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Written by Robert M. Stanley.
Please return. (H M Junkin)

Soaring is a man's closest approach to the effortless grace, the rhythmic beauty of bird flight. For who have soared on man-made wings can adequately describe the sublime serenity, that exalted sense of achievement, of destiny fulfilled, which permeates one who has achieved unaided mastery over these immutable laws of gravity.

Even those of us who have never flown, however, are stirred by the implications of the word. Soaring is not in the vocabulary of the plodder or drudge. Its usage transcends mere commonplace; [[strikethrough]] goads ambition [[/strikethrough]] by its mystic alchemy of suggestion, its inflames imagination goads ambition, returns us again to that unihibited [[uninhibited]] world of childhood fantasy, youthful yearning, mature scheming [[guess]] whose inexorable destiny is cultural progress. Contemplations of its [[stamped out]] meaning imbues a longing to emulate the grace and freedom of the bird, wheeling effortlessly, relentlessly above rocky crag or woodland glade, over lonely dune or wave torn cliff, circling, dipping, curving like a fancy skater, pursuing with timeless energy, with infinite gracefulness his life's eternal quest for food. That hardly dormant worship of thing that fly is the innate quality for us to subdue beeath [[beneath]] our carefully preened plumage of sophistication... it is too inherently linked with evolutionary instinct of intellectual advancement.

Soaring, in its more modern, more technical sense however, is that ability of motionless aircraft to utilize these movements present in our atmosphere to sustain and increase its altitude above the ground. The term gliding denotes a toboggan like slide along and invisible air path from a higher to a lower [[strikethrough]] altitude above the [[/strikethrough]] elevation. In like manner, an aircraft that glides is a glider. An aircraft that soars