Picture this: You’re standing on a gently sloping hillside. Soft breezes swirl around you, and swallows skillfully skim the terrain, darting and hunting in the morning air. In one hand, you’re holding a modern radio control transmitter; and in the other, the wingtip of an ultralight, high-performance radio-controlled glider.

It’s so light and optimally shaped that you can feel its wings responding to the air around you. You bring the glider up behind you and with the natural, accelerating swing of your arm, you give it velocity. At the end of this throwing arc, you release the wingtip, and send it speeding skyward, arrow straight.

It’s stunning climb begins to slow as it reaches the height of a six or seven story building. With a tiny forward flick on the joystick of the radio, your glider instantly responds, nosing over into graceful level flight. The silence of the flight is striking as you begin searching the peaceful air for signs of lift.

About the wingspan of a hawk, but weighing only four and a half ounces, the craft at your command converts altitude into forward flight with amazing efficiency. In fact it’s efficient enough that only a small upward movement of the air is required to extend or sustain its flight. And this same aerodynamic efficiency means that a momentary dive creates enough speed and energy for a flashy aerobatic sequence. The choice is yours. Eke out the longest flight you can, or link a series of loops and rolls into a perfect hand catch... then throw it again... and again.

In the right conditions one throw can turn into a 20 minute thermal flight, or an hour long session on the slope. But throwing it is so much fun, it doesn’t matter whether you fly 20 seconds or 20 minutes.

If this sounds amazing, that’s because it is. Liftworx creates unique radio controlled glider kits that begin with an exceptional building experience, and culminate in an exceptional flying experience. Welcome to Liftworx.

...Musing on all this, you almost miss the sudden upward shift your glider has just made in it’s flight path! With a quick response, you bank into a turn, knowing this may indicate a thermal: a column of warmer air rising from the ground in the cooler air around it. Sure enough, your turn provides further indications of lift: you’ve turned almost a full circle, and instead of losing a bit of height, you’ve remained perfectly level. Unsatisfied, you adjust the circle you’re flying to try to find the lifting core of this gentle thermal. A few exploratory turns reveal that this lift has more to offer, and before long you’re ‘coring it’.

Now every circle you fly gains you 5 or more feet of altitude. It’s like a free invisible elevator ride. Just like a hawk, you’re rising without any visible means of power. You allow your turns to drift with the breeze just as the thermal current you’re hitching a ride with would do, but you’re constantly making small adjustments to try to stay in the best lift. The task is mesmerizing, requiring total concentration; and removing your mind, quite literally, from any worldly concerns.

It’s time to come home. Your glider has gotten so small that you can barely make out the tail surfaces to figure out what direction you’re flying. So you push your stick forward and enter a near vertical dive. Losing a hundred feet in just a few seconds, you’re now traveling with enough energy to complete three extended graceful rolls, then dive again for an inside loop, followed by a half an outside loop to an extended session of inverted flight. A half roll puts you right side up again, and you begin to plan a landing. You orient the glider downwind of you and set up a straight approach. Visually measuring your speed and remaining energy, you control for a flatter glide and slower flight. Your judgment honed from your many hours of flight experience, you squeeze every last bit of forward energy from the glider just before it arrives at your hand with almost no speed at all. Catching it is like reaching out and taking it off an invisible shelf.

...This is the Liftworx Experience!