Petite traduction adaptation de http://marque-en-ciel.blogspot.com/2010/02/la-traversee-de-larc-en-ciel-enfant-les.html corrigée par Manu Colle, merci à lui:
When I was a kid, the first aeronautical readings which thrilled me were collected in a big book called « 85 stories and adventures in the air ». Amongst others, there were some extracts from “The man who rode the thunder” by Lt-Co William Rankin, “Typhoons hunters” by Pierre-Andre Molene, or even a mention of the Green Spectra from “T.V.B.” written by Pierre Vire. Of course, when you are a child or a teenager, it is easy to be captivated by these stories, in which pilots fly in the vicinity of extremely powerful meteorological phenomena or full of magical poetry.
But the magic remains …
Nowadays, if I gladly let others dive in the heart of a thunderstorm or in the eye of a cyclone, I am the first to fly with my students between the sun and the sunny side of a cloud, trying to show them the “Pilot’s glory”. It is a beautiful optical effect which causes the shadow of an airplane to be surrounded by an iridescent halo when projected on the cotton of a cloud. In the early period of aviation, it made the pioneers dream and they very immodestly found this glorious name for such a phenomenon. For those who have never flown, seeing our shadow without being linked to it already leaves a marvelous impression. So just try to imagine the shadow with a rainbow colored crown!
On that day, trying to see that glory was our aim, as we flew a glider from one lift area to another in the “Circus”, below mount Granier, one of the first ridges north of the Chartreuse range. The official map names of these small mountains are “Pas de la Fosse”, “Joigny”, “Gorgeat”, or “Pellaz” but they had long been changed by the geographical fantasy of glider pilots to “First circus” and “Second circus”, due to their double half-moon shape. These ridges are located a few miles west of the Challes airfield, so we were able to play there with the lifts and the clouds knowing we could easily get back to our runway which remained permanently in sight under our wing tips. But the air mass was wetter than expected. Instead of playing leapfrog with the cumuli to project our shadow on their side, it was a game of hide-and-seek with clouds to avoid sheets of rain below them. These scattered showers were not hazardous for gliding because of their small size which did not prevent seeing through them. But we were not eager to get a shower. Heading to the sun, i.e. to the west as the afternoon was well on its way, a larger rain curtain tried to stop us, between two rows of clouds at various levels. We easily made a half-turn to come back closer to the airfield. This was when a giant rainbow appeared just in front of us, projected by the sun and the rain which diffracted and sprayed its rays …
In flight, rainbows are quite different from these weakly colored semi-circles visible for the standard pedestrian. They can reach full circles if we fly high enough. And that is what we had in front of us, a giant iridescent circle.
Actually, I should have said two. Two concentrically placed circles, with a less visible one on the outer side of another with inverted colors: from red to purple for one and from purple to red for the other. The inner one was right in front of us and seemed to get wider. We had the feeling we could touch it with our hands or the wing tip, as we were heading towards it.
Nowadays, if I gladly let others dive in the heart of a thunderstorm or in the eye of a cyclone, I am the first to fly with my students between the sun and the sunny side of a cloud, trying to show them the “Pilot’s glory”. It is a beautiful optical effect which causes the shadow of an airplane to be surrounded by an iridescent halo when projected on the cotton of a cloud. In the early period of aviation, it made the pioneers dream and they very immodestly found this glorious name for such a phenomenon. For those who have never flown, seeing our shadow without being linked to it already leaves a marvelous impression. So just try to imagine the shadow with a rainbow colored crown!
On that day, trying to see that glory was our aim, as we flew a glider from one lift area to another in the “Circus”, below mount Granier, one of the first ridges north of the Chartreuse range. The official map names of these small mountains are “Pas de la Fosse”, “Joigny”, “Gorgeat”, or “Pellaz” but they had long been changed by the geographical fantasy of glider pilots to “First circus” and “Second circus”, due to their double half-moon shape. These ridges are located a few miles west of the Challes airfield, so we were able to play there with the lifts and the clouds knowing we could easily get back to our runway which remained permanently in sight under our wing tips. But the air mass was wetter than expected. Instead of playing leapfrog with the cumuli to project our shadow on their side, it was a game of hide-and-seek with clouds to avoid sheets of rain below them. These scattered showers were not hazardous for gliding because of their small size which did not prevent seeing through them. But we were not eager to get a shower. Heading to the sun, i.e. to the west as the afternoon was well on its way, a larger rain curtain tried to stop us, between two rows of clouds at various levels. We easily made a half-turn to come back closer to the airfield. This was when a giant rainbow appeared just in front of us, projected by the sun and the rain which diffracted and sprayed its rays …
In flight, rainbows are quite different from these weakly colored semi-circles visible for the standard pedestrian. They can reach full circles if we fly high enough. And that is what we had in front of us, a giant iridescent circle.
Actually, I should have said two. Two concentrically placed circles, with a less visible one on the outer side of another with inverted colors: from red to purple for one and from purple to red for the other. The inner one was right in front of us and seemed to get wider. We had the feeling we could touch it with our hands or the wing tip, as we were heading towards it.
Despite the little Cartesian voice in our head trying to remind us of basic Physics, our hope was growing as the distance was decreasing. Yes, we would be able to touch it, softly, as sunrays on our skin. The first color to paint the white of our glider would be purple. Would we be able to distinguish when it turned to indigo, to prepare for blue, then green? This rainbow, this circle, seemed so big! Would it be compatible with the size of our sailplane, for all colors to illuminate her in a giant pilot’s glory? Or would these initial colors have disappeared when yellow, orange, and red lightened our face?
And what about heat? Would we feel difference in temperature, when the various colors reached us? Would it be colder when opening the first purple folds of the curtain, then when finishing in the furnace of gold, or carmine rays? The sheer pleasure of the thought thrilled us.
Contact was so close, only a few seconds to fly…
When suddenly, with absolutely nothing changed on board, we were back in uncolored air and everything had disappeared around us. The little Cartesian voice was now laughing, calling us dreamers who had just forgotten that this was only an optical phenomenon, that it was impossible to touch it. Oh quiet little voice!
Despite the annoying Cartesian reminder, we knew, deep in our hearts that we had managed to cross through that rainbow, that we had touched its magic!
Who said we were no longer kids?
JNV
