Anne Soltow’s glider was leading the field all day. Now it is in an actual field and a kilometre short of the finish. The single-seater sailplane looks like a giant alien bug: long slender fuselage, a canopy encasing the cockpit like a single eye, epic wings, 15 metres tip to tip. They were all that was keeping Soltow’s engineless aircraft in the sky – until 10 minutes ago.
The pilot is furious with herself. She had been in the air for nearly four hours and in first place before running out of altitude on the final run back to the airfield. “Landing out” is common in gliding, where testing courses are spread across hundreds of kilometres (think orienteering in the sky). You stay airborne by climbing naturally occurring, upward-spiralling cylinders of warm air known as thermals. Fail to find these and the ground comes to meet you a lot earlier than you would like.
