fastened to the windshield with what appears to be masking tape.
"That's the yaw string," he says. "It's a turn coordinator." When it sticks straight up against the glass, Rintala knows he's riding level, not turning against the current. He doesn't want to waste the wind's lifting power. "In a glider we want to fly always as clean as we can."
To fly always clean. Because Sami Rintala was born in Finland, he lines his words up in a poetic way. Rintala first came to Salt Lake City as a high school foreign exchange student and came back, after military duty, to be a flight instructor. Now he teaches at High Valley Aviation at the the Heber Airport. As Rintala floats above farms and mountains, he looks down on a place very like his native town of Kauhaba.
The Heber Valley is the perfect place to glide, he says. He will explain the way the wind sweeps in from the west, hits the mountains, rises and cools back down, fast, to warm and bounce up again. The air makes waves, like ocean waves, he says. Waves give a glider its farthest and highest flight.
"You can catch a wave up to 100 miles long." This particular type of thermal activity helped one glider pilot set an altitude record of nearly 50,000 feet.
Rintala will be on the lookout for rising warm air when, after about 10 minutes and the tow plane has taken you in slow arc above the hills, and he pulls a lever and releases the tow rope.
Suddenly, the glider slows. The noisy tow plane disappears.
Still, the world is far from silent. The wind is loud and strong. When the glider was towed it bounced against the air. Now it rides the currents.
From below, you look as graceful as a bird. Yet this doesn't feel like what you imagined being a bird would feel like.
In a glider you rise or fall smoothly, but quickly, as if in a speeding elevator. The force hits your chest, the power surprises. You catch a thermal. As the air rises, an invisible column, you swirl inside. Close your eyes. Try to feel like an eagle. "We are rising 400 feet per minute," Rintala says.
The problem is, you've got nothing to grasp. Because this is a training plane, there are twin controls. You've levers all around your seat. You can't press your knees or hands against the sides of the cockpit. That's where the rudders slide. You can't grip your knees against each other; the stick rotates around the center of the floor.
The wind presses you down the west face of the mountain. You turn and it whirls you back up. "We could stay up all day" Rintala says. "Maybe," you think, urging the muscles of your back to grip your spine, so at least some part of your body is holding on to something.
Rintala knows gliding is safe. In fact, he says, he believes every pilot should train first on a glider. If you learn to fly without an engine, you will always know how to land without one, he says.
A light airplane has a glide ratio of 1 to 10. If you were one mile up and turned off the engine, you could fly 10 miles before landing. This glider has an even better ratio of 1 to 28. "The best are 1 to 60," Rintala says. "But those cost $125,000."
For $2,000, at High Valley Aviation, you can obtain either a glider or an airplane pilot's license. Rintala teaches and enjoys both types of flying.
The difference is that airplane pilots rely on instruments, he says. But a glider pilot looks to the sky, taking clues from the birds and the clouds.
Beneath a cumulus cloud, warm air is rising. Where birds are circling, you'll find another thermal. Once, Rintala says, he flew with hawks at 14,000 feet. "Sometimes they are 10 yards away and they stay right there and they glide with you." In an airplane, at 100 mph, you barely notice birds. But in a glider, at 30 to 40 mph, you are flying at bird speed.
In a glider, "you have to feel the plane," he says. "You have to listen to the wind." He demonstrates. Adjusting the flaps, he nudges the stick forward, and - without looking at the altimeter - cites the height and speed as he descends, gently, to the airport.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Glider records
Time in the air: 2 1/2 days
Distance for one trip: 1,250 miles
Altitude achieved: 49,000 feet