Guys, I recognize that the OlyII and 650 are great first planes for getting started. My first sailplane back in 1977 was an Airtronics Square Soar.
But today kids don't seem to have the time or gumption to build their own trainer. Perhaps it's too many competing priorities in their lives or that they've gotten used to instant gratification, or that their parents plan too much of their lives each day. Here's a fairly typical story in our area - one that I've experienced several times myself when responding to inquiries from parents and kids. Once I had a very nice woman come to our field with her son. They watched the sailplanes for hours and were entranced. The Mom: "Wow, those are really beautiful", she says, "my son would like to get into this". Soaring guy: "I'd be glad to help. I'm with the Seattle Area Soaring Society. We have a trainer night every Wednesday afternoon. You should come down and we'll get him started." The Mom: "Oh, that won't work, he's got soccer practice that day." Soaring guy: "Ok, well, why don't we meet at the field on Thursday and..." The Mom: "Well, he's got a Soccer game on Thursday" Soaring guy: "Ok, how about Tuesday?" The Mom: "Well, maybe, but I'll have to check. His father has visitation that day." Soaring guy: "Ok, why don't we meet up this Weekend. There will be a few of out here and we'll get out the traine..." The Mom: "Hmmm. Yeah, I don't know...we've got church on Saturday morning, then he has bible study afterwards. So that would be tight. Then Sunday he has this youth group meeting..." You can just see the sunken, hollowed-out look on the poor kid's face. He's only 13 and already has so many obligations. He knows he'll never get a moment's peace to dream up his own fun (like most of us did). His whole life is programmed. Even his weekend is shot. That's just no way to grow up if you ask me. If he's lucky, he'll grow up to be a mid-level cog in some big corporation, reporting up through a dense and Byzantine hierarchy. That's the fate that awaits kids who are raised like this. One thing for sure is that very few prospective young sailplane fliers can be bothered to build their own plane. Our goal here is to get him/her flying. Maybe he will enjoy it enough to get more involved and cause his parents to reprioritize his schedule. The important thing is to get him in the air with some successful flights asap. One thing you can seem to get parents to do these days is to throw money at their children. So, the ARFs make the most sense. You give the parent a shopping list, which they will dutifully purchase, then meet during one of the rare few hours the kid has open. Hopefully, they have a good enough experience that they will keep coming back. --Jim ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Whyte" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <Soaring@airage.com> Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2006 7:46 AM Subject: Re: [RCSE] Re: Beginner Sailplane recommendation Ok, lets get down to the two standards of the industry for a trainer. First off it should be recognized that building the glider will teach the beginner most of the basics and give him or here the knowledge of what to look for in a future kit or RTF. The Lee Renaud / Airtronics Olympic II and the Olympic 650, I believe have been used to get more glider pilots started in the right direction. They are inexpensive easy to build fly great and can be repaired if something should go wrong. The Oly II is larger has better visibility and is a little more forgiving than the 2 Meter 650. The Oly II is available from Ray Hays at www.skybench.com the Oly 650 will be available shortly from www.aerosphereonline.com EW. Ed Whyte WHYTE WINGS 7207 Cornerstone Drive Caledonia, MI 49316-7879 616 698 8668 ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Soaring@airage.com Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2006 9:00 PM Subject: [RCSE] Re: Beginner Sailplane recommendation I see it now, the suggestions are going to keep escalating to higher-performing and more expensive planes. Forgetting that the user is going to be a youngster first-timer. And suggesting slope oriented planes for thermalling seems weird to me. Not that it's impossible, but because it makes little sense to me in the context of the target user. Very inexperienced newbies I know of tend to need lightweight gasbag planes, and preferably poly ships that are as stable as possible. You guys seem to forget that most of you are elite flyers and high performance ships are your normal stock in trade. I work the lower end myself, and am quite happy with 2-meter 2-channel poly floaters with inexpensive gear. I think that that direction is a good one for beginners as well. If you put an EPP nose on a Gentle Lady fuse and traded the GL wing for one with an EPP leading edge, carbon tube spar and main cores of styrene, I think you'd have my perfect trainer. RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
