Gliding: Uplifting stuff ... but not this day

Ian Finlayson once had to talk his way out of an Italian jailhouse after landing in a tobacco field. Herald picture / Amos Chapple

If the muggy weather gets you down, spare a thought for the glider pilots at the national championships.

Thirty three of them have been mainly parked at the Waharoa Airfield near Matamata this week, beads of sweat rolling down furrowed brows, lips cursing the easterly winds.

When the main aim in life is to soar around, you wake up every day hoping for clear skies and a beating sun to produce those lovely columns of rising air. Heaven.

Ian Finlayson saw unfriendly weather coming this week, of course.

All glider pilots are weather boffins, but this 69-year-old farmer from Hamilton is a gliding guru. With more than 7000 hours of glide time under the belt, and seven or eight national titles, Finlayson's the master at reading the dastardly sea breezes which knock around this country.

Finlayson has seen it all since hopping out of a Tiger Moth biplane and into a glider in 1962. In those early days, the gliders were made of canvas and wood. Then came the fibreglass age, and the Schleicher ASW27 glider Ian has owned for 10 years is mainly carbon fibre.

Back in the pioneering times, cloth signs marked the courses. Nowadays, it's the GPS era.

In the old days, unscheduled landings meant you trudged off to a farmhouse to phone the back-up crew. Now, you just get on the mobile and ring in the coordinates.

Which is just as well according to Ian's wife Shirley, who says you'd be lucky to find anyone in a farmhouse during the day these days.

Times have certainly changed. And New Zealand gliding, with about 1000 pilots, has grown to produce world champions.

But one thing doesn't change - the weather. And those low clouds meant that Ian had plenty of time to answer a few questions from the Herald this week.

* * *

If aviation is your go, why not get about with an engine?

The Tiger Moth was the real thing. Goggles. Open cockpit. You really had to fly them. But to me gliding was a far more sporting activity because you are really reading the weather. We were dead ignorant in those pioneering days. All you had was the radio and newspaper weather reports. No weather girls back then huh?

The met service used to send and pay for an on-site forecaster at the national champs. Some were good, some were hopeless. We're after such specific information and with New Zealand being islands, predicting the weather is so tricky. There are so many micro climates.

So those TV diagrams with a smiling sun covering half the North Island aren't that helpful

No (heavily paraphrased answer).

Moving on from the weather ...

Weather's been important all my life, farming and gliding. I've still got a wind sock outside our house. I'll wake up in the morning and look at the wind sock and immediately know the wind strength and direction.

Everyone needs a good wind sock

For sure.

And you're not one of those recreational glider types.

I like contest flying because it expands your horizons. It's different from choosing what you'll do yourself. In a contest, someone else is telling you to get from point A to B to C then home. On a good day it might be relatively easy. On a more difficult day you might strike different climates and end up achieving something you wouldn't have thought possible. It's all about accumulated knowledge, and looking for the tell-tale weather signs.

Such as ...

You just feel it. You might see good cumulus clouds up top but their sources have been cut off from ground level and from low level you can't get up there. Then you've got a sky full of convection and it will start blueing out. That's telling you something.

Precisely. Said the same thing myself this morning. Returning to earth ... what are your proudest moments?

I was in one official New Zealand team in 1978. I finished seventh at the worlds, in France.

We were still struggling to catch up to countries like Germany then. I was the first New Zealander to establish a record for a 500km triangle.

Germany figures high in gliding.

Otto Lilienthal pioneered primary soaring flights in the late 1800s (Otto also nose-dived to his death). After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles banned Germany from building an air force. So they promoted gliding.

The development of modern gliding stems largely from Germany. When Hitler turned up, he had the nucleus of the Luftwaffe ready and waiting - most of the famous German pilots started out in gliders. Most of the gliders you see here are German built.

The Schleicher is your pride and joy?

Absolutely (Herald note: His glider cost $135,000 to buy, import and set up. If you're thinking of getting into the glider market, set aside anything from $5000 to a quarter-million.)

How high have you been?

24,000 feet (you catch 'waves' to get this high, and much higher)

What's your favourite tobacco field and jailhouse story? (loaded question, this)

I landed in a tobacco field in Italy, at a village near Florence, in 1984. Nice and carefully, between the rows of little plants. The head of the local paramilitary was driving by and suddenly thinks to himself, 'There's a law against landing a plane in a field'.

So he goes into town, checks his book, and sure enough, he sends his blokes back to drag me to the station. He keeps going, 'There's no problem, but there is a law about this'.

It took an hour of goodwill to sort it out, and he sent me back with a full escort, sirens and all.

Any accidents over the years?

No. You never enter any country without knowing you can get to a landing area. I've never been caught in a situation where there's no escape.

Apart from being stuck in the clubhouse on a muggy day.

(muffled laugh).