I would like to agree with Tom, Ross and Simon. Last season I attended my
first comp and flew in the NSW comps at Narromine in club class. Had nothing
but support from the old hands and left hooked on comp flying looking
forward to this season with Narromine Cup, NSW comps at Keepit and club
class nationals at Benalla on the agenda. As an ex hang glider pilot I have
found gliding to be an amazing opening of horizons regarding XC flight.
There are a lot of HG pilots out there who would jump at this if they knew
what a buzz XC in a sailplane is . How do we go forward?
Regards.
Mark Barnfield.
_
From: aus-soaring-boun...@lists.internode.on.net
[mailto:aus-soaring-boun...@lists.internode.on.net] On Behalf Of tom claffey
Sent: Sunday, 29 August 2010 1:40 PM
To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia.
Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] Death of a movement - start of a sport
It is great to see Peter and the Caboulture club realise the facts about
City/coastal and Country/inland clubs. From what I have seen at Qld Easter
and state comps the system is working well, much less so in NSW.
It shits me off completely when I hear all this comp Pilots are dangerous
and unfriendly crap from people who have never been to one in the last
10-20 years.
Negativity is destructive, listen to Ross M'clean, Simon Holding etc re
their first comp experiences and the help they received, we all like to see
new pilots enjoying themselves!.
Re any lack of help from NSWGA, anyone going to take on the Marketing
Officer for NSW position advertised for last 2 years or only bitch here???
Having just returned from 6 weeks in Europe we don't realise just how good
we have it here!! [and not just the weather, GFA/CASA is nothing on EASA!]
Happy Flying,
Tom
--- On Sat, 28/8/10, Peter Stephenson p...@internode.on.net wrote:
From: Peter Stephenson p...@internode.on.net
Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] Death of a movement - start of a sport
To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia.
aus-soaring@lists.internode.on.net
Received: Saturday, 28 August, 2010, 7:50 PM
Great to see posts from Yannick and this from Andrew.
My Club Caboolture is like that Sydney Club and has Brisbane to the
south and under 3500' CTA and limited XC options. In our training, we
refer to cross country in our circuit training (covering the altimeter)
and actively send our members out to the inland cross country clubs
DDSC, Kingaroy, Boonah and Warwick after training them to go solo and
get off daily checks. In addition, I usually organise a week every
year for our members at DDSC and so we realise that we are a feeder club.
As an instructor, it is really great to see our ex-members at the other
clubs so our club is not growing per se but if you include all our
ex-members at other clubs, we are! :-)
PeterS
On 28/08/2010 3:32 PM, Andrew Hallam wrote:
Hi All,
Interesting discussion, especially since I am one of those new members who
is deciding whether or not to continue with gliding.
Caveat: My (lack of) experience and my personal situation may, or may not,
be representative of others making similar decisions.
I started gliding last year at age 42. I now have 21 hours solo time (10
flights), and have been fortunate to complete flights that meet all Silver C
requirements. So far it has been lot of fun, and resulted in a great sense
of achievement. From what I understand, I also approached learning to fly
gliders a little differently than most. (The journey so far is partly
documented at
http://www.hallam.id.au/journal/2009/11/3/learning-to-fly-gliders.html.)
I still have a *lot* to learn. I now need to decide whether to invest the
time and money in that learning. That means thinking about what the future
looks like if I do continue with gliding, and making a call on the
opportunity costs.
While the idea of flying in competitions is enticing I'm unlikely to be a
serious or regular competition pilot due to my age, the limited number of
hours I can fly each year, and the cost of a reasonable glider. Therefore,
thinking of soaring as a sport might not be realistic, for me.
The most likely path, for me, seems to be treating soaring as more of a
hobby. Flying when I can, setting my own tasks, and maybe posting a few
flights on OLC. Competition flying is likely to be an occasional bonus
rather than a regular thing. I am wondering if that is going to be enough to
keep me interested.
If I do continue, some of the things I'd like to experience while
finishing my Glider Pilot Certificate are:
- More cross country soaring. Learning by doing via coaching in a dual
seater or pair flying with an experienced pilot.
- Graduating to a higher performance single seater (doesn't have to be the
latest and greatest,
just good enough to maximise my enjoyment at my skill level).
- Flying in a competition as a passenger in a dual seater.
- More training on all aspects of safety.
- More learning about soaring weather
