XC Soaring camps

If you're looking for an opportunity to experience XC soaring first
hand with the guidance of an instructor, I would strongly recommend
SoaringNV in Minden. They've got a really positive vibe going, great
people and top notch equipment. Hop a commercial flight to Reno and
book a few days with them in a Duo Discus. You'll get to experience
all of the aspects of XC flying with the security of someone that
knows the area, the hotspots, the landouts and the glider. You can
push your own decision making as far as you want, with a backup brain
sitting in the back seat to help when needed. It isn't the same as
when you're out on your own, but can be an excellent confidence
builder and very educational, not to mention that you can rack up
20-30hrs in less than a week of soaring the Sierra and the Great
Basin. It's also quite a bit closer and cheaper than flying down to
New Zealand to fly with GlideOmarama.com, but come winter, I'd
recommend that as well.

If you've already got some experience and want to spend a week
exploring your own limitations and learning then a sports class
contest can be a fantastic learning experience. It can be humbling,
but it gives you amazing feedback into your decisions that you don't
get flying more or less on your own.

Morgan

Folks,

Thanks for all the thoughts and replies, this is exactly the type of discussion I was hoping I would generate.

Let me be more explicit wrt my quals...I'm a newly minted Bronze badge-holder with a strong desire to cut the apron strings. I have a large amount of power experience, but have only flown gliders for the last two years and have less than 100 glider hours.

Contests sound like a great venue to improve my skills, but my understanding is most if not all want pilots showing up with their Silver badge done or an equivalent level of experience. I'm not there yet. (and Tony, if you're the Tony who's wing I ran at Region 10, Great Job in that Cherokee! Hope you enjoyed the contest and flying at Llano!)

Soaring at Minden sounds like a great option, heck I'm already seriously considering towing my steed (ASW-19b) up there to do the Air Sailing camp, but the distance is daunting. Dalhart sounds interesting if some leader/follower flights can be done. I've done one of those this year here in Central Texas, had a blast and learned a bunch...but the coordination with todays work situations to get it scheduled to say nothing of asking a much better pilot "dumbing down" his flying for me to keep up...is a lot to ask.

The structure/syllabus presented at Air Sailing appeals to me...a set of objectives and learning goals, pre-stated....it matches what I experience in my flying day jobs training department. I like that approach better than a "strap in and go fly" approach that one can learn from...but doesn't do as an effective job in my opinion. If something like they present is out there somewhere (the Dalhart suggestion maybe?) or perhaps another club famous for minting xc pilots, I'd appreciate the point out.

Thanks again and for all the suggestions...and a note to John Cochrane, I have really enjoyed reading the soaring section of your website. Lots of good gouge on there and I'm having a hard time finding room on the cranial hard drive for it all!

Rob

On Aug 23, 8:08*pm, RAS56 wrote:
Folks,

Thanks for all the thoughts and replies, this is exactly the type of
discussion I was hoping I would generate.

Let me be more explicit wrt my quals...I'm a newly minted Bronze
badge-holder with a strong desire to cut the apron strings. I have a
large amount of power experience, but have only flown gliders for the
last two years and have less than 100 glider hours.

Contests sound like a great venue to improve my skills, but my
understanding is most if not all want pilots showing up with their
Silver badge done or an equivalent level of experience. I'm not there
yet. (and Tony, if you're the Tony who's wing I ran at Region 10, Great
Job in that Cherokee! Hope you enjoyed the contest and flying at Llano!)

Soaring at Minden sounds like a great option, heck I'm already seriously
considering towing my steed (ASW-19b) up there to do the Air Sailing
camp, but the distance is daunting. Dalhart sounds interesting if some
leader/follower flights can be done. I've done one of those this year
here in Central Texas, had a blast and learned a bunch...but the
coordination with todays work situations to get it scheduled to say
nothing of asking a much better pilot "dumbing down" his flying for me
to keep up...is a lot to ask.

The structure/syllabus presented at Air Sailing appeals to me...a set of
objectives and learning goals, pre-stated....it matches what I
experience in my flying day jobs training department. I like that
approach better than a "strap in and go fly" approach that one can learn
from...but doesn't do as an effective job in my opinion. If something
like they present is out there somewhere (the Dalhart suggestion maybe?)
or perhaps another club famous for minting xc pilots, I'd appreciate the
point out.

Thanks again and for all the suggestions...and a note to John Cochrane,
I have really enjoyed reading the soaring section of your website. Lots
of good gouge on there and I'm having a hard time finding room on the
cranial hard drive for it all!

Rob

--
RAS56


I don't know what the typical pace is, but I looked back at my log
book and found that I had completed my Silver C at about 40 hours so
if you are approaching 100 hours and are stuck at bronze, with an
ASW-19b at your disposal, then your instincts to accelerate your
learning curve are probably on the mark.

My suggestion is that you leave your glider at home and jump the next
airline flight to Reno, rent a car and drive the 40 minutes down to
Minden to fly dual cross-country with one of the SoaringNV pilots in
one of their Duos. Frankly, there is no substitute for flying dual XC
with an experienced pilot. Follow the leader is okay, but having
someone who knows what they are doing observe your flying from the
cockpit (and vice versa) is many times more useful in accelerating
your learning and confidence. I know this from being on the giving and
receiving side of both experiences.

Devin may be back from the Junior WGC in time to take you up, but if
not they have several very fine and experienced XC pilots who will
build your skills and confidence.

There may be other sites that offer similar experiences, but I really
think dual flying at a site with reliable XC weather with an
experienced XC pilot in a modern high-performance 2-seat (not Grob
103) glider is the best path from where you are right now.

