Does How a (Sailplane) Pilot Thinks, Matter?

On Friday, April 8, 2016 at 12:23:01 PM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:
I see that our under-20 pilots find great pleasure in flying on weak days for an hour. That tells me that I'm on the right track. Don't lose 'Beginner's Mind'.

That's one of the reasons I wasted so much time and money trying to get a winch going, to allow some cheap fun (plus practice takeoff and landings) closer to home when an epic XC wasn't necessarily in the cards. It seems like we don't have enough pilots left around our area who enjoy flying for the sake of flying, rather than racking up OLC points.

Marc

On 4/8/2016 2:06 PM, wrote:
On Friday, April 8, 2016 at 12:23:01 PM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:
I see that our under-20 pilots find great pleasure in flying on weak days
for an hour. That tells me that I'm on the right track. Don't lose
'Beginner's Mind'.

That's one of the reasons I wasted so much time and money trying to get a
winch going, to allow some cheap fun (plus practice takeoff and landings)
closer to home when an epic XC wasn't necessarily in the cards. It seems
like we don't have enough pilots left around our area who enjoy flying for
the sake of flying, rather than racking up OLC points.

Marc


I dunno/have-no-opinion about how OLC has-affected/is-affecting pilot
motivation, but the "selective day tendency" was something that became
apparent to me within a year or two of bumbling into the sport in the early
1970s, as "fairly common". And I agree with you both that it's (arguably)
something of a force mitigating against continuing participation. (It's a
pretty small mental step from "This day isn't worth going to the airport
over," to "ANY day isn't good enough.") Those times on "looked dodgy/dead"
days I was able to convince others to join me by taking a tow were always
pretty rare, even if anyone showed up at the field at all. Many were the times
I'd be aloft for "from well beyond dead-air times" to hours, and no one else
took tows...bizarro, to me. And yet - having learned in the east, where "good
days" were far from "visually common" - I felt ANY stick time was worth it,
and by springing for at least one tow pretty much every day I went to the
field, I learned buckets'-worth about how dynamic the atmosphere actually is.
(Useful on XC, too! )

As to targeting pilots for winching, I imagine I'd pretty much write off just
about every "experienced glider pilot I know" as a target-winchee,
concentrating instead on the steady stream of newbies filtering into local
clubs; they pretty much lack preconceptions about it. IMO/observation most
people simply aren't mentally into "new experiences like that" once they've
ascended whatever learning curve(s) they're comfortable with. (Aerotow was
good enough for my old man & it's good enough for me!)

Bob W.

On Friday, April 8, 2016 at 5:31:06 PM UTC-7, BobW wrote:
As to targeting pilots for winching, I imagine I'd pretty much write off just
about every "experienced glider pilot I know" as a target-winchee,
concentrating instead on the steady stream of newbies filtering into local
clubs; they pretty much lack preconceptions about it. IMO/observation most
people simply aren't mentally into "new experiences like that" once they've
ascended whatever learning curve(s) they're comfortable with. (Aerotow was
good enough for my old man & it's good enough for me!)

Newbies aren't yet invested enough in the sport to spend time and money on something they know nothing about. The vast majority of veterans (at least, in in our area) don't particularly care about lower cost launches or even having a steady (or any) stream of newbies. After 7 years of making presentations and talking up the subject, in one of the most populous soaring regions in the country, I was able to find only one other person really willing to invest the cost of a cheap used glider and spend a couple of years of weekends with building a winch (with more support, we would have been much happier to buy one of Roman's). And, once built, we had to spring for a full membership in one of the local clubs just to get hold of a CG hook equipped Grob to test with. We gave up, and someone else now has a cheap winch project elsewhere, maybe they can get some traction.

It's not surprising that the majority of new winches in the US are going to CAP units, they are faced with dwindling budgets and actually need an economical way to get newbies in the air.

Marc

How this sailplane pilot thinks is:

In aviation, the convenient and the unnecessary are invitations to an accident.

MM

WELL STATED! That says it all.

On 4/8/2016 11:22 PM, wrote:
How this sailplane pilot thinks is:

In aviation, the convenient and the unnecessary are invitations to an accident.

MM

--
Dan, 5J

A poster above the urinal at Black Forest Soaring Society was this poster: http://www.check-six.com/lib/Poster_Crash.htm

"Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."

Keep this in mind and take baby steps to expand your boundaries and you can become an old and (to the uninitiated) bold pilot.

-Tom

I posted that same quotation a while back. The first time I saw it was
in a weather shack in Windy Pass which runs through the Alaska Range.
It was a dark and stormy night... No! Really, it was, and I was in a
C-172, it was about 0200, and, though I was a studly AF jet pilot, I had
absolutely zero instrument time in a light plane. Prudence told me not
to mess with the thunderstorm blocking the pass and the mountains on
either side of the pass were above my service ceiling. I landed on a
gravel strip and spent the rest of the night in the weather shack
drinking coffee and eating pop corn.

On 4/9/2016 10:09 PM, wrote:
A poster above the urinal at Black Forest Soaring Society was this poster: http://www.check-six.com/lib/Poster_Crash.htm

"Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."

Keep this in mind and take baby steps to expand your boundaries and you can become an old and (to the uninitiated) bold pilot.

-Tom

--
Dan, 5J

On 4/8/2016 11:22 PM, wrote:
How this sailplane pilot thinks is:

In aviation, the convenient and the unnecessary are invitations to an
accident.

MM


Heh! One might say this - like the 10 Commandments - is additional evidence
that it's more succinct to suggest how NOT to live a life (pilot a glider)
than it is TO do so.

Bob W.