Why is Soaring declining

Liam Finley wrote:
Better to recruit one good pilot than ten Lennies who wash out and
then spend the rest of their lives whining about it.

These are the days of safe web browsing. Reading about it and
viewing photos on the web is very enjoyable itself, why bother
learning to fly? Food 4 thought.

gill
www.gillcouto.com

"Gill Couto" wrote in message
news:NuNmc.90908$Qy.42435@fed1read04...
These are the days of safe web browsing. Reading about it and
viewing photos on the web is very enjoyable itself, why bother
learning to fly? Food 4 thought.

gill
www.gillcouto.com

I have only 2 reasons
--the sense of adventure when I turn my back on my home field and head out
on course
--the sense of accomplishment when I'm on final glide

OK, there's more
--giggling at the improbability of climbing at 13 kts in a motorless
aircraft
--the view
--the brain flush of fully concentrating on the task at hand with not
another thought in my mind
--soaring w/hawks and turkey vultures
lots more. But if browsing the web works for you, stick with it.

Looks like we've got our first really good weekend coming up.

Yipee!

Brent

At 15:12 07 May 2004, Gill Couto wrote:
Liam Finley wrote:
Better to recruit one good pilot than ten Lennies
who wash out and
then spend the rest of their lives whining about it.

These are the days of safe web browsing. Reading about
it and
viewing photos on the web is very enjoyable itself,
why bother
learning to fly? Food 4 thought.

gill
www.gillcouto.com

Gill, you could say the same thing about food and sex.
Those are both dangerous.

Gill Couto wrote:
viewing photos on the web is very enjoyable itself, why bother
learning to fly? Food 4 thought.

Touche' Just because the numbers of pilots, aircraft,
SSA members or tows declines, this may not mean much if there are many
more people enjoying the sport vicariously.

Makes "representatives of the sport" all that much more
meaningful... :P
--

------------+
Mark Boyd
Avenal, California, USA

In article 409c7e66$1@darkstar, Mark James Boyd
writes
Gill Couto wrote:
viewing photos on the web is very enjoyable itself, why bother
learning to fly? Food 4 thought.

Touche' Just because the numbers of pilots, aircraft,
SSA members or tows declines, this may not mean much if there are many
more people enjoying the sport vicariously.

You mean, like reading a porno mag instead of doing something real?

--
Mike Lindsay

Mike Lindsay wrote:
In article 409c7e66$1@darkstar, Mark James Boyd
writes

Gill Couto wrote:

viewing photos on the web is very enjoyable itself, why bother
learning to fly? Food 4 thought.

Touche' Just because the numbers of pilots, aircraft,
SSA members or tows declines, this may not mean much if there are many
more people enjoying the sport vicariously.


You mean, like reading a porno mag instead of doing something real?

What do you read in a porn mag?

gill
www.gillcouto.com/hg

Mike Lindsay wrote:
In article 409c7e66$1@darkstar, Mark James Boyd
writes

Gill Couto wrote:

viewing photos on the web is very enjoyable itself, why bother
learning to fly? Food 4 thought.

Touche' Just because the numbers of pilots, aircraft,
SSA members or tows declines, this may not mean much if there are many
more people enjoying the sport vicariously.


You mean, like reading a porno mag instead of doing something real?

No. I think he means *preferring* the magazine over the real thing. Sort
of like the PC flight simulators. There are legions of dedicated
"simmers" who will never sit at the controls of a real aircraft.

I've bought several versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator in the hope
that a better version will spark my interest. So far, they bore me to tears.

Tony V
http://home .comcast.net/~verhulst/SOARING

Yeah well when you got no chance to fly an Airbus, an Learjet, or an F-16,
to name a few, some sims might spark your interest.That's it if you're
interested in flying and computer games, some people don't like computers.
That's ok with me.
I fly gliders (as a matter of fact I prefer flying gliders to sims, believe
or not) but I'm also a big fan of Falcon 4.0, an F16 'hardcore' sim.
IMHO soaring could be declining because it's expensive (more expensive than
other popular activities) and more important, it is a time consuming
activitie. Not an inmediate gratification activitie, requires investment in
both money AND time, and if you don't have a passion for flying to begin
with, it will not catch you. All the people I've flown with liked the
experience but only who came decided to get involved with flying behorehand
actually stayed in and got their licence. And of those, not all of them
continued soaring after that.
In Spain at least, my personal impression is that soaring is growing. It is
becoming available to that pool of people with deep interest in aviation,
not that we are convincing anyone.
For my part, at least, I don't have a great interest in turning soaring into
a mass sports, like skying has become. Just keep it open and accessible for
everybody (I mean, no elite attitude), and people with real interest will
get in. The ocassional pilot can be more of a hazard than a contribution to
the sport, in my opinion.

Good flying!
Jose M. Alvarez
ASW-24


I've bought several versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator in the hope
that a better version will spark my interest. So far, they bore me to
tears.

Tony V
http://home .comcast.net/~verhulst/SOARING

In article ,
Tony Verhulst wrote:

I've bought several versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator in the hope
that a better version will spark my interest. So far, they bore me to tears.

Yeah, well that's possibly because it's crap! MS Flight Sim is now a
great *scenery* simulator, and ever since the days of 8 MHz Macs (maybe
even earlier) it's been pretty decent for practising IFR using AH and
VOR and ADF. But it's still got rubbish physics.

X-Plane is a much better simulator, and actually feels quite real (and
you can get some pretty good glider models for it, from
http://www.x-plane.org/Aircraft/). It's a good enough sim that several
real companies use it for pilot training and design evaluation for
aircraft they are designing. With the right add-on hardware, it's also
FAA approved for logging simulator time. Not bad for a $49.50 program.

In older programs, I found the Mac-only A-10 Attack! to feel *very*
realistic to fly -- of course I don't know what an A-10 feels like to
fly, but it felt like it *could* be a real aircraft (and I *have* been
at the controls of kinda similar size aircraft, such as the
Harvard/Texan). It also had excellent emulation of the interaction of
the landing gear and struts with the ground. I'm told the authors
(Graphic Simulations) actually make high end simulations for the
military as well as games.

There are probably some good PC simulators, too, but I don't know what
they would be -- the vast majority have very little to do with real
aircraft, whether because the programmers didn't know how (probably), or
because their customers (like the Sep11 pilots) didn't care about
takeoffs or landings, I don't know.

-- Bruce

In general, simulators of any sort are not very much fun unless they
allow you to blow stuff up.

MS Flight sim does not let you blow stuff up, so it is pretty lame.