9B

Rob,

Yes it is me. Dalhart is very intentionally as non-structured as
possible since it is a vacation for everyone involved. I think the
thing to do for you would be, as Andy suggested, go somewhere with a 2
seater available for XC instruction, get some dual on getting away
from the airport, then come home and start working on Silver legs in
your 19. Maybe even take it to Dalhart. Many more landing options up
there for a newbie cross country pilot than down around Llano!

On Aug 23, 11:08*pm, RAS56 wrote:
Folks,

Thanks for all the thoughts and replies, this is exactly the type of
discussion I was hoping I would generate.

Let me be more explicit wrt my quals...I'm a newly minted Bronze
badge-holder with a strong desire to cut the apron strings. I have a
large amount of power experience, but have only flown gliders for the
last two years and have less than 100 glider hours.

Contests sound like a great venue to improve my skills, but my
understanding is most if not all want pilots showing up with their
Silver badge done or an equivalent level of experience. I'm not there
yet. (and Tony, if you're the Tony who's wing I ran at Region 10, Great
Job in that Cherokee! Hope you enjoyed the contest and flying at Llano!)

Soaring at Minden sounds like a great option, heck I'm already seriously
considering towing my steed (ASW-19b) up there to do the Air Sailing
camp, but the distance is daunting. Dalhart sounds interesting if some
leader/follower flights can be done. I've done one of those this year
here in Central Texas, had a blast and learned a bunch...but the
coordination with todays work situations to get it scheduled to say
nothing of asking a much better pilot "dumbing down" his flying for me
to keep up...is a lot to ask.

The structure/syllabus presented at Air Sailing appeals to me...a set of
objectives and learning goals, pre-stated....it matches what I
experience in my flying day jobs training department. I like that
approach better than a "strap in and go fly" approach that one can learn
from...but doesn't do as an effective job in my opinion. If something
like they present is out there somewhere (the Dalhart suggestion maybe?)
or perhaps another club famous for minting xc pilots, I'd appreciate the
point out.

Thanks again and for all the suggestions...and a note to John Cochrane,
I have really enjoyed reading the soaring section of your website. Lots
of good gouge on there and I'm having a hard time finding room on the
cranial hard drive for it all!

Rob

--
RAS56

At the risk of inciting a flame war, I would also suggest you get a
copy of the Condor soaring simulator, a copy of my book "Cross Country
Soaring with Condor", and fly XC in Condor over the winter. When you
get comfortable flying in the sim, give me a call/email at
and fly some one-on-one leader-follower flights
with me.

If you doubt the power of training in the Condor sim - just look at
the recently concluded Junior WGC. Two of the top four pilots in Club
Class, including the winner, are well-known Condor pilots. The just-
crowned JWGC Club Class champion (Tim Kuijpers) has logged only about
300 hours total time in real-life, but thousands of hours in Condor.
By way of comparison, our best placing U.S. pilot was Boyd Willat in
22nd place, over 1500 pts down from the leader after 7 days of
competition.

TA

Then there is the old fashioned way. With an ASW19, 100 hours, a
license, a bronze badge (which means you know how to thermal) and
power experience (which means you know how to navigate and use
airspace)... just go! All of the rest of us got going in cross country
by simply looking at a map, picking a simple course to some nearby
airports, and going. Sure, it was slow the first time.

Is there nobody flying XC at your club to talk to? Just ask for some
advice on the simplest triangle. If not, pick a better club!

Instruction, camps, and contests will all be more fruitful once you've
been out a few times. You have to go do it, get some sense of visual
navigation and thermaling and gliding, before you can really benefit
from camps and such. The camps will tell you to go faster, to stop
taking every thermal. You can't really take that advice until you've
been out a few times. Go when you're at a plateau.

You really only get good at cross country by going every weekend. And
it really is a self-taught exercise. A little instruction here and
there can help a lot, but 99% of learning to fly cross country is,
read all the material on the ground, then go try it out in the air. By
yourself.

John Cochrane

On 8/24/11 8:09 AM, John Cochrane wrote:
You really only get good at cross country by going every weekend. And
it really is a self-taught exercise. A little instruction here and
there can help a lot, but 99% of learning to fly cross country is,
read all the material on the ground, then go try it out in the air. By
yourself.

As others have said, most of us "old timers" (I started in 1973) did it
all solo. After several years, I hooked up with a Janus owner and flew
as co pilot in numerous contests. I still recall the first few flights
were HUGE eye-openers for me and my XC technique.

So my suggestion is to go fly dual XC with an EXPERIENCED pilot. One or
two flights of a few hundred km will provide all the incentive and
observed skills you'll need for a long time to come.

It's also a lot easier to get even the most aloof pilot to critique your
performance, no matter how bad, than to talk to someone with no
perceived common ground. So just go fly, then talk about it at the end
of the day with those guys who flew hundreds to your tens of kilometers.
Launch first, act as sniffer, then when the "big dogs" climb through
you and take off, try to follow. Maybe you'll keep up to the next
thermal, maybe not. Then, at the end of the day, ask what they were
thinking when they left you in the dust. Next time, you'll keep up for
2 thermals, etc...

This is also the perfect way to learn at a contest. Start early, then
latch onto each pilot for a few minutes as they overtake you. Most will
be happy to share decisions made while sharing your airspace. BUT
REMEMBER to fly your own flight at YOUR comfort level. Don't do
anything that makes you uncomfortable, and be sure to maintain
situational awareness as you follow.

-Tom