MAAA Wingspan - Quarterly Magazine

19 AUGUST WING SPAN MAAALogo. “I didn’t do quite as well as I’d have liked, but it was a good learning experience overall,” he admits. Andrew considers one aspect European glider pilots have over the Australian ones is the slew of competitions that are held over a short span of time. “I spoke to a member of the Czech team and he’d basi- cally done a large competition every week up until the world championships, so a lot of the Europeans basically go on the road over summer and just fly at competition after competition,” he says. “That’s one of the things that we struggle with in Austra- lia. We only have a small number of major gliding events annually, with a number of local club contests, but given that we’ve got such a small population, it’s difficult to be as connected as the Europeans are.” In June, Andrew competed at Australia’s biggest gliding event: the LSF Open Thermal Glider Tournament and came a very respectable fourth. “The top ten pilots were separated by 2% in scores so it’s very tough at the top,” he says. An engineer by trade, Andrew says it’s a combination of the silent aerodynamic design elegance and the intricate technology of gliders that he finds particularly appealing. “The fact that you can get around without a motor is for me a very elegant way of flying. The models, while being aesthetically appealing, are incredibly well designed and there’s as much thought that has gone into the aircraft design as a full-scale aircraft,” he considers. “Some of the designers of the models are full-scale aircraft designers, so if you look behind the engineering, behind the construction of the models, there’s some fabulous tech and as an engineer that’s really appealing to me.” Andrew also likes that no two flights are ever the same and that RC gliding challenges you to calculate numer- ous aspects during any given flight. “It’s not just about taking off and doing the exact pattern routine every time. It’s about being able to read the envi- ronment around you, to understand what the air is doing and what else is going on in the field – it’s a beautiful little 3D challenge that you have to solve,” he says. “The competition aspect is really interesting to me too because it can show how well we process information and get to an end result. I also like that my brain can’t think of anything else when I fly. All of life’s worries can be put on hold for a while…at least until you land.” Being an enthusiastic member of SSL for over a decade, Andrew finds many positives about the community of flyers he shares this passion of flight with. “I like that we have a network of people who come from various industries with a wide range of skills and experience and that people are generally happy to share information,” he says. “We’re all there for the same reason: to enjoy flying model gliders and it’s a great way of getting out of the house to focus on something completely different.”