Flying sideways

We'd just gotten back from a trip yesterday and were out walking the
dogs when I heard the sound of a powerful engine at high output. It
kept on getting louder and louder and I began scanning to find out
what it was.

This is always hugely amusing to my wife, but she wanted to see too
when I saw what it was. It was the local soaring club's L-19 towing a
glider. This was way too late in the year for there to be convective
thermals so the pilot may have been looking for ridge lift. There was
a considerable breeze blowing from the northwest on both Saturday and
Sunday, this was Sunday.

Just as I spotted it, the tow plane released and turned away leaving
the glider headed west. The impressive wind was causing such a crab
angle for the glider relative to it's chosen course that it appeared
that it was flying sideways and my wife commented on it. "That's
new", she said, "flying sideways?"

I tried to explain that to the glider, the wind was right over the
nose and that it only seemed sideways to us because we were standing
still on the ground watching it. She did not seem to buy the
explanation but I've a long history of not explaining things well to
her. I tried the analogy of people in a canoe paddling towards the
opposite shore of river in a swift current. The water is passing
directly to the stern as you move forward, but the canoe is moving
downstream at the same time. The canoe is moving sideways relative to
the river bank. "That's what I said", she replied, "it's flying
sideways."

Corky Scott