Gavin Wills' School of Mountain Soaring

Gavin Wills Mountain Soaring is a unique family run Soaring School operated by GlideOmarama.com. It offers services for both experienced pilots who wish to extend their mountain cross country flying in the spectacular Omarama soaring environment or inexperienced and beginner pilots who wish to improve skills or learn to glide. Some of the world's most experienced mountain flying instructors are led by Gavin Wills, G Dale, and Lemmy Tanner (CFI).

The South Island of New Zealand, with Omarama approximately in the centre, produces some of the world's best wave flying as well as astonishing ridge, thermal and convergence soaring amidst the spectacular and dramatic mountains of the Southern Alps where the visibility is often in excessof 400 kms. The volatile weather and wild mountains make for challenging soaring and are an excellent learning environmentfor pilots at any level of expereince. Indeed many advanced pilots consider Omarama to be the premier location for developing their mountain and wave flying skills.

The Omarama Airfield is a purpose built gliding site with outstanding facilities. It has on site accommodation, camping ground, restaurant, spacious club-house and hangers for 80 gliders.

The school opearates the world's largest fleet of Duo Discus's with 6 of these gliders plus a DG 1000, an ASH25 and a Grob 103 basic trainer. GlideOmarama has access to a fleet of well equipped and well presented modern single seat gliders for those wishing to fly solo.

See also Ten Good Reasons for flying with GlideOmarama.

For experienced pilots the Gavin Wills Mountain Soaring School offers the following:

Private Mountain Soaring Courses
For a great introduction to the Omarama soaring environment and for coaching individual pilots (or small groups) at any level of experience.
Adventure Soaring
For visiting pilots with limited time who wish to enjoy a day or two of spectacular flights deep into the mountains with an instructor in a Duo Discus, ASH25 or DG1000.
Adventure Soaring Week
Five days experiencing the joys and challenges of Mountain Soaring at Omarama in a variety of conditions.
Supervised Soaring
For experienced pilots and returning guests who want to rent a single seat glider to explore the local environment in solo flight.

In addition the school offers for beginner pilots:

Trial Flights - 30 and 60 minute Adventure Soaring flights for the first-timers gliding experience.
Two day Introductory Course - A week end introduction to soaring with hands on instruction.
Adventure Soaring Week - Five days of soaring adventures with an instructor.
Learn to Fly Gliders - Seven day instructional course to solo.
Post Solo Training - Five day Individual Private Course.