[جناح جده]

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
شعبنا واحد
وديننا واحد

حصري من سلسلة الدعم المعنوي للطيارين 13
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ننقل لكم مقابله باللغه الانجلييزيه مع الطيار الشراعي اليمني الكبتن محمد صالح

المقالح والتي تتظمن مواقف حدثت اثناء الطيران في المجلة اليمنية الشهيرة
( اليمن اليوم )
يمن تودي
فيها بعض المواقف التجارب التي مر بها الاخ والصديق
محمد المقالح
تحية عطرة له وتحية عطرة الى ارض اليمن السعيد مهد الحضارات

نترككم مع الموضوع وهو بالغة الانجليزية وسوف يترجم قريباً من احد الزملاء

طيران موفق

عبد الله القرني
جناح جدة
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MOHMMED Al-MAQALEH

The Highs & Lows of Flying in Yemen

Every afternoon throughout the country, Yemeni men sit in a crowded room slowly stuffing their cheeks full of green leaves. Time drifts by until they arrive at the Hour of Solomon and Yemeni minds soar into the heavens as the cathinone and cathine slowly take effect.

• By Jousha Maricich

However, there is one Yemeni man, Mo­hammed Al Maqaleh, who was never satis­fied with sitting and chewing qat. He needed something stronger. He needed adrenaline. Unfortunately, adrenaline isn’t grown on stone terraces in the Yemeni highlands, so Mohammed was forced to find another source. He decided to become the first Ye­meni to learn to fly.
In 1985, Mohammed was active in Ye­men’s student federation. Designated a fu­ture Yemeni leader, he was granted the op­portunity to tour the United States.
The idea behind the program was to send Yemenis to America to meet American lead­ers, learn from them, and return to Yemen with new ideas and experience that would help the country develop. While in the US, he attended numerous meetings and lectures and was introduced to American politicians, economists, and business leaders. However, on a day trip hiking in California, meant to give the students a break in their rigorous schedule, he also met some pilots. They told Mohammed all about the adventurous aerial sports of hang gliding and paragliding, and forever changed his life.
Mohammed remembers how appreciative he was of his time abroad. “I was so inspired by America, I came back to Yemen and I wanted to change the world. I wanted to bring a gift back to my country.” Although he’d met many economists and politicians, it wasn’t free market capitalism or democratic reforms that he wanted to bestow upon his countrymen. Instead, a deep desire inspired by the Californian pilots had consumed him. He recalls his new life mission, “I was going to show Yemen how to fly.”
Mohammed was relentless in pursuing his dream. However, with no equipment and no instructor, it would prove difficult. As fate would have it, he was chatting with the director of the Yemen-America Language Institute, who introduced Mohammed to an American named David Van Haman. David was a pilot, and after some convincing, he agreed to train Mohammed.
An ecstatic Mohammed immediately sold some land, bought a hanglider, and set out to learn from his new American friend. “It was a long and challenging process,” Mohammed admits, smiling at the memories of the many thrills and spills. “I started at one meter. Af­ter some time, David would tie me to a tree and I’d practice taking off. He’d then pull me back to the ground.”
The training continued until he’d con­vinced his mentor that he was ready for his first flight. Mohammed, then a student at Sana’a University, spread the word that the first Yemeni in history would be flying from Wadi Dhahr and invited people from the university to come watch. Not everyone was as excited about this idea as Mohammed. The university made him sign a release form, and his mother and father each fasted for three days so that Allah would keep him safe.
On the morning of his first flight, he per­formed his ablutions, recited Quran, and drove to Wadi Dhahr. A massive crowd had gathered to watch history in the making. They sang songs and cheered as he assembled his glider. However, as the moment for launch came, the crowd suddenly became quiet and unsettled. They asked him, “What is the ben­efit Mohammed?” Several of his friends even offered Mohammed their jambiyas, begging him not to attempt such a stunt. Moham­med says that this shook his confidence, and admits that he began to have second thoughts. He quietly recited the Fatiha for strength. Never one to disappoint a crowd, he could not be deterred. He was determined to become the first Yemeni to fly.
