Hi Paul,
On 02/09/2014, Paul Bart <pb2...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Frankly, I am more interested in maintaining a simple and inexpensive > system to fly gliders in Australia. Given the fragile state of of > participation in gliding I fear that any rise in complexity and / or cost > will simply drive more people away. You say "When our newcomers realise > that they will always be treated as second class aviators we can't blame > them when they vote with their feet." Well I have been involved in gliding > for some fourteen years now, with a reasonably sized club and I am yet to > encounter any pilot being too worried about being classed as "second class > aviator". Maybe I'm just unusual, but that's how I felt under the GFA system. I started off flying at Caboolture with some great people. I then moved to the RAA world and loved the ability to say "Next weekend I'm going for a two hour flight" - which in decent weather was pretty realistic. At Caboolture, at least with my skills, this would be very, very unlikely on most days. After exposure to the RAA I found it ridiculous that, unless I wanted to be a gliding instructor, the GFA insisted I was a student who needed to be supervised forever. Even after getting an L1 independent operator cert for motorgliders (great fun!), a club would still be responsible for my actions. Why should they be? If I do something dumb, it's my fault, not theirs. I don't understand why a few friends can't get gliding licenses, buy a low-performance 2nd hand glider, and winch launch from a paddock somewhere. You don't need to have an instructor present to have fun in a boat or an ultralight. You don't even need to be in a formal club. It'd be as lost-cost and low-effort as you could get. If we had a real CASA issued gliding license I'd knock the dust off my logbook tomorrow. cheers, Al _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list Aus-soaring@lists.internode.on.net To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
