Byron gliding club

Today, I caught my first sultry sight of a Scheibe Falke in action. It soared over the hillock where I was planted running a time-lapse of the bay. The view from the lighthouse hill is unrivaled. Over the course of an afternoon, a crowd of parcelled cumulus gathers over the Koonyum Range and swells up and blows inland, while more puffs congregate further seaward. Some of the more buxom cumulus individuals were even capped by lenticular pileus clouds. Above it all, filaments of mare's tail cirrus drifted slowly, like wisps of fine white hair. Some of my favorites.

I made a two-wheeled trek out to Tyagarah a couple days ago to visit the Byron Gliding Club. The place is pretty bare bones. One room of flight manuals, creased sectional charts, faded pilot certificates, plus the office desk and kitchen sink. In the rear, a doorway leads to a spacious hangar with a handful of motor gliders and an old Cessna. The bathroom is classic outback: a toilet stuck to a concrete pad, encircled by a cylinder of corrugated galvanized iron. I move in next Tuesday.












For a glider certificate, it should take around 5 hours of flight time in a motorfalke. Perhaps the same one I saw graze the hillside today. Upon flying the length of the lighthouse spit, the glider slipped soundlessly into an 80 degree bank and disappeared beneath the cottony fringe over the mountains. Soon, I'll have wings again.