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Sail Plane

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Attached is a photo of my sailplane which I keep at a glider port near Pyramid Lake which is north of Reno. It has a glide ratio of 33 to 1 which means that for every foot it goes down it goes forward 33 feet so that if you are a mile above the ground it will glide 33 miles before having to land. This is a medium performance glider and is all metal and is a single place. There are sailplanes with much better performance and a lot more costly with glide ratios close to 60 to one which are made of fiberglass but my is just fine for my type of flying. I will follow with photos from a flight I took yesterday (Saturday). After being towed up by a tow plane I found good stead lift from thermals and achieved a maximum altitude of 16,000 feet plus above sea level. The field elevation is 4,300 feet above sea level any my tow was about 1,700 feet to 6,000 feet above sea level so I gained over 10,000 feet in additional altitude by working the thermals. I stayed up for three (3) hours so it was a pretty good flight. If you want to fly in a two place ship when you come out in August we can do it but you don't have to. On a good day like yesterday the sailplane can be flown all the way from north of Reno to Bishop, California and back without landing as the terrain and the weather condition in this part of Nevada and California are the best in the world for flying sailplanes. More photos will follow. Jerry H Mowbray

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