Considerations for joining flying club

Andrew Gideon wrote
Can you provide an example of something fun and challenging that is against
some club's rule? That seems rather against the idea of a club (as opposed
to an FBO).

I was only a member of a glider (as opposed to power) club, but maybe
this will help.

We had several aerobatic gliders. Aerobatics weren't actually
prohibited in club gliders, but you needed to get a checkout from the
designated aerobatic instructor. Except there wasn't one. We had
plenty of instructors who were aerobatic-capable, but the club
wouldn't designate any of them. If you wanted to do acro, you bought
your own glider and figured it out on your own.

We had a couple of gliders that were reasonably capable of
cross-country flight (yes, gliders do this). It wasn't actually
forbidden to go XC, but there were certain requirements you had to
meet - and nobody had managed to meet them in years. If you wanted to
go XC, you bought your own glider and figured it out on your own.

We had a rule about landing short of a line someone marked on the
field. How this amateur-defined displaced threshold was actually
chosen was never adequately explained, but it required that I throw
away hundreds of feet of usable runway and made it impossible to
practice steep approaches over an obstacle. If you landed short of
the line, you had to fly with an instructor. I think that eventually
went away.

For a while, if you were a private pilot you couldn't fly from the
back seat. Too dangerous (tell that to all the people who soloed in
Cubs). You had to get your commercial. The local DE (also a club
member) got ****ed about this, and started requiring that the
commercial be flown from the back seat. In a glider, it's really the
way to go anyway if you want to give someone a good ride. So the club
changed a little - if you wanted to fly from the back seat as a
private pilot you needed a separate back seat checkout for every make
and model, renewed every year.

We bought a new glider that is used, worldwide, as an early solo
glider (Blanik L-33). The insurance company was fine with anyone
flying it with a CFI checkout, but the club decided you had to have 40
hours in gliders to fly it. There was no reduction in premium for
this.

Those are my personal experiences. I eventually left the club - not
only for those reasons (I did eventually buy my own glider and go XC,
and I wound up doing acro in my girlfriend's 'Duster) but because when
a club makes rules this way, it's a sign that other things are wrong.
And they were.

Now let's talk about some other clubs.

Not too long ago, we had someone posting here about a club that had a
10 kt Xwind limit. Amazingly, some people were trying to justify that
as a reasonable rule.

I know a club that prohibits retracts on grass. Despite what the
inexperienced among you might think, that is NOT reasonable. I land a
Twin Comanche on grass routinely. The key is being able to
competently evaluate a grass surface for suitability.

I know another that requires 3000 ft of runway for all planes. Again
- this is NOT reasonable. I've comfortably landed a twin on less.

I know a club that prohibits night flight without an instrument
rating. I had well over 100 hours at night before I got an instrument
rating.

Of course I know FBO's that do this too. Here's the difference - with
an FBO, you have no real investment. With a club, you do - so it
makes sense to do more homework in advance.

Michael