Soaring like an Eagle

I soared last month.

With only air currents for power, I touched the clouds on a beautiful August day and felt the power and confidence of an eagle.

I was a passenger in a glider owned and operated by a former colleague.  Don Ingraham now runs a business called Cross County Soaring out of the Faribault airport.  I had seen him in a Finding MN feature on WCCO TV so I sent him a congratulatory note and mentioned that I’d like to go up some day.

“How about 2 p.m. this Saturday?” he responded.  I was definitely not expecting that but who could say no to an engineless ride at cloud level?  Ingraham is one of the most likeable people I’ve ever met.  He’s also very persuasive.  

I waited in his hangar while he finished giving a ride. Ingraham is a glider pilot and trainer.  I thought it was interesting that he does not have a license to fly small planes (with engines).  They are noisy, have too many gauges to watch, and can break down up there, said Ingraham, a one-time car mechanic.  Up there, you can’t just pull over.  He does own his own tow plane and hires fliers to pull him up.  These are usually pilots looking for some more flying hours.

After a short overview of how it all works, we towed the glider to the landing strip with his electric cart.  To keep the glider rolling along without tipping and scraping a wing, Ingraham invented a support made of bicycle wheels.  Once the tow plane was in position ahead of us, the cable was connected.  Ingraham showed me the disconnect knob that gets pulled when you are ready to fly freely.  I sat in the front seat with Ingraham in the seat behind me.  The controls and gauges are nearly identical in each seat.

I wasn’t nervous but I mentally asked myself if I was ready for this.  I had watched gliders take off and land at the Red Wing airport when I was a kid but this was me now going up.  Before I could change my mind, we were in the air.  The glider gets off the ground first since it is lighter.  Ingraham set up a GoPro camera near my head to capture the entire event.  I took pictures with my camera and phone.

When the plane got us up to 5,000 feet above sea level, I pulled the disconnect and we were free.  We immediately started descending.

“See that Walmart parking lot?  A lot of warm air rises from the blacktop and that’s a great place to get lift,” Ingraham said.  “Usually, a cloud forms over them, too, so you look for them.”

Sure enough, a large cloud hovered right over that spot and we started to climb immediately as was shown on the variometer (a gauge that displays your rate of climb or descent).  Glide ratio is the important measure of glider performance (like horsepower in a plane).  A 35:1 ratio means the glider can travel 30 miles from a height of one mile.  I did not find out what the glider ratio is for the glider we rode in but Ingraham has traveled as far as Illinois and back in a single flight.  A very long wingspan is part of the reason why that’s possible.  A small string is mounted at horizon level on the outside of the windshield to indicate aircraft yaw (lean) left or right.

The only sound we heard was the wind as we cut through the air.  I thought we would bounce around like I remember happening on plane rides.  But there was little of that.  The fun part of the ride was climbing, descending, and the quiet ride.  The view was much better than in an airplane.

To end the ride, we descended at 140 mph aiming right at his hangar.  That was a bit unnerving.  But that is to get us down faster.  We pulled up, swung around wide and landed perfectly.  It must have very small wheels because we were really close to the ground.

We towed the glider back to the hanger area and, since it was time for Ingraham’s lunch break, we had brats on the grill – something they do almost daily.

Soaring was a very enjoyable experience.  It wasn’t on my bucket list, but now I’m going to add it and mark it accomplished.

You can see the report on Ingraham’s soaring business on the WCCO TV website.