Product Description

This volume is for everyone who has ever dreamt of escaping to thousands of feet above the ground, with a view stretching to the horizon, and barely a whisper to disturb the moment. The book guides you through how to realize that dream and goes on to explore the many opportunities the sport offers. Topics covered include: a history of the sport; an introduction to gliding clubs, getting started and what to expect; an insight into how gliders fly and detailed instruction on how to fly them; sections on launching, the cockpit, safety and weather forecasts, and finally ideas for cross-country and competitive flying and tips for owning a glider.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45017 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Steve Longland is a regional examiner for the British Gliding Association and a member of the BGA's Instructor's Committee. He has been instructing since 1974, flown over 4,500 hours in gliders, completed 8600 launches and landings and has flown over 63,000km cross country. He has a Gold C badge with all three diamonds.

Customer Reviews

Covers pretty well all you'll need to know about gliding
This book is well laid out with clear diagrams, and explains all the necessary information for both the novice and more experienced pilots. The illustrations are particularly helpful and the explanations of various techniques easy to follow. Overall this is an excellent book, and I would recommend it to anyone starting out in this sport. I peviously bought "Beginning Gliding" by Derek Piggot, and in my opinion, this book by Steve Longland is the better one by a long way.

Excellent book for a beginner
This is a really excellent book. Its key strengths are simplicity and clarity - on these it is arguably the best book for the absolute beginner to gliding. The diagrams are simple and clear but very useful - for example the diagram on 'lookout' is etched on my brain!

In the end I got 3 beginner gliding books - this one, Piggot and Stewart. They all do certain things very well and do complment each other. But for those first few weeks I'd say that Longland is the best - giving a crystal clear introduction to this fantastic sport.

As well as the basics of flying a glider, other very useful aspects relate to the history of the sport and an outline of how a gliding club functions - these were very useful indeed as gliding clubs are often set up very differently to powered flying clubs.

A fantastic book and worth every penny!

Best, bar none for a beginner
I am a professional gliding instructor and for the last four years I have recommend this book to all my students when they start gliding; for a beginner it is the best book available, bar none!

At my club (the SGU) we run summer holiday courses where we have three students sharing one instructor for five days. We are considering including this book as part of our offering, sending it to our students in advance of the course, so that they "hit the ground running".

For little more than the price of one flight (off a winch launch) it must be the best deal available to minimise the cost of learning to fly.

Chris