About 25 times a year, he sets soar in his LS-3A glider for a four-or five-hour excursion, searching for thermal columns of warm air to lift his aircraft and keep it aloft for miles.
Last year Sean set a national record in his sailplane, flying from Tehachapi to Alturas, near the Oregon border, a distance of 456 miles in about seven hours.
Mind you, a sailplane doesn’t have an engine, so if the thermals quit, it loses altitude. The good news is, his sailplane’s roughly 40:1 glide ratio (how many meters it can travel forward before losing 1 meter of altitude) is far better than a Boeing 767 at 12:1 or the Space Shuttle’s glide ratio of 4.5. 
Still, he can no longer count the number of times he’s dropped unexpectedly out of the air to surprise guests. These impromptu visits come with the territory.
“When I was in high school, I landed in a field where the farmer’s daughter was having her graduation party,” Franke said. “They invited me to the party, and we had a grand time. I think it was something new for them.”
Although unexpected, these landings should hardly be classified as emergencies, especially for Franke, a third-generation glider pilot who saw his first hang time when he was two-years-old. He is always with a plan if his glider’s altitude sinks to an unacceptably low level.
..Read the complete article at ……………………
http://www.laverneonline.com/2009/09/02/sean-franke-gliding-through-life-one-day-at-a-time/
2 weekends ago Sean and his Father set a new record in his new Nimbus 4D Sail Plane.
Tehachapi California to Burley Idaho. 497 miles in 7 hours.
A stately,1940 Fairchild F24W, with a 165 HP Warner Scarab radial engine has recently taken up residence at Cable Airport, housed comfortably in hangar 295. John Selk is the proud owner of this classic aircraft, having purchased it just three months ago from a gentleman in Torrance, who’d owned the airplane since the early ‘70s.
John started flying in a Piper Cub in his early twenties out of Ardmore, Oklahoma, while attending college. At the time he had his sights on flying for the airlines; getting his private, commercial, multi engine, instrument and flight instructor ratings all within a few years. To build flight time, he took on student pilots, and flew airmail at night for Catlin Aviation, out of Oklahoma City.
In 1968, he married his wife Vicki, and bought their first aircraft, a ’39 Piper Cub. By the early ‘70s, the airline industry was furloughing thousands of pilots; John was hired by American Airlines in late 1970 and promptly furloughed before he completed his training. Recognizing the then-current practice of training only pilots under the age of 30, John and Vicki moved west to California.
John and Vicki settled in Claremont, where they have remained, and had their daughter, Elizabeth in 1983. John played bass guitar for rock bands on the west coast, participating on several hit records, and subsequently moved into the auto brokering business, while Vicki worked for Pitzer college, recently retiring as Vice President/Treasurer.
John got back into flying in the ‘80s, buying a 1947 Beech Bonanza that he housed at Cable. Several aircraft followed the Bonanza, including a partnership with Bob Andrews and Terry Freedman in a 1940 Piper Cub, and a Commemorative Air Force (CAF) partnership in the CAF T-6 Harvard, co-flown by Cliff Heathcoat and Doug Schuster (hangar T). John has taken many a cross country in the T-6, and has instructed F-16 pilots at Edwards Air Force Base in ‘unusual maneuvers’ with the T-6.
John and Vicki (also a pilot) are looking forward to local flights in the Fairchild, so stop by and say ‘hi’!
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