Hi All, I'd like to congratulate Mark on his well crafted letter expressing views that I'm sure are shared by many of us:
Quote:-------------I don’t want to be “supervised” by someone else. I’m not if I fly as an RAAus member, or as a CASA license holder. I’m only a second-class aviator not trusted to make my own decisions independently if I fly with GFA. In literally every other aviation discipline, I can front up to an aircraft owner, flash a pilot’s certificate, hire an aircraft, and be 100% responsible for my actions. Under the GFA system, I can’t. That’s been a common complaint about the GFA for as long as I can remember, and it’s immensely disappointing that there is no apparent intention to address it at all. Membership-based organization not responding to members’ issues. ------------ End Quote I can fully understand the need for pilots flying club gliders to be supervised by instructors. I can't see any reason that that should include pilots flying their own aircraft. While that supervision is seldom onerous, it still exists and in most cases achieves little. Many smaller clubs have difficulty finding instructors. It's likely that the requirement for instructors to be responsible for the flying of pilots flying their own aircraft contributes to people's reluctance to take on the role. Could someone from the GFA please reply explaining what's required to remove this supervision requirement? Cheers, Greg. ---- On Tue, 02 Sep 2014 12:30:31 +1000 Mark Newton <new...@atdot.dotat.org> wrote ---- On Sep 2, 2014, at 10:50 AM, Paul Bart <pb2...@gmail.com> wrote: 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”. <puts hand up> Hi, I’m Mark. I’m another 14 year glider pilot, just like you. In addition to a GPC with an L2 instructor rating and a D1109 airworthiness cert, I also have an RAAus pilot certificate, and a CASA PPL(A). During my time in the GFA system, I’ve spent 3 years as a club CFI. I know all about GFA’s attitude towards personal responsibility. I’m yet to encounter any other form of aviation in any other jurisdiction where a trained pilot is not considered responsible for their own actions; or where an instructor is expected to assume some kind of poorly defined “responsibility” for what other trained pilots do, simply by virtue of being present at the time of their launch. … except the military, which is, I believe, where the GFA’s system and attitude originates. There was a time when I didn’t care about any of this: I was a GFA member, a glider pilot, and that’s simply the system, take it or leave it. So I totally understand why it doesn’t matter to some (most) glider pilots. But after exposure to the CASA and RAAus systems, my attitude has changed. The Commonwealth of Australia considers me competent to make and be responsible for all my own decisions relating to my operations and the airworthiness of my aircraft. The GFA does not. That paternalism grates. At each membership renewal since I gained my PPL, I’ve thought a little bit harder about whether I’m prepared to accept the GFA’s increasing tendency to centralize, to oversee, to diminish the responsibility that each pilot has to maintain their own safety. I’ve also thought about the responsibility of instructing, and “taking charge” of an operation that can only be influenced, not controlled, and whether that’s something I want to expose myself to. I’m also increasingly of the view that some of that philosophy reduces safety. There are so many things that GFA pilots can convince themselves they never need to worry about because someone else will second-guess the decision for them. My membership is currently overdue. I’m still thinking. Last weekend I was going to fly my RV out to a gliding club to try them on for size, to have an annual check and see if we we’re a good fit for each other, and see if there are any openings in that I might be able to contribute to. I would have renewed my membership to make that happen, but I had a bad night’s sleep on Saturday night and didn’t assess myself as passing an IMSAFE check for that kind of operation, so I stayed home instead. Now I have some more work travel coming up and it’ll probably be at least a month before I get another opportunity, so maybe I’ll keep thinking about whether GFA’s philosophy is compatible with me until October or November. Here’s something that’s important, which I think is frequently lost: Aviation is a technical discipline, but it has a strong emotional dimension as well. We fly because we get some kind of high out of it: We love it, otherwise we wouldn’t put ourselves through the time and money and setbacks and heartache needed to enjoy it. Different people find that emotional response in different ways. For some people, it’s about flying higher or further or faster or longer than anyone else. For those people, the philosophy of the GFA is utterly irrelevant: As long as they can get into a glider, who cares, right? These are the people the GFA serves the best, in my opinion. For others, emotional reward comes from making contributions. We’re the people who instruct or serve on committees or get airworthiness credentials. For us, the philosophy of the GFA does matter, a bit, because it defines the framework those contributions are made in: It’s unlikely, for instance, that someone will find reward in instructing if they believe GFA’s syllabus provides bad safety outcomes. Then, there’s at least one other group: Entire libraries of books have been written about the gut emotional appeal that the freedom of human flight satisfies. That isn’t just the ability to soar with the birds, it’s also tied up with the fact that it’s one of the few pursuits left where an individual can assume “command responsibility” and make decisions without being second-guessed by a bureaucrat, and be wholly responsible for the outcome of those decisions. For that group, GFA’s philosophy of never yielding control and responsibility to pilots is utterly toxic, and incredibly patronizing. No matter how much training we do, we can never be trusted to assume command of an aircraft under our own recognizance, we’re always being “supervised” by someone else. So the FAA system, where you have a PPL(G) and fly gliders without being forced to be a member of a private association, is incredibly attractive. That’s what we expected from the CASA GPL, and the fact that its design has been sabotaged to specifically to exclude that outcome is the source of much bitterness and negativity among some of us. I don’t want to be “supervised” by someone else. I’m not if I fly as an RAAus member, or as a CASA license holder. I’m only a second-class aviator not trusted to make my own decisions independently if I fly with GFA. In literally every other aviation discipline, I can front up to an aircraft owner, flash a pilot’s certificate, hire an aircraft, and be 100% responsible for my actions. Under the GFA system, I can’t. That’s been a common complaint about the GFA for as long as I can remember, and it’s immensely disappointing that there is no apparent intention to address it at all. Membership-based organization not responding to members’ issues. I’ve had a lot of emotional reward from GFA over the last 14 years, do I want to abandon it? I really enjoy flying gliders, but this stuff is important to me even if you don’t understand it and it isn’t important to you, and GFA makes it so freakin’ hard to extract pleasure from flying when this ridiculous, unnecessary paternalism overshadows everything. So I’m still thinking… - 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
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