Good things start well... Usually the end of one adventure does not immediately become the beginning of the next one, but not this time.
September 2024
Good things start well…
Usually the end of one adventure does not immediately become the beginning of the next one, but not this time. I once came across the statement that…
„Aviation is an incurable disease”
and I fully agree with it, because I myself had a break of more than a decade from flying. We start our flying adventure at different ages – if your health allows it, aviation has no age limit for taking the first step.
At a young age, after a turbulent start, we face the need to put our lives in order. Studies, starting a family and a professional career determine whether we stay within the circle of enthusiasts or step away from it for a shorter or longer while. At what we might call a more mature age, especially these days, you need to strengthen your finances in order to pursue your dreams of flying.
At this point let us go back to September 2024, when a phone call takes place between a man with an unquestioned business position on the market, returning to aviation after more than twenty years, and an experienced instructor who has been firmly embedded in various sport aviation structures for several decades. To the short question: „will you help me set up a gliding school in Mirosławice?” came the answer: „let’s meet”.
In the quiet of a café, over aromatic coffee, the details of the concept were laid out, and after five minutes the answer to the earlier question was yes.
No details are needed here about who, with whom or for how much – what matters is a clear concept, willingness, means and a short chain of decision making.
We are doing this!
Autumn 2024 and winter 2024/2025
We ran into another statement typical of Polish aviation: these days it is not gliders, aeroplanes, helicopters or balloons that fly – it is paperwork that flies.
With a tear in the eye one can look back at the old days, and having been in aviation for over 50 years I remember well the times when the state financed the development of aviation, provided funds for running the centres, financed equipment purchases, the maintenance and development of the infrastructure of 60 airfields, and the training of newcomers for future work in so-called big aviation and in military aviation. Natural selection within that scale meant we were the best in the world – both in terms of people and equipment.
The 21st century brought enormous changes in these matters. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater, and only a few regional aero clubs coped, and still cope effectively, with the realities of aviation transformation in Poland without state funding. What is more, a management structure through associations that is inefficient by today’s standards means that private initiatives are, from my point of view, the only realistic way for new aviation centres to appear, survive and be properly managed.
At the beginning we had two gliders: a new SZD-51-1 Junior training glider and an older, but excellently maintained, high-performance SZD-55 Promyk. Both gliders were grounded for what we might call paperwork reasons. On top of that there was a covered glider trailer and efforts to acquire a tow plane and further gliders.
Preparations also began for the legal groundwork of the gliding school.
The carousel of activity picked up unprecedented speed and the beginning of 2025 brought the complete documentation needed to set up the new centre, including: training programmes, declared training organisation documentation, the airfield manager’s consent to operate in Mirosławice, the purchase of a Maule M7-235 tow plane, obtaining the iconic PZL-104 Wilga tow plane for use at the centre, the rental of two hangars and – importantly – the purchase of a two-seat SZD-50-3 Puchacz glider, and in the following months also a covered trailer dedicated to that glider type.
This new glider really is new – and not just because it is new to the centre, but because its total flight time is only 183 hours. An additional advantage is its reinforced airframe, which clears it for inverted advanced aerobatic figures.
29 January 2025
Another date worth remembering, because next to the rented hangar an office container appeared, beautifully fitted out, and the centre gained a real base located at the best spot on Mirosławice airfield.
1 March 2025 – how it should be done!
We had aeroplanes and gliders, but the new school lacked tow pilots. So what do you do? It is worth looking at how it should be done when the decision chain consists of a single ownership link. We had a Maule in Mielec and gliders in Mirosławice… so off we went.
A driver delivered the Puchacz in its trailer to Mielec in the morning, and the flying crew followed in two more cars. Waiting for us there was an instructor from Aeroklub Mielecki with a Puchacz rented for the day and helpers, plus a powered flying instructor who was to train the tow pilots.
We quickly rigged our Puchacz and, after the pre-flight inspection, moved both gliders to the launch point. We held a short briefing and the carousel started. It was a carousel in the literal sense, because the launches followed one another without shutting down the aeroplane, and quite often a landing glider had to delay touchdown for a moment to allow a crew change in the Puchacz waiting to launch.
Each of the new tow pilots had to fly five times in a glider so that, as part of the training, they could see what an aerotow looks like from the other end of the rope. This was very important, because the gliding instructors discussed the tow pilot’s mistakes from the glider pilots’ point of view live in the cockpit.
It was not only the tow pilots who flew the gliders, but also future gliding students, for whom these were their first glider flights. Four and a half hours were enough for us to make forty-four flights, achieve our goals and, in good spirits, set off home after an excellent lunch at an inn in Mielec.
One amusing fact was that the crew car strayed from the route back to Mirosławice. The conversation never stopped and we let the electronics fool us – it sent us to Rzeszów to charge the batteries rather than to Kraków.
Can it be done? It definitely can!
8 March 2025 – appetite grows with eating
We had flown in Mielec, so it was high time to start flying in Mirosławice. Thanks to the goodwill of the Board and the Director of Aeroklub Dolnośląski, we started our first flying day on runway 09R-27L, the southern and shorter of the two parallel runways, 515 m long.
We had two tow planes available: the Maule and the Wilga. The task of the day was an operational assessment of gliding at Mirosławice and of launches in both directions.
Observers stationed along the runway were to determine the lift-off points of the combination with the Puchacz during launch, and to our great joy they found that behind both tow planes the combination with the heavy Puchacz and a crew of two was already airborne 300 m after the start of the roll.
Even launches towards the buildings to the east were no problem, because we passed over the houses and the power lines next to them at a safe altitude. The tows were very short – after five minutes we were already at 500 m and could enjoy the view of nearby Ślęża, the Mietków reservoir, and also the more distant Owl Mountains and the somewhat closer panorama of Wrocław.
There was enthusiasm and plenty of fun, but we were also practising the operational aspects of gliding from a narrow runway so as not to be a nuisance to the considerable powered traffic at Mirosławice.
On that first flying day in Mirosławice we made 14 flights, and the result was an article by Dominik Punda in „Przegląd Lotniczy” comparing the performance of the iconic Wilga with the Maule.
For a start we showed a very good, orderly and safe approach to flying and to air traffic handling, and we dispelled any doubts among the „locals” that the arrival of gliders in this place would bring them restrictions or inconvenience.
A beautiful place, a successful day and a good sign for the gliding school taking root in these remarkable surroundings.
Follow us on social media, where we show everyday flying, training and life at the airfield:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cloudelite_sky/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cloudelitemiroslawice
text: Leszek Wlazło
editing: Łukasz Machowczyk