Students take to the skies with the BU Gliding and Soaring club
For many travelers, the act of flying has become almost routine. Once ensconced in the
long metal tube that is a commercial jetliner, you might gaze out the window (if you get
the window) while the plane takes flight and the landscape drops away and starts to
look like an elaborate model railroad set. Then you’re in the clouds, and after a moment,
you settle in to watch the in-flight flick.
It’s easy to imagine that this experience would be a bit more exciting if you were in a
two-seat propeller plane. In the smaller craft, you might feel more exposed, a speck in
the welkin. You’d feel the sensation of flying as a kind of rush through your body.
Now what if, upon reaching those heights, you could turn the engine off? Suddenly, the
only sound is of the wind whistling across the wings—which have been designed to
keep the plane aloft without power. You catch an updraft and circle silently through the
air with the birds.
Once a week (when the weather allows), members of the Boston University Gliding and
Soaring (BUGS) student club get the rare opportunity to do just that, sailing the skies in
a Stemme S6 motor glider. The Stemme’s powered propeller gives it the freedom to just
take off. (No tedious wait for a towing plane.) Once at the desired altitude—say, 1,000
feet—the pilot cuts the power and coasts on air currents, the way birds do.
“In a plane with a motor, you’re generally trying to get from Point A to Point B,” says
BUGS member Kit Ng (ENG’26). “In a glider, you’re almost never doing that. It’s more
for fun, and kind of a test of your pilot skills, just to stay in the air.”
“When I go up in the Stemme, it’s very serene,” says Sophia Becken (ENG’12), the
club’s outgoing president. “Very, very serene.” With the Stemme’s expansive cockpit
window, “you can see all the way around,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”