As the women murmured verses from the Quran under their veils, Mohammed, his heart racing, picked up his glider and began running; a gust of wind carried him off the ground and into the Yemeni history books. “You can’t imagine the experience!” he recalled with a wistful look. “The wind and the glider were perfect, and I had an amazing view. Imagine: You see the world below you. You feel like a bird.” He circled above the crowd and waved. The Yemeni women below stopped reciting Quran and they ululated for Mohammed. He chuckles, “After my first flight, I suddenly had options.” In fact, he used the remainder of the money he’d made on the land deal to get married just three months later.
Nonetheless, learning to fly in Yemen has not been all thrills and girls for Mohammed. Yemen’s rugged landscape makes it a diffi­cult place for beginners to learn. Sharp rocks, no maps, few predecessors, and zero local knowledge of the aerial sports have posed unique challenges.
One day, Mohammed went flying from Aiban mountain. A man sitting on his don­key watched him descend and land in the valley. As he began to pack up his glider, the donkey came running towards him at full speed. The man couldn’t control his beast of burden, and it ran over the glider. Mohammed looked down at the holes in the glider, incredulous and crestfallen. He chased the man and his donkey, but they escaped. With nothing else to do, he gathered up his broken glider and returned home, well-chaffed by this rural hit and run.
On another occasion, Mohammed went for a lengthy Friday flight. However, the thermal he had been riding suddenly gave out and he fell, luckily landing in a grove of qat trees. The edges of the glider were caught on both sides by the branches and he was left hanging precariously. Eventually, the faith­ful spilled out of the local mosque to find Mohammed suspended from the trees. They called the police but they didn’t have any proper equipment. He was stuck for many hours as the village contemplated the best course of action. Finally, they decided to cut branches from nearby trees and pile them beneath him to provide him a cushion. He hesitantly released himself from the suit and fell into the branches below. Poor Moham­med was again forced to return home to his wife, scratched and bleeding, with another damaged glider.
Perhaps the most entertaining of Moham­med’s aerial escapades was on a trip to Jebel Ba’adaan to the east of Ibb. He hiked up the mountain after lunch, but was forced to wait for an appropriate wind. The sun began to set, but he didn’t want to walk back down the jagged path to his Landcruiser, so he decided to fly down. He took off and flew towards the sunset, over the wadis as the farmers began to return home from the fields. The astonished locals looked up and saw his black glider, swooping like a massive bat, above. “They did not know what I was!” he laughs. “They shouted up at the glider and I real­ized I was going to have a problem.”
Mohammed landed, packed up his glider, and began to make his way back to his car, forgetting to remove his gloves, goggles, and helmet. He was stumbling through the dark­ness when loud voices demanded, “Who are you creature from the sky?” He tried in vain to explain. However, the villagers gave chase and hunted him with sticks and stones. He gave one more cry, “I am Mohammed. I am Yemeni. I am a man. I flew from the moun­tains. Please help me!” After some convinc­ing, the villagers remembered their Yemeni hospitality, poured him a hot cup of tea, and even carried his glider to his car for him.
Despite these various setbacks, Moham­med has never faltered in his lifelong en­deavor to bring the aerial sports to Yemen. He continues to promote awareness in the Yemeni community, and has been featured in both international and Yemeni media. He even started the Yemen Hangliding Club, and is working hard to petition for money from the public and private sectors to raise funds to share his love of flying with his country­men. He hopes to train Yemen’s youth and wants to encourage the first Yemeni woman to learn to fly. The first Yemeni to fly, he con­tinues in his efforts to show his countrymen that the sky is the limit.


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المصدر كما وردني في البريد الاكتروني الخاص بي

https://www.yemen-today.com/pages/ADVENTURE.htm


يمكنكم معرفة المزيد من التفاصيل عنه من خلال هذا الرابط -من اعدادي
https://www.flyingway.com/vb/showpost...41&postcount=1