Chukar's own account

On Thursday, April 23, 2015 at 4:15:24 PM UTC-4, kirk.stant wrote:

I suggest Son_of_Flubber get some education on how the Brits practice cloud flying before calling them "reckless".

A subscription to "Sailplane and Gliding" (The BGA's magazine) would be a good start to his education....

Kirk,

You overlooked the sarcastic intent of my earlier post. I'd rather not come right out and say what I really think about the USA approach to Spin and Cloud Flying training (because I'm not a CFI-G or an elite pilot.)

But I think that the same USA mindset comes into play for both sorts of training. The UK mindset seems starkly different. I take it from Martin's comments that most UK glider pilots are confident about spin recovery and quite a few are confident about cloud flying. If you step outside the ranks of elite USA glider pilots, there are quite a few pilots that are not confident about spin recovery, and emergency cloud flying capability is rare, much rarer than glider pilots flying in wave.

I expect that quite a few glider pilots like me get ****ed off when another pilot enters a spin at a recoverable altitude but dies. If I fly into IMC and die from lacking of training/instruments... I'm going to be really ****ed off.

Sure. I can take the initiative to train IFR in a SEL and add instruments to my panel (but I can't practice in 'easy clouds', gain proficiency and stay current). Some individuals will do that. But if I lived in the UK, the training culture would have me ready to fly in clouds by now. The USA safety culture is broken wrt spins and cloud flying (and perhaps other scenarios are treated likewise).