The Soaring Engine
When I am not translating, I am flying gliders. I started gliding while at university in Germany and joined a new club pretty much immediately after moving to the UK. At the weekends I can often be found in the back of a two-seater as a volunteer instructor at my local gliding club. When not instructing I enjoy cross-country flying, in particular cross-country coaching and competition flying. I have taken part in six international gliding competitions as a member of the British Team, culminating in winning a silver medal in a World Championship.
On a rainy day during a National Championship we were both competing in, G Dale, himself a silver medallist in a European Championship, and I got talking about a possible German translation of The Soaring Engine, a series of textbooks on cross-country gliding he has written – and in 2018 I finished the translation of the first volume.
The Soaring Engine series explains how the sun, wind and terrain combine to produce rising air for the soaring pilot to exploit.
In the first volume you will see how the wind flows over and around hills, ridges and mountains, how thermals form and evolve, the patterns that ridge and thermal activity create in the air and how to use the lift produced both in flat terrain and in mountains.
Illustrated with clear simple diagrams, this book is a primer for soaring pilots flying anything from a paraglider to high performance sailplanes.
The Soaring Engine Band 1: Hang-, Thermik- und Gebirgssegelflug (ISBN 978-0-9928270-3-8), the German version of G Dale’s “The Soaring Engine Vol 1: Ridge Thermal Flatland Mountain” can be ordered from
Germany
www.air-store.eu – New price!
Switzerland
swiss-sailplane.ch
Netherlands
www.gliderpilotshop.com
For additional information see www.thesoaringengine.co.uk
…or read the following review by long-standing member of the German national gliding team, Georg Theisinger, published in Segelfliegen Magazin in January 2019:
