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" Popular Mechanics contributing editor Jeff Wise, a private pilot and long-time aviation writer, takes on his biggest challenge yet: Flying withoutan engine. Follow along as Jeff learns that no matter how experienced the pilot, getting a glider license is no easy sail.   It&amp;#039;s a beautiful summery day as I pull into Freehold Airport in upstate New York, with traces of cirrus wisping the sky. Located just north of the Catskill Mountains, this sleepy grass airstrip is home to the Nutmeg Soaring Association, a 50-year-old glider club that was originally founded in Connecticut, but moved to Freehold a few years ago. I&amp;#039;m here to work on getting my glider license\u2014which should be a fairly straightforward undertaking since I already have my powered-airplane license. According to the FAA, power-pilots like me only need ten flights to make the transition to gliders, and I&amp;#039;ve already gotten 35 under my belt. But somehow I haven&amp;#039;t yet bothered to come up with a concrete plan for getting that magical piece of paper. My mission is to rectify that situation\u2014within the next week or so. Were I really hell bent on that certificate, I could go to a commercial school, and get the thing knocked out with an instructor. But with gliding, the journey is the destination, and I&amp;#039;ve been enjoying leisurely turns around the sky, sometimes by myself, and sometimes with and instructor. Sure, I&amp;#039;ve had to learn to be patient\u2014to wait for the weather and for my turn behind the tow plane. But that&amp;#039;s okay because gliding is to power planes what sailing is to motor boats: Patience is a prerequisite, patience to pay attention to Mother Nature&amp;#039;s whimsy. But the rewards are unparalleled, an ineffable sense of freedom and a purity of experience. When you&amp;#039;re riding the sky with nothing to power you other than the natural movements of the air, you&amp;#039;re really flying. And that&amp;#039;s to say nothing of the camaraderie that comes with club flying. When I get to the field, I help another member, Mac, move his glider to the take-off area, and then he helps me haul my plane, pulling it on a rope from a golf cart as I walk alongside, holding the wing. Before I take off, another friend from the club\u2014Tom\u2014helps me strap in, and he signals to John, the tow pilot, who\u2014like many Nutmeg members\u2014is a retired airline pilot with many thousands of hours of flight time under this belt. My aircraft is a Schweitzer 1-26. It&amp;#039;s a contraption that&amp;#039;s probably older than I am, and relies on very little technology that we&amp;#039;d currently recognize as such. To get to in the air, I rely today on the Piper Pawnee that John is flying, a stout-muscled workhorse originally designed for agricultural spraying. After a last preflight checklist, I signal to Tom by waggling the glider&amp;#039;s rudder; Tom signals to John by swinging his arm in a circle, and John hits the throttle. Grass swooshes under the hull as we gather speed, and then, with a bump, I&amp;#039;m airborne.  As we climb, I quickly realize how rusty I&amp;#039;ve gotten in the month since I last flew. The glider skitters around the sky, and I have to concentrate to keep it lined up behind the tow plane. At 4000 feet, I pull the red knob that unlatches the towrope, and, with a jerk, I&amp;#039;m free, left alone in the cockpit with only the sounds of my breathing, and the gentle whoosh of air rushing over the canopy. As per procedure, I bring the nose up and bank to the right. When you&amp;#039;re in a plane with no engine, you&amp;#039;re always heading downward through the air. What makes gliding a sport is finding upward-moving air so that, in the balance, you can stay up and fly. It&amp;#039;s a bit like walking down an up-escalator. There are different reasons that air rises, but today I&amp;#039;m be counting on thermals: the warm columns or bubbles of rising air. Gliding is a bit like fishing\u2014you have your tricks, your favorite spots, but at the end of the day it&amp;#039;s Mother Nature who either delivers, or doesn&amp;#039;t. You keep your fingers crossed. I cruise toward the Catskills, hoping for that telltale nudge in the seat of my pants announcing that I&amp;#039;ve flown into a column of rising air. I scan the horizon for other planes, and then the instrument panel: The two dials that are of main interest are airspeed and the vertical speed indicator, which tells me how quickly I&amp;#039;m rising or falling through the air, and, thus, if