Sailplane in mountain wave
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soaring books g dale competing in gliders advanced soaring made easy

Falling in love with gliding may happen on your first flight, your first solo, once you’ve really started to grasp its beauty in all its incredible facets, the learning really starts to accelerate.  One thing is for sure, once you do discover this, there’s no going back.  It’s an inspiring sport, one of beauty, freedom, joy, and inspiration.  Once this develops, your thirst for knowledge on all things gliding will grow exponentially, this is a good place to be.  Knowledge is power, the more you know, the more you’ll want to learn about it, this then becomes an insatiable thirst for more, and more will follow, thermalling up always.  You can learn in so many ways, everyone is different.  We can learn by reading textbooks, detailed explanations through lectures, webinars, or coaching, others learn from practice, others only from competitions and speaking with their peers after each day soaring. It doesn’t matter in all reality, all one needs is the desire to learn, to acquire the knowledge, this is the recipe vital for your success – you’re reading this and many of the other author's great articles weekly, so you’re almost certainly already on the path!

Once you’ve gotten to the advanced level, learning becomes easier, as you can learn without instructors or coaches, you know what you’re weak on, what you are interested in, perhaps even able to identify areas of ‘what you don’t know, you don’t know’, so you’re able to delve deeper and open up another area of gliding that you hadn’t thought of yet.  So from this, you’re no longer dependent on others to find success.  

One thing for sure is that success is never straight ahead and easy, there are many twists and turns along the way.  I found that my biggest learning in recent years came from my failures, the biggest one for me was losing my fear of failure.  After I unlocked this critical part, I was able to learn more freely, without judgment from myself, my enjoyment factor increased too.  However, with this attitude, you must also be ready to accept the failure, and be able to bounce back from it, which is imperative.  Making mistakes is absolutely normal, we must however acknowledge it, learn from it, then work towards future improvement.  It’s clear to me that Ingo and Kawa both never made it to the top without persistence, learning from their own failures, their thirst for more knowledge, brutal hard work, and dedication.

If you’re not at the top level yet, or indeed you are, then reading some key textbooks once a year will help motivate, trigger some key thoughts and help you along your path.  Which ones do I recommend?

Banner photo by Dan Thirkill

Adam Woolley  Adam Woolley was born into the gliding world, being the 3rd generation in his family. Going solo at 15, his thirst for efficiency in soaring flight & quest for a world championship title to his name has never wavered. One big passion is sharing his experiences & joy with other glider pilots all around the world. Adam is an airline pilot in Japan on the B767 & spends his off time chasing summer around the globe. He has now won 7 national Championships & represented Australia at 5 WGC's & 1 EGC.