On Thu, 17 Jul 2014 16:33:14 -0700, son_of_flubber wrote:

BTW, I've also done a few hours in a Duo with a top-shelf XC pilot at a
world class soaring location. The general thrust of this thread is to
make those opportunities more available, and I would certainly like to
see that happen. It is something that I would like to do more of in the
future, but that level of flying is so far above my level that it hardly
seems relevant at that the moment.

To back up what Frank said: I learnt, and still fly at, Cambridge Gliding
Club in the UK, which has a very strong XC culture. At a guess more
members go XC than don't and it is expected that club gliders will go XC:
on a good day its quite common to find both our ASK-21s flying 80-100km
out and return trips if the students are close enough to solo to benefit
from the experience. Yes, many of our instructors are good XC pilots. I
went solo after 6 months (learning off the winch in ASK21 and G103a with
a Puch for spin training), converted to the club's SZD Juniors and spent
the next 12 months getting my Bronze badge and, along the way, picking up
Silver C height and duration legs as well as the soaring flights needed
for the Bronze XC extension. Then I did the navigation, field selection
and field landing practise training in the club's Schreibe SF-25 TMG.
These are not pass/fail exercises: you do it until both you and the
instructor are happy you can navigate and handle a landout. The first
good day after that I was briefed and sent off in a Junior to get Silver
distance by flying the 68 km to Rattlesden and landing the friends
brought the trailer and we de-rigged and trailered the Junior back. I was
monumentally slow - took me 3.5 hours to get to Rattlesden, but I did get
there and was able to retrieve one of that crew a month or so later when
he flew the same course.

IMO this is a near ideal way to learn the basic XC skills: going for
Bronze and Silver more or less straight after soloing keeps the momentum
going and, equally important, gives the new glider pilot something
achievable to aim for instead of getting bored flying round the field and
then wandering off to try something else.

Meanwhile, a student can be learning to stay up while flying round a
course by flying mini-triangles round the home field while working on the
Bronze badge. This can be done without getting out of gliding range of
home and is a far more useful way of building hours and XC skills than
aimless bimbling about near the field. Its more fun too.

Using a TMG is a very good way to do navigation and field landing
exercises as it flys at a similar speed to a glider and a good instructor
will know how to reduce the power enough to get a good approximation of a
30:1 glide ratio for field landing practise. The student will be familiar
with the glidepath control since the SF-25, like many other TMGs, has
airbrakes.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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