What can I do when after I have gone solo?

The sky is the limit - literally!

Once you have reached that magic moment when the instructor gets out of the back of the glider and say's, "Right, now you do one on your own", the learning starts in earnest. You can progress as quickly or as slowly as you like - but you can be assured that a Booker instructor will be there to help you along at every step of the way.

After a dozen or so solo sorties in the glider you first learned in - a trusty K13, you will be sent, after a check flight off in your first single seater. At Booker we use a K8 or a K18 for this. A few more solos and a few more checks will see you strapped into the cockpit of your first glass-fibre single seater, a Junior - an extremely robust club single seater. By this time you will probably be doing your bronze flight tests and ground exams. Part of these are a cross country and field landing syllabus, carried out so that you will be competent and safe during your first solo flight away from the airfield.

When a suitable day arrives, you will be sent on the first leg of your silver badge - a cross country fight and a landing at a different airfield. At Booker we tend to send pilots to either Lasham or Enstone (both gliding clubs) depending on the wind direction. A successful flight and landing will earn you your first silver leg. The next two silver legs are duration - being able to soar for a period of five hours or more - and height, a gain of just over 3000 feet from release height. When all three of these legs are completed, you will be awarded a silver badge.

From this point, you will be flying more advanced gliders such as our Pegase and Discus. You may be offered the chance to become a basic instructor, taking the BGA course which would enable you to take up people on air-experience flights, you will probably move on to try for your gold badge, flying a 300km triangle and using oxygen for the first time attempting a height gain of over ten thousand feet in mountain lee wave. You may well enter gliding competitions where you could be competing against 30 or more fellow pilots in a ten-day competition, and later attempting to gain your much-coveted diamond badge - a height gain of over 20,000 feet and a 500km distance task.

You may, of course decide that competitions are not for you, and merely float above the world and enjoy the scenery and magic of silent flight - or even join our active vintage glider group and help restore and fly some truly beautiful historic aircraft.

It's your choice...Just enjoy.....