>>The question remains, why can’t properly licensed glider pilots be treated >>exactly like fully licensed power pilots?
Please… fully licensed SAILPLANE pilots! Hang glider and paraglider pilots having passed the novice stage can turn up at a take off, assess the weather and if they consider conditions suitable, launch. I remember a sailplane pilot asking me in horror… "So you can just turn up at a hill somewhere and jump off??" The answer is more or less, yes. If your rating doesn't restrict you to novice hills, it's up to you. There's a strange dichotomy here though… after a handful of flights, a sailplane pilot can take a passenger up for a flight. So you are considered safe enough to risk someone else's life but not safe enough to risk your own, taking off solo from an airstrip outside the view of the duty instructor. It's almost as if the hardware is more valuable than the software… a hang over from the days of small clubs and wooden gliders when a damaged glider might shut the club down for months or for ever. D On 02/09/2014, Mark Newton <new...@atdot.dotat.org> wrote: > > On Sep 2, 2014, at 2:29 PM, Paul Bart <pb2...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Finally a number of posters indicated that we may be losing potential >> glider pilots, because the GFA rules, yet I see people turning their backs >> on power flying, often citing cost (medicals etc.) and complexity as a >> reason. I do not know how the numbers stack up, but chances are that >> neither do you. So it is just a speculation used to prop someones point of >> view. > > I know how the numbers stack up, because I do both. > > A CASA Class-2 medical from a DAME costs $80 plus GST. It is one of the > most trivial expenses it’s possible to accrue in aviation, excepting perhaps > the $6 it costs to land a GA light aircraft at an AVdata country airport. > > And as of yesterday, under Part 61 you don’t need one anyway. Switch to a > drivers license medical from your GP, fly up to 1500kg MTOW with 1 > passenger, fixed pitch, fixed gear, no aerobatics, day VFR. Sold. > > Anyone who says they’re giving up flying due to the cost of a medical > probably flunked theirs because they were on hallucinogenic drugs. > > - mark > > > _______________________________________________ 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
