(upbeat music) - A glider works just like a power plane only it trades altitude for energy.

And so the gravity provides your energy to give the lift in the wings that support the aircraft in the air.

And a short count for radio check.

(radio static) Thank you.

All right, so our guys are spotting for other traffic in the area.

(plane engine swirling) The tow plane is going forward and taking the slack out.

Clear.

- Go - Glider ready.

(wheels squeaking) (engine revs up) (wind soaring) All right, so we're 6,000 feet, 5,000 feet above ground.

I'm gonna check, make sure there's no traffic around you and pull on that yellow knob and we'll turn right (radio chatter) to tow lane and go left.

(radio interference drowns out speaker) Oh, straight out?

Yep.

- All right, here we go.

- All right.

Good tow thanks, Ed.

(radio static) It's absolutely the most relaxing wonderful thing in the world.

I love the connection with weather.

Meteorology.

You know, weather controls our, our world.

And the idea of of of being able to go up here and literally use the energy from the sun to see a loft and not use any gasoline or electric power, or, I mean once we use our tow, this is free.

It's like, it's like sail boat.

So what I'm doing now is I'm taking a sort of the city.

The city usually gives off more heat.

The sun, there's blacktop parking lots.

There's many of these factories, and that warms up the air and it creates the lift.

So if you have warm air at the bottom and cold air, it's gonna rise.

Just like you know, warm water goes to the top warm air goes to the top, see how the noise starts going up.

So now we turn into it.

Now if you look at that instrument on your right, that variometer, it's going down right now.

It's below zero.

- Yeah.

- So when we come back around into the lift, hopefully it will start gaining altitude.

Then we fly to the next thermal.

And you can do this for hours and hours using the ground.

We just gained 200 feet.

(instruments squelching) (wind soaring) We're looking for the traffic coming at us which I see none, (instruments slowing down) (loud wind) and we go out to the side.

So we're back normal.

(soft music)