By spending a significant amount of time at the field, one sees many good
and bad takeoffs and landings. It's possible to learn a great deal just by
observing and discussing with your clubmates.

By pitching in to help rig and derig gliders - the club's and the other
private pilots who keep their ships at the field - one can learn how they
differ and what one might want to eventually buy.

Yes, I've had those days where I only flew for 20 minutes... or not at all.
With an hour drive both ways, I was into it about for 2 years before my
day's soaring time exceeded my drive time!

In my experience, those that expect to show up, fly, and go home do not get
deeply into the sport because they don't learn enough to make the commitment
to truly learn to soar. I decided from the beginning that if I was going to
be a pilot I'd better give it my all in order to be safe and proficient.

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...
Dan G wrote:
On Jul 8, 6:23 pm, Peter wrote:
Rob McDonald wrote

My experience with soaring is that you are always doing something when
you
are not flying. Socializing with club members is part of the
experience,
and much more common in my experience than in power-plane flying clubs.
The social scene seems to be a way of life. It's OK if you want that,
not OK if you don't. But one needs to be clear that this is the
choice. I looked into gliding and it was obvious one would spend the
whole weekend hanging around.

I think it depends on where you're flying. I understand that in the US
you can book lessons with instructors and turn up a set time, fly, and
go home again.

In the UK you get instruction for free but have to spend the whole day
on a cold field being bored for twenty minutes of flying. In theory
you can entertain yourself by doing some other jobs e.g. helping
launch gliders, driving winch retrieve etc. but if you do that people
will quickly come to expect it of you, and you'll rapidly find
yourself part of a small group which does all the work while everyone
else shirks.

And people wonder why UK gliding is shrinking faster than the
icecaps...

A couple of clubs have got their arses into gear and introduced
booking systems and are indeed reaping the results (more members
flying than they know what to do with), but those clubs are very much
in the minority (introducing something new implies the old system was
inadequate, and it's very hard for people to admit that they were
inadequate).


Dan

Actually not a bad system for learning. Naturally it all depends on your
available time and the level of your incentive, but I'm one instructor who
believes strongly in the concept of "hanging around the field" as one of
the strongest learning tools in aviation.
Doing this, you soon pick up on how things are done and why. You also see
first hand the result of things tried, done, and not done. You learn
fairly fast just who knows what they are doign and who doesn't.
All in all, hanging around the field can pay off in HUGE unpaid for
dividends for those with the time to do it.
Dudley Henriques