Halcyon days of the U. S. sport of gliding were in 1929. Airplane tycoons like Richard Hoyt, Sherman Fairchild, Giuseppe Bellanca, William Stout, spent big money to promote it because expert glider pilots can easily learn to fly motored planes. Detroit Aircraft Corp. purchased Gliders, Inc., biggest U. S. glider manufacturer, planned to sell gliders at cost. Glider clubs began to be organized. Conservative enthusiasts predicted 1,000,000 glider pilots by 1935.
Armament limitations forced young Germans to develop motorless flying after the War. Product of one ill wind, gliding failed to profit from another. Depression curtailed plane companies' interest in the sport. U. S. manufacture of gliders soon ceased. Some enthusiasts bought their planes from Germany, others built them at home. Groups pooled their resources, formed more clubs, mainly because there were not enough ships to go around. Not 1,000,000 pilots but a bare 70, cream of the total U. S. crop of some 2,500, were at Elmira, N. Y. last week for the seventh annual meet of the Soaring Society of America.
Gliding—the pastime of coasting downhill just above the ground in a motorless plane supported by the air current that moves up the hill—is today merely an introduction to the infinitely more exciting sport of soaring. Soaring is three-dimensional sailing whereby, to achieve altitude and distance, an expert has his choice of four types of air current: 1) hill-deflected winds, 2) thermal currents from warm spots on the ground, 3) upcurrents under cumulus clouds, 4) explosive updrafts preceding a thunderstorm. At Elmira, long ago selected as the best soaring spot in the U. S. because its prevailing west winds are deflected upwards in successive strata by the huge petrified surf of the Chemung Hills, soarers last week camped in tents below the knolls from which their ships were launched, helped each other tinker their craft, chattered over picnic fires. Major topic of three-dimensional sailing enthusiasts, like that of yachtsmen, is the weather. Because the weather at Elmira for the last three years has been disappointing, pilots discussed moving their annual meet to Ellenville, N. Y., in the Catskills. After one painfully calm day, when the meet started last fortnight, a warm summer wind began to pour across the green Chemung ridges. Results:
¶ The $500 Bendix prize for the meet's longest distance flight went to Chester J. Decker of Glen Rock, N. J. On the last day of the meet he took off from Elmira, climbed to 5,500 ft., found a "street" (chain of cumulus clouds). Swinging beneath it in long, irregular parabolas from cloud to cloud, he proceeded to Ottsville, Pa., where he glided down — 146 miles from Elmira. His flight narrowly missed the U. S. record of 158 miles.