Rob was the sort of glider student you wanted to see.  We had been flying together for a couple of months, and now he was about ready to go up by himself. I marked off a whole Friday afternoon on the schedule.

These last pre-solo flights are mostly just about assuming responsibility, but it’s also a chance to learn how to handle surprises. Spins are a good example. Most airplane pilots these days are probably just taught to avoid spins, and expect to fly in aircraft that are hard to spin, but at Issaquah we wouldn’t solo anybody who hadn’t demonstrated recoveries from spins both left and right. In a 2-33 It takes some effort to keep one wing flying when the other one isn’t, but it provides a chance to practice the procedure — and it’s the most fun that the FAA will (thanks to a loophole) let you have without wearing a parachute. Some people enjoy this more than others.  One thing I learned is that they worry less if they start out with a little extra altitude.

We took the usual 3,000 foot tow and got the spins done. The next contingency to consider is the off-field landing. Gliders are a lot more likely than airplanes to make unscheduled stops. We didn’t have an alternate field nearby, but what we could do is approach our runway from an unfamiliar direction, and cover the altimeter so the student gets a chance to land without the usual cues. On our way we ran into a little bit of lift and so Rob got some experience flying in wave, and a few extra minutes for the price of his aerotow.

Another thing to check off is a practice rope break. Airplane pilots talk a lot about what they’d do if their engine ever quit on takeoff, but glider pilots make a point of thinking about something similar, in great particularity, on every flight. Rob had acquired the necessary habit of announcing 200 feet of altitude each time as he climbed out over town, and on the next, very brief, flight he was treated to a jolt and the sight of the towrope snapping away into space.  A 45 degree bank, into the wind, and a little button-hook pattern to land opposite-direction and coast back to the spot we’d started from.

A few last-minute details to attend to on the ground. Endorsements by the instructor in the logbook and on the student pilot license. Preparing the glider for a single pilot: weight and balance have changed. Line kids, if you’ve got ’em, may show up helpfully with ballast when required. Rear-seat restraints are fastened and snugged down so they don’t try to grab the controls; the rear cushions are removed unless subdued by the straps. The instructor offers some droll words of advice and a reminder to have fun, and may claim the honor of running the wingtip.

This is a high point in the student’s life, but a familiar scenario for those left on the runway. It was pretty much the end of the day, so we went about tying down other gliders, figuring out who should take the cash box, talking about the weather, etc. Dinner plans began to form. Ordinarily, someone would be filling a bucket of water in anticipation of Rob’s return. Hazing for new airplane pilots typically involves cutting off the student’s shirttail, but we were definitely a water-based operation.

The thing is, we noticed that Rob wasn’t coming back. By that I don’t mean he was missing, like when they say it in the movies — he was easy enough to spot, out beyond the gravel pit. He was having a great time. He just wasn’t moving.

I mentioned that we had found some wave lift during our recommendation flight.  In a stable airmass, when wind blows across a ridge, it may form standing waves like those in a stream. An aircraft that can stay in the “up” part of the wave, by matching its airspeed to the wind speed, may be able to remain over a spot on the ground and climb. We didn’t see this often and the conditions at Issaquah were never spectacular, like some other places; but when it happened, it was still magical.

I hadn’t said anything to Rob about returning the glider. The proverb usually takes care of that. On a good Saturday we might send two or three dozen flights aloft, and in my experience none had ever become lodged up there before.

We milled around. It would have been thoughtless of me not to be at the airport when Rob landed, but until then my presence wouldn’t matter much. Somebody pointed out that if he were at, say, 2,000 feet, it would probably take him something like ten minutes to get back down to where we were. We could watch him just as well from that new little restaurant on the other side of the freeway. There was Hawaiian pizza there, but also some pretty tasty shrimp. We drifted off toward dinner.

We were glad to be celebrating Rob’s success at soaring, but at some point it dawned on us (if that’s the phrase I want) that nightfall might precede Rob’s return. He could still be basking in sunlight as the runway saw darkness, making the famous ten-minute lead time seem less like an advantage now and more like a hazard. I keenly regretted having no opportunity to mention this to him.

Lacking radios, or a light gun, or any pre-arranged signal, we scrambled to think of a way to communicate with our hero pilot. We settled on having someone in the towplane intercept him and pantomime our message about landing soon. This duty fell to our visiting tow pilot,  John Croasdale, as the only one of our party both qualified to fly the Pawnee and not yet drinking.

Flying at night is one of life’s greatest pleasures, but success does require some preparation. The FAA regulates the training that pilots must have, and specifies the lighting to be displayed by their aircraft. More urgently from a practical point of view, a chosen landing spot should be visible from the air. It appeared that we might lack all of those things.

In Seattle, in June, the sun sets after nine o’clock. The Issaquah Skyport is a shopping center now, but in June 1987 there would have been a black hole eight blocks square between Gilman Village and Lake Samamish State Park. The eastern part, where Costco’s headquarters is now, was a farm with a barn and an oval track for harness racing. Part of the western half was our 1600 foot grass runway, with a hangar and fuel pumps on one side.

We had one more trick to try. Roger had told me about a time when a pilot arrived late and his comrades arranged rudimentary lighting for him. We went back to the airport and had people drive their cars onto both ends of the field and aim their headlights along its length, with an admonition to avoid blinding our pilot after he got low enough to identify the surface.

In the end, Rob arrived before it got really dark and had no trouble landing. His curiosity had just been piqued by the visit from the towplane, but he said that he found the headlights useful. He wasn’t deterred by this experience at all — we continued to fly at Issaquah and later at a couple of other places — and he had, as one should have, a really good solo-flight story.