On Wednesday, August 13, 2014 7:06:47 PM UTC+2, Robin Clark wrote:

What if America's national training center for soaring was mobile?

A two-place,self-launching sailplane towed by a motor home driven by the SSA's chief of training

could show up a week before a regional contest. The instructor would conduct seminars, take students aloft and encourage others to follow in their own planes. Other times, clubs could pool interested members to bring SSA training to town. It might be popular enough to require bidding with sites bringing the most paying students getting the trainer first.

The chief training officer could write a column for Soaring magazine, have winter chores in the offices at Hobbs, help put on the convention and other national events.

The project would be partially self-funding, but mostly supported through the SSA with the most subsidy aimed at the instructor community, because we want our instructors to convey excitement about cross country flying. Some sailplane manufacturer would get the benefit of a top-of-the-line product being demonstrated across the country.

Robin Clark


Robin,

The more I think about your idea, the more I like it. I strongly agree that the key to getting more cross-country pilots is to get instructors to convey that excitement to their students early. Many instructors haven't ever flown cross-country themselves, so they don't ever share it with their students. If we could get those instructors into high-performance two-seaters and fly some nice tasks with experienced cross-country pilots, some are bound to get hooked.

One way it could work:

1. Find experienced cross-country pilots with access to high-performance two-place gliders, either privately-owned or club-owned, who are willing to volunteer their time.

2. Find the flight instructors who are current and active, but who do not fly cross-country.

3. Have the volunteer cross-country pilots travel with the gliders to the clubs of the instructors, so that the instructors could experience cross-country from their home fields (note: insurance shouldn't be an issue with the glider being insured through the pilot and the tow insured through the instructor).

4. Then, encourage those instructors to fly cross-country with both students during training and with rated pilots during flight reviews.

If we had enough volunteers, no single volunteer would have to travel very far to get all of the instructors this crucial experience. The potential of this is exponential.

Chris Fleming