Badges are a great tool.

They give the pilot motivation and structure to set out on a planned
flight as opposed to heading off wherever the weather looks good.

Don't get me wrong - there are days when just following the good lift is
huge fun, and some long and impressive flights are made on OLC that way.
However, the discipline of having to plan a flight - predict where the
weather will be, declare the thing and fly it is invaluable.

When you move up to contests the task often gets set for the purpose of
challenging the pilots. Contests are generally won in the poor
conditions where the pilot who knows how to keep going makes points.
Getting there takes experience that badges give.

So - for me badges involve a lot more commitment, and deliberation and
skill development. They teach the pilot to have a clear idea of his/her
intentions for the day. Without that I see people drift around for a
while and then lose interest. These skills will all stand you in good
stead on the OLC, but I advocate starting with badges.

Log the flights on OLC by all means.
Now - if it jusr stops raining here before winter comes around

Cheers
Bruce

On 2011/01/25 9:12 PM, Tony wrote:
On Jan 25, 1:01 pm, wrote:
On Jan 25, 1:50 pm, John
wrote:


SNIP

Lane - +1! I love the badge program. Our pilots earned a lot of A,B,
and C badges at the club last year and hopefully we can do the same
next year. I also spent a fair amount of time working with our new XC
pilots and managed to get 100% first time approval on all of our badge
applications. We had a lot of fun!

--
Bruce Greeff
T59D #1771 & Std Cirrus #57