Riding on the Wind

To the sailplane enthusiast, the best things in life are a cramped cockpit, a long slender wing, a stout updraft, and unending miles of sky. Given these things, plus ice to suck and fruit to munch, he will soar hawklike for hours on invisible fountains of air, wrapped in a silence so absolute that he can hear the faint whistle of a train passing below. Last week, in the 28th annual national soaring championships at Wichita's municipal airport, the pick of the U.S.'s 2,500 sailplane pilots were living the good life high above the Kansas plains.

The 36 contestants at Wichita needed thermals--columns of warm air--to stay aloft and they knew just how to find them. Towed to 2,000 ft. by powered aircraft, the sailplaners looked first for a "salad bowl"--a cluster of rising sailplanes already airborne and circling slowly, as if stirred by some giant ladle. Failing that, the entrants looked for the big cotton bolls of cumulus clouds--the typical sign of updrafts--or for wheeling hawks, those skillful natural riders of the wind. Having hooked a thermal, the sail-planers got from it every last inch of altitude, then drifted off on the distance runs.

Sailplaning as a sport grew big in Germany between the world wars. Reason: the treaty of Versailles forbade Germans from building a powered air force; so future Luftwaffe pilots learned to fly in engineless craft. In the process, they perfected soaring techniques and wing designs that have influenced sailplaning all over the world. Today's sailplanes look and act like birds: slim of fuselage, with wings so disproportionately long that the best craft have glide ratios of 40 to 1, or 40 miles of reach for each mile of altitude. World sailplane distance record: 535 miles.

Sailplane pilots are part bird, too, who flock to competitions not so much for the trophies as for the chance to drift on the wind with others who share the love of the experience. Many of the entrants at Wichita also fly powered planes, e.g., 46-year-old Leonard Pratt, a Central Airlines captain, who took up sailing as an exhilarating change from the security--and the thunder--of piston flight. Another contestant, Gleb Derujinsky, 36, makes his living as a freelance fashion photographer.

By week's end, the contest judges--five veteran sailplaners grounded for the occasion--crowned the winner: Architect Andrew J. Smith, 37, a former Navy pilot from Tecumseh, Mich. Smith fetched up enough rising currents to lead the pack past the finish line at Salina, 81 miles away.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.