Even at "Commercial" Soaring operations, the help is essentially volunteer. At a club, those guys helping you get your rating are probably dipping into their own pockets to be there helping you. One instructor / tow pilot I know well drives about 200 miles a day to instruct or tow for free. Soaring develops that sort of dedication (think about that).

As an experienced pilot, a glider rating is an easy add on. Then you can spend as much of the rest of your life learning about soaring as you want, or can afford. The subject matter exceeds the learning capacity of one human lifetime (think about that, too).

The upside here is pretty big, but glider flying necessarily involves a lot of moving parts, it's a community effort.

best,
Evan Ludeman / T8

On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 10:18:04 PM UTC-4, ripacheco1967 wrote:
Bit surprised that the "small operation" in pensacola has been way more responsible that the "bigger outfits"


On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 8:15:26 PM UTC-5, wrote:
On Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 6:27:14 PM UTC-4, ripacheco1967 wrote:
I'm a bit disappointed that only the pensacola glider club answered to my emails about attempting to get my glider rating in a week of concentrated study/flying.

the clubs in jacksonville and seminole glideport must be too busy to want new pilots

Soaring operations(including some of the commercial ones) operate on a different wavelength than your typical airplane pilot mills. Takes more effort on your side. If you don't have the moxie to chase down the rating you probably aren't going to survive all the futzing about in soaring.