On silent wings

The romance and challenge of soaring without an engine.

Story + Photos Mandy McKeesick

"I was 15 when my dad looked to the sky and said we should learn to glide,” Jenny Thompson says. “I reluctantly agreed, but had absolutely no interest in aviation until the wheels left the ground. Then it was me forever.”

Now aged 65 and the chief flight instructor for the Darling Downs Soaring Club (DDSC), based at Bowenville in southern Queensland, Jenny has a story that is typical of pilots hooked by the romance and challenge of gliding an aircraft without an engine. In euphoric tones, they speak of cross-country adventures stretching for hundreds of kilometres, of chasing thermals in blue and cloudless skies, of competing in international racing competitions, of landing in paddocks and of peering deep into the eyes of eagles.

Jenny met her husband through gliding and flies alongside her daughter Sarah, who is also a flight instructor, and ex-president of the club. DDSC has been in existence since 1960, originally at the Oakey Airfield before that strip was commandeered by the army, then relocating to a farmer’s paddock, now known as McCaffrey’s Field.

Today, Jenny is introducing a novice to the sport she loves. After fitting a parachute to the bewildered participant, she straps him into a 4-point harness in the cocooned cockpit of the club’s 2-seater, 18m wingspan DG1001 Club training glider. Looking, and feeling, like an over-turned beetle in the recumbent seat, with a barrage of gauges and levers between his legs, the novice is ready to fly.