THE STORY BEHIND
ADVANCED SOARING MADE EASY By Bernard Eckey
Bernard Eckey’s book has been very well received by the Australasian and world-wide gliding fraternity and is in its second edition. As this issue of SoaringNZ goes to press Bernard is working on the German language edition. This comprehensive soaring text book has been years in the making. Bernard shares the experience of writing and publishing his popular text. Professional writers can probably write a novel in a few weeks, but mere mortals can take more than ten years to finish a book on gliding. Here is the story of Advanced Soaring Made Easy and my long list of excuses for taking such a long time to complete it. It all began about 14 years ago with a week long coaching course. Coaching in gliding was still in its infancy at the time but at the end of the week all six participants were given their Level 1 coaching rating. Then the course director shook our hands and wished us good luck in our new roles. There I was – a brand new coach, eager to help others, but with few ideas of how to go about it. As the only coach in my club, I decided that the best way to assist my fellow glider pilots was to help them brush up on theoretical knowledge. Lectures are not universally popular but articles for a club magazine are always welcome. So I put pen to paper and sent regular articles to the editor of our club magazine. After two or three years I got a pleasant surprise. A well known 20
December 2010
competition pilot rang me and suggested making these articles available to the Australian national gliding magazine. I did, and much to my surprise my unpolished work was gladly accepted. More positive feedback followed from all corners of the country and proved very encouraging indeed. I was obviously on the right track. Further articles appeared in quick succession but what happened next almost rendered me speechless. On an interstate gliding camp, two executives of the Gliding Federation tapped me on the shoulder and suggested collating the articles in a booklet for distribution to all clubs in Australia. At the time I felt honoured but was still far too busy running the Australasian operation of my German employer. Therefore I never gave the idea any serious consideration but when I decided to quit my job the situation changed somewhat. I had indeed written enough material for a booklet and with the help of modern word processor technology it shouldn’t be very hard to collate it all. I soon made a start but what I thought would be finished in a few months took the best part of a year and was more than just a booklet. However, eventually I was ready to show my work to a well known author of several books on aviation. He did his best not to offend me but his feedback was shattering nevertheless. “Unless you add a few chapters and make it an all encompassing book on advanced gliding you will have little chance of getting it published.” That is not what I wanted to hear, but after a few weeks of doubts I decided to go back to the drawing board. Three more chapters were added and the text was substantially rearranged. In the process further topics came to mind and simultaneous research resulted in major additions to the original manuscript. Another year of full time work went by but eventually it was time to let this man have another look. This time he was happy and even agreed to proofread it for me.
