MTs Al-Falah Jatinangor

I had the alarm on 06:00 yesterday. 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 to 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 euros 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 the 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 was pretty hard to find any shadow. I am therefore now very brown.

My first flight was as a passenger. One experienced member did the manoeuverings while I took pictures and looked around. He 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 vomitted in a plastic bag. 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 quiet and it was 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.