On Wednesday, October 4, 2017 at 6:24:18 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Years ago, Erik Mann and some other folks ran a series of spring XC days at PGC (Philadelphia Glider Council) that included a morning lecture from experienced pilots (Roy McMaster was one). They had lined up a bunch of experienced pilots to play lead/follow with about a dozen "students" of varying skill levels. IIRC, the higher the skill level of the students, the higher the skill level of the leader. A couple of guys got to follow Doug Jacobs around for a while! Also, IIRC, the ideal students/leader ratio declined with experience, as did the distance from the gliderport and other factors. The gliders were not all the same performance but weren't so far apart that it made flying together impossible.

Two things I recall:
1. Pulling dive brakes more than once to lead one of my charges around a thermal at lower altitude. The gap between leader and followers seemed to expand steadily based on everything from differences between sailplanes, to climbing not as well, to failing to leave the thermal immediately, to flying a little slower to just be safe, and to stopping for a turn or two in a weak thermal for the same reason. And, yes, thermaling skills tended to deteriorate as altitude declined and anxiety mounted. I suspect using simulators would have helped a lot! But there's just no substitute for getting low out of gliding range from an airport.

2. Less experienced students were very nervous about final glides, even with high arrival altitudes, if they couldn't see the home airport (not unusual back East). This was just on the leading edge of the GPS era so that may have changed. But sometimes we forget what a leap of faith is required to turn your back on the home airport, to pass up a weak thermal even when you've got altitude and good prospects ahead, to cruise faster than best glide, and to commit to a final glide based strictly on some calculations and the promise that the finish is out of site but reachable.

On at least one occasion, the organizers had managed to suggest enough alternate air-to-air frequencies that we could keep in touch with our students without annoying the rest of the fleet.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the feedback we got was almost universally high. I don't recall any outlandings but we got lucky on the wx. We did it early enough in the season that no one had to forgo a record day. Participation in local contests and in the Governor's Cup series that summer rose as a result.

Yes, it's an investment. But it's fun for everyone and doesn't cost much, if anything. The organizational burden is the biggest one: arranging for a venue--including a classroom as well as gliderport (and whatever machinations are needed to launch non-club members), making sure there are enough towplanes to get everyone launched fairly quickly even while a training operating is going on, getting the word out and then getting firm commitments, etc. Erik has great enthusiasm as well as a high tolerance for frustration for these kinds of organized efforts but not everyone does.

Chip Bearden

I was looking for my notes on these events just the other day. Chip and several other posters upstream cover a lot of it. A few other thoughts:

- Doing this as a group event with organized briefings and discussion really helped to get people in the right frame of mind.
- The goals need to be aligned with the experience level of the students. For some folks, a tiny triangle was a HUGE achievement. For others, breaking 40 miles an hour over 100K was the goal.
- Don't expect miracles. From memory, I believe we brought 25 students through the program over a couple of years. Fewer than half of them "stuck" in any meaningful way in the long term.

Just a little illustration of what to expect. My student was an experienced B-24 pilot, very active CFI-G, and owner of an ASW-19. The man could aviate! Every time we met, he talked about how "this year" was the year he would really get into XC. In his early 70s, I suspect he knew there wasn't a lot of time left to take up serious XC.

The day he and I flew was a really good one. 6,000 foot bases with honest cu, 5kt lift, and light NW breezes. He thermalled well, knew exactly where he was at all times, and really followed great radio discipline. We hopped a few clouds upwind about 15 miles then decided to head back for a start.. From 6,000 feet on a solid cloudstreet I headed off at 90kts. After a minute or two I asked where he was. "I stopped to climb". I backtracked and found him 200 feet higher circling in 1kt. I convinced him to follow me, and off I went.

Couple miles later and an S-turn or two showed no sigh of him. I asked again. His response "I stopped to climb." This scene played out several more times until we finally decided to just have fun flying within easy final glide of the home drome.

In the debrief, I asked him why he felt the need to climb when we had a 5:1 glide home with a tailwind? Intellectually, he knew the answer, but he just couldn't break old habits and simply wasn't comfortable out of glide range of the home airport. It wasn't going to change, and he still had a lot of fun continuing to hone his thermalling skills and teaching for his club.