I&amp;#039;ve found lift. Of less pressing interest is the altimeter, since I already know how high I am. Then my eyes move to the most important glider instrument, which isn&amp;#039;t on the panel of all: It&amp;#039;s a piece of yarn taped to the canopy, and it tells you whether a turn is &amp;quot;coordinated&amp;quot;\u2014that the plane is moving cleanly through the air\u2014or if it&amp;#039;s at an inefficient (and potentially dangerous) angle. After a few turns I feel as though I&amp;#039;ve knocked most of the rust off. My turns are smooth and efficient and I even manage to locate a few weak pockets of lift\u2014not enough to gain altitude, but enough to halt my descent for a while. Twenty minutes of this and the inevitable starts to loom: Gravity works. I&amp;#039;m running out of altitude and I have to head back to the airstrip. Pay attention, because this is when the part about not having an engine becomes really important. If you descend toward a runway in a powered airplane and you somehow screw it up\u2014you&amp;#039;re too fast, say, or you haven&amp;#039;t got it lined correctly with the runway\u2014it&amp;#039;s no big deal: Put in the throttle, climb out, and go around for another try. That&amp;#039;s not an option in a glider. When you come in to land, you land.  The last glider I flew was a different model from the 1-26\u2014it was a heavier, two-place ship called a 2-33. The 2-33 sinks faster than the 1-26, which might be why my approach to landing seems to be going really, really well\u2014just until I make my final turn and realize that I&amp;#039;m much too high. The airstrip is way down there; I&amp;#039;m way up here. If I try to land, I think, it&amp;#039;s not going to work. I&amp;#039;ll go off into the creek at the end, or maybe even hit the trees beyond the creek. I&amp;#039;m in a bad place. And when you&amp;#039;re in a bad place, you have to do something. You weigh your options, and you take the one that is the least worst. So I do exactly what I&amp;#039;m not supposed to do: I crank the stick hard over, put the nose down, and pull a tight 360-degree turn. It&amp;#039;s a rule that this is a big no-no. You don&amp;#039;t pull 360s on short final, where there&amp;#039;s so little margin for error. My heart is pounding, wondering just how badly this is all going to turn out. Finally, I roll out. I&amp;#039;m a little off center, but my overall situation looks better\u2014I&amp;#039;m lower. I put in the speed brakes and set the ailerons opposite to the rudder. It&amp;#039;s a manuever called a slip, an intentionally inefficient configuration that&amp;#039;s good for losing altitude quickly. As the ship settles down over the grass I hold it off\u2014just a few feet over the rushing green\u2014until the skid under the nose bounces and settles down. Half the runway lies ahead of me, unused. But most importantly, I&amp;#039;m on the ground, safe. As they say in aviation, any landing you walk away from is a good one. Is that the end of it? No way. One of the side benefits of learning with a glider club is that if you screw up, everyone knows all about it. As I&amp;#039;m cooling off in the shade a few minutes later, Bill, a senior member of the club, pulls up in his golf cart and gestures me over. &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s have a word in my office,&amp;quot; he says. I sit down with him and explain what happened. We talk about the things that I could have done differently, such as relying more on the speed brakes, which probably would have gotten me on the ground safely, and without that 360 degree turn.  On my next flight, I once again find myself high on short final, but I&amp;#039;ve been thinking about the problem for over an hour. This time, it&amp;#039;s a piece of cake. As I climb out of the cockpit onto the cool grass, I feel a huge sense of relief. I screwed up, I learned and I moved on. Instead of a disaster I had a teaching moment and now I know: No 360s on short final. And by that one small increment, I&amp;#039;m a better pilot than I was this morning.\u2014Jeff Wise Next: Grounded, If For A Day. Easy Glider: The author in his Schweitzer 1-26 sailplane (engine never included). Look Ma, No Throttle! The crowded, yet simple instrument panel of the 1-26&amp;#039;s cockpit.  Heads Up Display: A length of yarn functions as arguably the most important instrument on board, measuring the efficiency of turns. Hang Time: The view from 3000 feet, but not updrafts in sight. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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