Hello. New member here.

On Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 3:43:08 AM UTC+3, JJJ wrote:
Bruce Hoult;930688 Wrote:
What are you training in now? The same 2-33?

son_of_flubber;930692 Wrote:
I've heard that soloing at an early age makes it easier to take up the
sport later in life. It will be interesting to hear how that works out
for you.

40 years ago, I flew at Sky Sailing, Fremont. That operation is long
gone from Fremont, now operating out of 'Warner Springs'
(https://www.skysailing.com/) in SoCal. I was -this close- ---||--- to
graduating to the SGS 1-26.

I'm training in Grob G-103a's now. I'm finding it a harder plane to fly
than I remember the 2-33's being. I'm wondering if that's really true
or if it's just me. I see evidence that it's BOTH.

I've never been in a 2-33, but when my club moved from training in the 1955-era Blanik L-13 (which is a good bit higher performance than the 2-33) to the Grob 103 Twin Astir we saw the average time to solo for young people go from maybe 35 flights to 40 flights. So it's maybe a little bit harder. But mostly it's just different.

On the other hand, the "conversion to high performance glass" step later on goes from maybe 10 flights (landings, really) to a big fat zero.

When we changed from training the the Grobs to training in brand new DG1000-18 about a dozen years later I don't think we saw any difference in flights to solo at all.

Note that different organisations treat getting to solo differently. We expect people to be able to soar immediately upon getting solo, and most people have a number of flights in the middle of their training where it's too windy and/or thermally for the student to practice landings or even aerotow and the instructor says "let's go soaring for an hour or two!" and a cross-country flight ensues.

Originally Posted by JS

Triple J
Everything is a little different to fly, and having no currency does not help. With a lot of recent flying time these differences are humorous not frustrating.
Hang in there, the Grobs will feel right to you soon.
Jim

Originally Posted by Bruce Hoult

I've never been in a 2-33, but when my club moved from training in the 1955-era Blanik L-13 (which is a good bit higher performance than the 2-33) to the Grob 103 Twin Astir we saw the average time to solo for young people go from maybe 35 flights to 40 flights. So it's maybe a little bit harder. But mostly it's just different.

[ . . . ]

Note that different organisations treat getting to solo differently. We expect people to be able to soar immediately upon getting solo, and most people have a number of flights in the middle of their training where it's too windy and/or thermally for the student to practice landings or even aerotow and the instructor says "let's go soaring for an hour or two!" and a cross-country flight ensues.

Thank y'all for taking the time to talk to this n00b! I'm at about 20 high-tows now since mid-August plus a few patterns. Yes, I was getting a bit frustrated especially being totally out-of-control on tow for too long, but I've pretty much got a handle on that now. (A typical lesson consists of two high-tows and maybe a pattern as well.)

My club offers in-flight instruction but essentially no ground school beyond the debriefings with the instructor after each flight. We're expected to do the ground studying on our own somehow. For the time being, I'm reading stuff I find on-line (of which there is plenty) rather than buying books, but it's rather ad-hoc. We fly with whatever instructor is flying that day -- opinions may vary as to whether that's a good idea. This gives the student a variety of views from different instructors, which is a + but I think it also slows things down because they don't coordinate with each other as to where each student is at, so the in-flight training has a bit of ad-hoc quality too.

(@JS, I wanted my user-name to be just JJ but the platform I'm using, vBulletin, doesn't allow two-letter names.)

BTW, for whom it may interest, here are two beautiful videos of flights over the Bay Area, San Francisco all the way to Point Reyes, done a few years ago by Ramy, one of our members --

Low altitude, under 4000 ft -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggv5kkjqHrI
High alt, 15K-18K ft -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDdnfIANUxU

(For more like these, search for videos posted by "ramyyanetz")

Here, his blogs of those flights, with great photos, OLC traces, etc. (click any photo to enlarge) --
http://yanetz.blogspot.com/2011/05/m...ight-with.html
http://yanetz.blogspot.com/2012/01/bay-tour-sequel.html
http://www.valleysoaring.net/?page_id=314