PVCC Puma Press: October 2003

You slip into the glider’s front seat and strap down while the pilot sits behind you. A clear canopy is lowered over your head, giving you a 360 degree view of your surroundings. The preflight checklist is completed by the pilot and then the tow plane takes your 640 pound glider rattling across the gravel. Suddenly, you are in the air going 60 mph. After the glider has reached sufficient altitude, the pilot says, "Pull the red ball."

You look at the mysterious red ball in the middle of the dashboard and give it a tug. The pilot tells you to pull harder. You give the red ball a big yank and the tow rope releases with a snap. The tow plane flies away to the left and leaves you in the skies with only a pair of wings keeping you aloft. You see the desert below, the mountains in the distance and clear blue skies all around.

Along the dashboard are three gauges: the altimeter, which gives altitude, the airspeed gauge, which is given in miles per hour and the pariometer, which tells if you are headed up or down. The pilot demonstrates a few simple techniques with the pedals and the stick and then hands over the controls to you. You taste the personal freedom of flight. Gently you guide the glider around in a large circle and try your hand at going up and down. Eagles, hawks and buzzards share your airspace and circle lazily.

You can now soar like the eagles and not hear the roar of a gasoline engine shattering the pristine silence. It is possible at the Turf Soaring School to soar over the desert landscape almost like a bird. With the right thermals, in the summer an experienced glider pilot can fly all the way to the Grand Canyon and back in seven to eight hours.

However, your first flight lasts less than an hour. It is an amazing experience to gaze down at the desert see Lake Pleasant and realize the only thing holding you up is a glider navigating the thermals rising off the desert floor. Anyone can take a scenic flight in a glider where an experienced glider pilot will guide the plane and even allow you to take the stick and fly the sailplane yourself at the Turf Soaring School.

After you land, your pilot will enter your flight time in an official pilot’s logbook, which is yours to keep as a souvenir of the beginning of your glider pilot’s training. Your first hour can be the beginning of a new hobby or even a new career.

Turf Soaring School is located at 8700 West Carefree Highway near 99 Avenue. For over 27 years, thousands have experienced the excitement of soaring and have learned to fly at this unassuming private airport. Several blue buildings are scattered around the lawn, the only spot of bright green for miles around, which sits beside a narrow asphalt strip long enough for small Cessnas and gliders to take off and land. A mixture of privately owned gliders and the school’s sailplanes are tethered around the landing strip.

The school offers a variety of services, ranging from a single sightseeing ride, soaring flight lessons, aerobatic soaring lessons, ground school, rentals and tie-down privileges. If you get hooked on the sport as so many have, then after obtaining your pilot’s license, you can rent sailplanes by the hour and hire a tow plane to send you off into the blue vistas. The school is open seven days a week, year-round from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Instructors, eight sailplanes and three tow planes are available for clients.

One of the certified pilots at the school, Rich Brown, who has been flying for 32 years, says, "I would rather work than have a day off." He discovered the school many years ago and after his first ride, says, "I got hooked on it."

Another pilot, Jim Gager, a certified flight instructor, says he moved from North Carolina just to work at the school full-time. Like Brown, he took a glider flight and became hooked on the sport of soaring and currently has logged over 3,500 glider landings.

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	You guide the glider around in a large circle. Eagles, hawks and buzzards share your airspace.
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Gager says, "I love flying in a 3-D world." He competes in gliding competitions in the sport class division. There are different classes and divisions for gliders depending on their size and prices, ranging from $20,000 to $250,000. Gager says, the sports class is for guys like him who aren’t rich. He recently returned from a competition near Reno where, he says with a grin, "I won."

Glenn Whitaker, a student pilot from St. Louis and an engineer for Boeing, is spending his vacation time at the school qualifying for his glider pilot’s license. He says, "I spent 25 years looking at the ads in "Soaring" magazine and decided not to put it off any longer, so I came out here to do it." He says that it was more cost effective to come Arizona to get his flight hours and solo than it would be in St. Louis, and besides, thermals are rare in his home state.

Roy Coulliette is the owner of Turf Soaring School and has operated it for 37 years, 27 years at the current location on land leased from the state. He has loved gliders since he was 13 and discovered the Arizona Soaring Association, which then operated out of Cave Creek and Cactus Roads. While in college, he bought a small single engine plane and, in order to pay for it, towed gliders. Coulliette says, "There’s more fun at the other end of the rope." So he bought two gliders and began the school. He figures he now has over 22,000 glider flights under his belt.

Coulliette noted the different types of people who come to the school: from "newbies," foreign tourists and famous people to pilots with years of experience and sailplane owners. Among his students over the years are Hugh Downs, Barry Young and Cliff Robertson.

Often he teaches students to solo and years later meets them again as contestants at various soaring competitions and conventions. The school has hosted the Region Nine competition for the Southwest several times.

Coulliette says, "I compete every day by trying to stay in business." One of his private pleasures at the end of a hard day is to take a three-hour flight over Lake Pleasant, then head north toward the hills for the uprising thermals, slowly turn south around 6 p.m. and let the prevailing head winds send him straight to the school’s airport.

For his many contributions to the aviation industry, Coulliette will be inducted into the Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame in 2004. One of his pilots, Rich Brown says, "So many have come through this school and have gone on to do things that are important to the [flight] industry." According to Brown, this school is the number one soaring site in the country and only the Air Force Academy has trained more glider pilots.