The Five Hour in many ways is actually the biggest accomplishment of the Silver Badge. That's the tough nut to crack and it takes a lot of effort and perseverance to get it.

To do it on thermals is tough. My club requires it to be done on thermals as flying the ridge back and forth for five hours is simply an endurance contest.

But on thermals it requires a wide range of skills. For one, you need to pick your day. After you do your 5-hour, you'll find it isn't so hard to fly many hour flights. Most XC flights are 3-5 hours in length. But many flights just happen to end up around 4.3 to 4.8 hours. It just seems at least in the east coast that 5 hours is a special threshold on pure thermal days.

So you learn to pay attention to the weather forecasts and distinguish what days are good.

And when you get out to the airport, you have to time your launch just right. Too early and you fall out and miss your window. Too late and you fall out on the back end of the day. Many pilots have gotten 4.9 hours while trying their 5 hour duration.

During the day, conditions will usually cycle in and out over certain areas.. You can't just stay in one place. You will probably need to fly 5 miles away for a while and then go 10 miles from that spot, to the other limit of gliding distance of your airport. You may have one or two critical points that will decide whether you stay up or fall out. Maybe you even have a 1500ft save or two in that process.

There's a lot of decision-making that goes into it.

After you do it, you KNOW you have the skill and confidence to go cross country. You know that getting out of gliding distance on a two hour flight in the "meat" of the day is totally manageable. You know that when you get stuck in a thermal at 1500ft, working hard and climbing at .2 knots, that you have a lot of mental energy left in the tank. The Silver Distance feels "easy"!

Uniformly, the 5-hour is one of those things that people who don't have it, complain about its logic and usefulness. And then the people who do it and then progress to their Silver Distance, appreciate it for the wonderful accomplishment that it is.

My club requires a 5 hour endurance before taking our club ships cross country and it works very well as a training milestone. I think it's a great experience and a great goal for advancing gliderpilots to aim at.

All the best,
Daniel