Gliding: New Zealand celebrates 50th anniversary

Upside down: Pilot Steve Wallace loops his glider over the Southern Motorway. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

The drop from 1484 feet to 284 feet above the black sand of Karioitahi Beach brings your breakfast up to meet your brain, which is telling you that aircraft without engines shouldn't be going this fast.

At around 300km/h you can see into the living rooms of the beach houses before the updraft from the sandhills pushes the glider back towards the clouds.

Gliding New Zealand is promoting the sport as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, and also to celebrate the achievements of Kiwi competitors on the world stage. So they sent me up to see what it's like.

What it's like is better than any holiday park ride - a heart-pumping thrill from the winch launch that sends you up at a 45-degree angle that only military jets can better to the spiralling slide in to land.

From Drury at South Auckland we went to Port Waikato, up to Piha and back in less than an hour and a half, around three times as fast as it would take through Auckland traffic. With a great view and without the hassle.

Then there was the dive over Karioitahi, which pilot Connell Edwards couldn't help but drop in, just enjoying himself.

Flying for Herald photographer Glenn Jeffrey was Steve Wallace, who will represent New Zealand in the one-on-one contest for the Tasman Cup - the trophy for up-and-coming competitors in Australia and New Zealand.

Wallace will go to South Australia in January to defend the trophy that Stuart Cameron won last time at Matamata.

The 34-year-old father of two, who got his start with the Air Training Corps and got serious about flying when he bought his own glider in 1996, is the latest boast of the Gliding NZ sailplane racing committee, after a stellar year in world championships.

Aucklander John Coutts won the 15m class at the champs in Lesno, Poland, Ben Flewett was seventh in the standard class, Paul Schofield seventh in the PW5 class and the Kiwis won the teams title. South Islanders Theo Newfield and Grae Harrison took the world 300km triangle speed record.

Kiwi Terry Delore stayed with billionaire Steve Fossett after the American's attempts to break world records at Omarama in the South Island and the pair have since set six world records for height, speed and distance from Argentina.

The Drury club is typical of those around the country, with a dedicated band of around 100 members of whom about 70 fly regularly and 50 compete regularly. The Air Training Corps was the introduction to the sport for many.

Wallace won a scholarship from the Browns Bay RSA and spent a week in camp at Hobsonville, going solo on his 15th flight after two hours and 59 minutes training with an instructor.

It's as quick as you can get your hands on a joystick. There isn't too much in terms of instrumentation to worry about - the altimeter and the variometer that tells whether the air you're in is rising or falling is all. The silence is unreal. Hawks circle in time, competing in the thermals. Seagulls flee from the great predator.

Gliders cost from around $30,000 for an older fibreglass model to $350,000 for the latest handmade kevlar designs from Europe. Many pilots like Edwards pool resources with friends to reduce costs like insurance, around $8000 a year.

New Zealand is blessed with great gliding conditions thanks to the variety of terrain.

The Auckland region offers the Kaimai, Coromandel and Waitakere Ranges for uplift. From the city, pilots regularly get south to Taupo, up the west coast from Raglan to Piha or north to Whangarei.

Along with thermals they ride ridge waves of air rising over the ranges or the standing waves that form behind the ridges, like water rippling behind a rock in a river. Behind the Kaimai Ranges these standing waves offer lift at 2000ft per minute as the gliders rise from "choppy", disturbed air near the ground to a dead quiet, smooth swish skywards to as high as 36,000ft.

The air cools at between two and three degrees per thousand feet but it's comfortable in the insulated cockpit. Wallace has spent six hours airborne.

He's still learning plenty about finding the "right" air. But competition is less daunting than it was when he started, when competitors in similar craft would disappear into the distance ahead of him. "You have to form a mental picture of the air around you, watch the clouds, learn whether they are building or dissipating."

The gliders head for forming clouds, which means rising air. You get better lift off green fields in the morning, it's better off dark ploughed fields later in the day. Below 1500ft they're looking at the ground to get lift, above that they're looking around the sky.

As we soar in towards the cliffs at Karioitahi I'm firmly fixed on the altimeter falling. But, oddly, after the nervousness of the launch, the sudden stall at the top as the towing rope drops and before the wind picks the plane up, then the hammer into a 30-knot sou'westerly out to the west coast, I'm coolly calm as the big bird powers towards the beach then Connell pulls her up to the clouds again.

"Mind Over Matter", says the slogan on the back of his baseball cap. My mind's finally accepted that the lack of an engine doesn't matter.