The sky’s the limit for Amber as she prepares for world championships

Taking up gliding three years ago, Amber said she always had a fascination with “things that fly”.

“I knew I wanted to be an engineer and decided to go into Aerospace Engineering,” she said.

“My dad used to fly gliders back in the ’90s.

“So, towards the end of my first year at uni, my dad and I took part in the ‘Flying Start’ course that is offered at the Gliding Club of Victoria, in Benalla.”

Amber said she absolutely loved learning to fly

“I continued to take part in the coaching program at Joeyglide, which is focused on competition flying for junior pilots, under 26.

“After that program, I truly fell in love with the sport.

“I have always loved competitive sport, so knowing that I could do this in a competitive manner drove me to want to continue flying.”

Joeyglide, which is run by the Australian Junior Gliding Club, is a national competition and a major part of selection for the Junior World Gliding Championships.

“I was coming into the 2025-2026 (Joeyglide) season as an underdog,” Amber said.

“I hadn't placed well in the 2024-2025 competition, something I would say is due to having limited experience, as I only had 50 solo hours at the time.

“I was still relatively new to cross-country flying and I was rather nervous as it was my first competition.

“My biggest goal then was just to get around the tasks.”

Amber said with that focus, all of a sudden, she began to improve.

In her second week of competition she placed second in her final task.

“This season, I came in with over twice as many hours and much more focused practice,” Amber said.

“I took up every coaching opportunity I could, learning different techniques from different people until I was able to begin developing my own style.

“I also made an effort to fly competition-style tasks, where possible, rather than purely flying the best weather.

“This preparation led me to lead the Junior Nationals for most of the competition this year, before finishing in second place against a strong cohort of pilots.

“I still have a lot of learning to do, but I believe my strong placement this year and improvement from last year helped in being selected.”

With Germany on the horizon, Amber can’t wait to pit herself against some of the best young glider pilots in the world.

“We begin the championships with the opening ceremony on August 2,” she said.

“From the third to the 14th, we will fly tasks.”

In gliding competitions, there are basically two types of tasks.

“The first type is a racing task, where we are given turn points that we have to reach in a certain order, and we are trying to do the task the fastest,” Amber said.

“The second type of task is an assigned area task where we are given big sectors and a certain amount of time, and we essentially try to cover the largest distance in that time.

“The average flying day will see us taking part in a competition briefing in the morning, followed by an Australian team briefing, and then we finally go out to our gliders to fly the day's task.

“Our scores from each day will be added together to get the final competition score.”

In the meantime Amber has been doing all she can to get ready for the competition.

“After the Junior Nationals I took part in squad week training and the two-seat nationals, practising competition flying as much as possible before the season was coming to an end,” she said.

In the off-season, in winter, I have spent some time flying locally, and I’m just trying to stay up in weak conditions, alongside doing some simulator flying with my teammate to practice our team flying.

While she is excited about her success in the sport, Amber said she had loved just being able to get into the skies above Benalla and glide.

“The best thing about gliding is that there's something in it for everyone,” she said.

“I love competition flying, but there's also aerobatics, or simply local soaring for someone who just wants to see the world from the air.

“Benalla has so much variety in flying, we have the flatlands to the north and the hills to the south.

“This allows us to fly in different and interesting conditions as often as possible.”

Amber said she’d love to see more local young people getting involved in gliding.

“I think it's really important to look towards increasing the junior involvement in the sport,” she said.

“Gliding isn't a well-known sport, but Australia has some of the best flying conditions in the world.

“So it would be awesome to see more young people come along and give it a try as it's unlike anything else.”