On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 07:22:06 -0700, Daniel Sazhin wrote:

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.

Agreed.

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 when flying over flat land, thats all you've got.

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.

In the UK you need to get Bronze before tackling Silver, Bronze being 50
solo flights with two exceeding 30 minutes (winch) or 60mins (aerotow)
followed by flying and written tests.You also need the Bronze XC
endorsement (selection, field landing and navigation exercises, all done
in an Scheibe SF-25 at my club).

Our instructors will insist on you having Bronze with XC endorsement
before tackling Silver Distance, but won't stop you doing longer flights
while getting Bronze, so a lot of us got our Silver Height and Silver
duration while working on Bronze.

So, for most of us, Silver Distance becomes our first solo XC flight.
Mini-triangles count as local soaring since they stay within 5 miles of
home and a lot of our new pilots will have gone XC in two-seaters, often
during competitions, before soloing.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org