Sad to hear.

Luckily the approach in our club is quite different. Most of the pilots remember their early flights
with Blanik or Pirat and have some romantic approach to those gliders. The attitude towards the
lower performing gliders and the pilots who fly them is even somewhat jealous. Like looking at the
young boy who's in love for a first time - memories, memories ... :-). Of course later in your life
you meet the females, who look better and perform better than the first-one ;-). As you do with
gliders. But no-one can never take away your first love and remaining warm feelings towards the
subject.

There is no point in badmouthing early training gliders. Somehow the youngster has to gain the
experience to jump in to the glass cockpit. And you can bet that while sitting in the cocpit of 2-33
or Blanik and watching a beautyful glass glider taking of, he's thinking about "Gee, can I fly
that-one? Ever?". It seems helluva long way to go for a youngster and responsible pilot won't make
it seem longer or non-achievable.

So. The real problem seems to be that there's too few enthusiastic pilots left who lure other people
to soaring. One has to realise, that even the records set by Ohlmann mean nothing if there isn't
tens of thousands of pilots who seldom fly away from the gliding distance of the airfield and who
actually have a clue, what an achievement those records are.

The responsibility of every single pilot out there is to take care that youngsters get lured to
gliding. Personal example works best.

Regards,
Kaido Tiigisoon
www.purilend.ee
Jantar Std 3


"Jim Vincent" wrote in message
...
somewhere
with a 4th hand Woodstock towed behind an old Jetta and step out on
the field dressed in Levi's and a T-shirt there will be a few pilots
quietly snickering in the background about my poor performing
hardware.

Too right! A large percentage of members at my club proclaim anything other
than glass as a Piece of Sh** and gladly tell new students this. Never mind
having to "dumb down" to fly a 1-26.

Sadly, the new students who haven't a clue take on the same attitude.

Jim Vincent
CFIG
N483SZ
illspam