The Rev Donald G. Place of St John's Episcopal Church, North Adams, has been flying with the club for about a year now. He joined the club to learn how to fly.

"It was something I had wanted to do for a long time, ever since I was a kid," Place said. "And here I am, living five minutes away from a soaring club -- so I'm doing it."

One of the main things the club does is to teach its members how to soar.

Soaring is not powered flight, Place explained. "You're tied by a line to a plane and taken up."

An engine-powered tow plane pulls the soaring plane behind it with a nylon line, in order to launch it into flight. "The one that's being towed has no engine and no (propeller)," Place said. "It's just wings and a body.

"You take off, and when you're about 2,000 feet above ground level, you pull a release that releases the tow rope," he explained. "The tow plane goes back to the airport and you're up there on your own, until you have to come down."

Place said the soaring plane's design makes it easy to fly "It takes off in a pretty light wind, actually. On the ground, you have to hold the thing down sometimes."

The plane, with its long wing span, is designed to glide a long distance without any power. If an emergency were to occur; and Place needed to land, he said he would just need to find an open field.

"You might not make a perfect two-point landing, but you come down," he said. "It's designed to fly without an engine, so you don't have to worry about your engine conking out."

The trainer plane he flies in weighs about 900 pounds and holds two people - the student and the instructor.

Under the right conditions, the plane can soar all day long.

"What you look for are called Thermals," Place said.

A thermal is a column of warm air that's rising. The warm air is what keeps the plane airborne.

"If you ever watch hawks or vultures around here, you can see them soaring in circles without flapping their wings - they're in a thermal," said Place.

you're going to be coming back down pretty quickly because it's the thermals that keep you aloft.

"In the absence of thermals, the flight will generally only last about 10 to 15 minutes, "which doesn't give you a whole lot of time for instruction," Place said. "But, if there's a thermal, there's no limit."

Part of Place's pilot's test will include his demonstrating what to do in the case of an emergency. There are hand and wing-flapping signals to learn in case the radio goes out.

If the tow rope won't release for some reason, Place would need to flap the plane's wings to alert the tow plane's pilot to the problem. The tow pilot would then use the tow line release on his plane, and Place would have to land with the line still attached to the soaring plane.

Because Place's soaring is done through the club, there is an hour-long time limit if others are waiting to fly. If "no one else is waiting … you can stay up there all day if you want," he said.

Place enjoys being part of the soaring club, whose members come from all over Western Massachusetts and New York.

"It's a great bunch of people," he said "We go out in the afternoon and, of course, there's only a couple (of pilots) up in the air at a time. It's a good time to just sit and relax, and talk with people."

It is that camaraderie that drew Place, in part, to join the club.

"As a priest, I think people look upon clergy as a member of the congregation. But I'm really not," he said. "I'm a person that everyone turns to. I can't have the same kind of fellowship among my parishioners that the parishioners have among themselves. So I have to look outside for fellowship and companionship."

At his last parish, Place took up the martial arts.

"And that was the reason I got into that - to have a group to gather with," he said. Place has served as rector at St John's since January 1996.

There is no doubt of the appeal that the flying aspect of the club has for Place.

"You drop off that (tow rope), and there's no sound at all, except the air over the wings," he said. "It's magnificent."

He said his favorite time to fly is in the fall with all of its brilliant colors.

Place hopes to take his first solo flight later this summer. He figures he has logged a total of about eight hours of flight time, "which are quite a few 15-minute flights," he said. "Usually it takes about 20 hours in instructed flight before you do your first solo."

After he solos for the first time, Place will have to put in a certain number of hours, flying on his own, before he can take the test to become a licensed pilot.

"You can't take up passengers until you're a licensed pilot," he said. "I've already got a list of people who want to go up."

It is doubtful his wife will be one of those passengers, however.

"She thinks I'm nuts," he said laughing. "She takes horseback riding lessons and I keep telling her that her riding is just as dangerous if not more so, than flying. She won't buy it."

Place also has recently taken a seat on the North Adams Airport Commission for a three-year term. "I'm the only member of the club that actually lives in North Adams," he said.