Sport
28 January, 2025
Martin looks to improve skills
Horsham's Ruben Martin wants to improve his flying skills over the next week by participating in the Horsham Flying Club's gliding coaching week.
Martin grew up in Leeton, Country NSW, and started flying when he was 13 years old, as his dad, Owen, was a pilot.
Martin participated in gliding until he was 20 years old before life took over and he was travelling with work.
He settled in Horsham and, over the last five years, has slowly gotten back into gliding.
"Gliding is a good way to learn to fly, and it's the cheapest way as well and teaches you good handling skills," Martin said.
"To fly massive distances with no engine on the sun's power is the most attractive thing.
"With the rising air and thermals, the goal is to find and climb them, cruise, fly to the next thermal, and link them in."
"The best I have done in one trip is 250km, which is not that much, but coaching week pushes you to go as far as possible and teaches you the process of cross-country flying."
Martin hopes to improve his skills during coaching week.
"Coaching week is good to set up the foundations for cross-country flying," Martin said.
"It's the process of reading the weather, choosing a task suitable for that day's weather, and having the glider prepared with everything you need for the flight.
"A few classes are talking about different topics, and on the flying side, you get to learn the process and strategy, build up what works for you, and apply that every day, given the weather conditions, to achieve cross-country flying.
"It will help develop my foundation skills so I can fly cross country when I want. The knowledge base and learning rate is quite high and steep, so you learn a lot in the condensed week."
"I won't be entering the competition as I am too busy. My deficiencies are reading the weather, understanding what will happen for that day, and being able to monitor the weather conditions during the day."
"The skill of gliding is understanding what the weather is doing and when to speed up and slow down."