On Tuesday, August 18, 2015 at 5:36:33 AM UTC-6, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Tue, 18 Aug 2015 03:04:30 -0700, Bruce Hoult wrote:

On Tuesday, August 18, 2015 at 2:43:38 AM UTC+3,
wrote:
One of the big reasons that my club is so relaxed about cross country
flying in club equipment is due to its two 1-26Es. If you would like to
get XC approved, the rules are quite simple. Get your Silver climb and
duration in the 1-26 and then you are approved to do a Silver Distance.
After completing your silver badge in a 1-26, you are free to fly XC in
any glider that you are approved to fly.

Things work a bit differently at my club.

I'm not aware of any formal requirement to demonstrate soaring ability
in order to go cross country. The requirement is to demonstrate ability
to make a circuit and short precision landing over an obstacle (fence at
least) to a place you haven't previously landed. This could be an unused
corner of the airfield, or a nearby field with a friendly farmer (bonus
points if it's far enough away in a suitable direction that you might
actually need it in anger later). Cross country ratings are given for
each glider type -- you might be allowed to take the PW5 cross country,
but only fly the DG1000 locally.

In the UK a lot of the preliminaries are covered by the BGA's Bronze
Badge, which as two parts:

Part 1
- 50 solo flights or 20 flights and 10 hours
- two soaring flights of 30mins each off a winch or 60mins from an aero
tow of 2000ft or less
- followed by
- three check flights with an instructor including stall&spin
checks, launch failure recovery
- two demonstrated field landings with altimeter covered.
May be done on the airfield but using a part that isn't a usual
landing area or approach
- a written test on Air Law and General flying
- the lot to be completed within 12 months.

Part 2 (XC endorsement)
- a one hour and a two hour soaring flight
- field selection, field landing and navigation exercises,
usually done in a motor glider.

At my club a new solo pilot converts to the SZD Juniors after 5 solos and
flying checks on the ASK-21 and almost immediately starts working on the
Bronze Badge, which gives them something concrete to aim at after solo.
They are encouraged to start work on their Silver Badge at the same time,
because both Silver height gain and duration can be done without leaving
the home field and, if conditions are suitable, Silver distance can be
attempted as soon as the Bronze XC endorsement has been signed off.

Then they're encouraged to go for the BGA 100km diploma, usually in a
club single seater (we have two Juniors, Pegase 90, Discus and ASW-24).
The 100 km diploma has 2 parts (a) flying the 100 km as a triangle or out
& return and (b) a similar flight with a handicapped speed of 65km/h or
faster. I did both parts in the club Pegase in a single flight on a
really good day: flew a 109km triangle, turned round and went round it
again in the opposite direction. The second time round was fast enough
for part B.

Last but not least, there's the InterClub League, in which the clubs in a
locality fly in a series of weekend competitions, with each club hosting
one of them. Each club enters teams of three:
- pundit (anybody can fly - no experience restrictions)
- intermediate (must not have flown a 500km Diamond distance or a
Nationals level competition)
- novice (must not have flown a 300km Gold task or a rated competition)

It seems to me that the InterClub League format might be something that
would work well in the US scene since it involves relatively small tasks,
lets pilots at various levels compete against each other and gives them
the experience of flying from different fields.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

Speaking of the Interclub League
http://www.midweekherald.co.uk/sport...ague_1_4198025