Blair's Quiet FlyersIn their gliders, the Omaha Soaring Club finds peace in the skies above Blair. Story and Photography by Mike Whye |
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TO MOST AIRPLANE PASSENGERS, hearing only the rush of air would mean big trouble: The engine isn’t working. But it’s a soothing sound to Bob Moser as he flies above the rolling plains southwest of Blair. To him, the best way to enjoy Nebraska from the air is in a glider.
“Flying an airplane is a science,”
he says. “Flying a glider is art.”
He would know. He manages air operations,
flight simulation and the Aviation Resource Center at the University of Nebraska
at Omaha’s Aviation Institute. And he’s spent about 10 percent of
his 2,000 flight hours in gliders.
Soaring high above the earth, Moser can see many miles away to where blue sky and green-and-brown earth blend as a thin hazy band. His glider’s long, slim canopy windshield blends beautifully with a teardrop-shaped fuselage (the plane’s central body).
He begins a turn, leaning the control stick to one side and pushing a bit on a rudder pedal. One slender wing rises; the other drops. As the glider banks, Moser looks 3,000 feet down at the Blair Municipal Airport, where he can see about a dozen members of the Omaha Soaring Club. Like ants at this distance, they are busy preparing to fly the club’s other silver-colored glider. From here it looks like a toy.