Flying with the student association (DSA)
I had the alarm on 06:00. My neighbour Sheryes had an Indian birthday party the evening before so I didn’t get much sleep. However it was no problem to get up due what I planned to do during the day. I had been in contact with the student association DSA, Delftsche Studenten Aeroclub and was going to fly with their sailplanes. For only 50 euro I got 3 flights, travel and lunch! I was very excited. They picked me up at 07.15 next to the train station and we then drove for one hour to the airfield Terlet near Arnhem, which is a bit north of Utrecht. The wind was from east which meant that we had to share a field with some other gliding clubs. It was a really good spirit at the airfield, everyone helped each other. There were however no trees which meant that it were pretty hard to find any shadow. I am therefore now a very brown.
My first flight was as a passenger. One experience member did the manoeuvrings while I took pictures and looked around. The plane take of with a wire in an acceleration of 6G. My pilot found some good up winds which took the plane to a higher altitude. Once you found an upwind, you want to stay in that area. This meant that he was making a pretty strong left turn for about 10 minutes. Once we reached an altitude of above 1.5 km I started to get dizzy of all the spinning. This together with some turbulence made me regret that I just had eaten a sandwich before the flight. I vomited in a barfbag. It was supposed to be a long flight but instead I wanted to rest a bit on the ground, so we put out the breaks and landed. The excitement dropped a bit.
After an hour on the ground I started to feel good again. At this time it was my turn to steer the plane! It was really fun and I felt much better during this flight. I also went up a third time in the evening close to the sunset which was really gorgeous. The air was quite and there possible to see a lot of balloons in the horizon. The day was very successful and I arrived home after midnight with a big smile.
Daniel Andersson flying with DSA
Daniel Andersson flying with DSA
Daniel Andersson flying with DSA
