Plane Aerotowing a Glider
Tuesday, 16th October 2007 by Alex Turnbull
Please note that some or all of the objects mentioned in this post are no longer visible on Google Earth or Google Maps.
Check out this brilliant shot of a plane in flight, aerotowing a glider into the sky!
These guys clearly took off from the nearby Devon & Somerset Gliding Club, where we can see several other gliders, presumably waiting for their own time in the sky.
You can see all sort of pictures of gliders at the DSGC's homepage, and read more about Gliding at Wikipedia.
Thanks to Noisette at the Keyhole Forums.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
Nice shot ! But I can’t find the plane’s and glider’s shadows ???
According to the trees’ shadows, they should be upper right of the 2 planes…
Mathieu, the shadows are either indistinct because the planes may be a couple thousand feet above the ground, or the shadows are lost in the tree lines. The sun is at a pretty low angle (probably 30 degrees at best).
By the way, I think it is amazing you can see the tow cable in this shot. The photo is an aerial photo from Infoterra and Bluesky. But, even so, the sun must have hit it just right to get enough reflection to be seen.
You should put this post in the England category (and put the stamp at the top too)
Oops! Thanks raph (and for the other one too!)
Strange, the Google Earth imagery is quite different from Google Maps
ajho, the imagery in Google Maps is often updated later than that in Google Earth. In fact this area was updated on 23 October 2007 in GE and some time later in Maps, so the plane and glider are now no longer visible in either.
The towing combination may no longer be visible, but a twin engined plane has been captured on the latest update. So still worth a look.