An evening flying testimonial

Member Brian O'Sullivan says: What do you normally do between 6pm and 8pm on a weekday evening? Travel home, eat dinner, browse the web, watch telly? Living so far above the equator our lengthening daylight hours gift us time to play. As a dad with a young family but a desire to fly gliders again finding time to train is a real struggle. I've 'negotiated' Saturday mornings, but so far have missed 1 in every 2. That just isn't enough to stay current, let alone make good progress, so I've been looking for alternatives. And I think I've found it with evening flying. What perfect conditions for training! Now the experienced flyers amongst us should stop reading now... when you are trying to master the multi-dimensional skills of co-ordination, thermals are a pain in the rear end: Heresy I know, but true nonetheless. Once above about 500 feet on the aerotow something quite magical happened. The conditions were so smooth, I relaxed! With a bit of fine tuning with the trim, the stick barely needed any attention. I can't tell you what a massive confidence boost this is for a student. I however made the mistake of telling Chris this after we landed and his retort was, "Relaxing on the aerotow. I need to give you more work. Next time box the tow!". Sigh... after an early degree of success boxing the tow, an oscillation set in which I initially attributed to the tug pilot trying to fling me about the sky. Silly me... I of course say this with tongue in cheek. Chris was a very patient instructor. The evenings are great - I can't recommend them highly enough. It's as if you've reclaimed time that would otherwise be wasted. Thanks to the guys and girls who freely volunteer their time to make it happen.