Cheap sailplanes

Someone wrote snip
wrote:
Ah, you really don't need to be X-C pilot to teach the fundamentals of
flight. In fact, so long as an instructor is dedicated to his art, that
is, teaching, he can take most students quite far without any X-C
experience of his own.

Is he a better instructor for having done it himself? Of course, and so
I would encourage him to expand his own horizons. But I wouldn't be too
hasty to disqualify him because he has little or no X-C experience...


I suppose you are an instructor for saying such crap. One of the reasons
why soaring is not going too well is the existence of instructors of
this sort. In my opinion an instructor who is not proficient in XC is
totally disqualified to teach soaring, because he doesn't know squat in
what is the essence of soaring. snip
- - - - - -

I'm sorry, but thanks to technology I was able to dredge up the following
from a thread 4 years ago. I haven't changed any relevant opinions since
writing it then... :-)

Regards,

Bob - not an instructor - W.
- - - - - -
snip

A Fractured Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, my instructor sold two 1/3 shares of the ship he built to
two of his recently erstwhile student pilots. Soon afterwards, one weekend
while practicing for a fun 3-day contest the next weekend at COSA (a far
distant gliderport in a far distant state), one of the tyros landed out in a
field, whereupon his partners retrieved him...and brought Our Hero the beer
themselves. (Lo! It was a strange day all around.)

The next weekend Our Hero drew the straw for day #1. He finished 4th in a
field of 12, and only several days behind the 3rd of the 4 finishers. He
judged his final glide so well that after crossing the finish line, he
stayed up to finish his 5 hours.

The next day the Wise Instructor drew the straw. He landed out hardly
halfway around the triangle, in a field too beautiful to describe.
Displaying nerves of steel, our Wise Instructor drove the crew car back to
the airport all by himself. Along the way he revealed that now, he too, had
his first landout under his belt. Our Hero experienced a hot flash. "Who
are YOU to be teaching me how to make off field landings when you hadn't
made one yourself?!?" he spake with ill-concealed heat, while feeling
vaguely shortchanged.

Wise Instructor turned toward the back seat with a twinkle in his eyes.
"What did you need to know last week that you didn't know?" was his
response.

Truly this was a puzzling question to Our Hero, who pondered the question
seriously for the rest of the return to the airport...and for many days
thereafter. Forsooth (for whom?), the answer was "Nothing," both then and
later, even after he continued to add to his landout knowledge firsthand.

Years later, Our Hero learned from rec.aviation.soaring that the 1-26 he
flew for several hundred hours and in which he made his first 4 landouts,
was incapable of cross country flight. This bemused him even more than his
instructor's question.

And he lived happily ever after.


Bob - who still believes in Santa Claus and 1-26's - Whelan


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