(Mark James Boyd) wrote in message news:4088b324$1@darkstar...
Marcel Duenner wrote:

The difficult thing in soaring is not the soaring. It's the landing.
You only have one try. That is fundamentally different from powered
flight. That means a lot more training has to be put in to it. I think
80-100 launches is quite reasonable to be safe.

Learning to aerotow safely in my experience takes more time
than learning to land. By the time the purely new student can safely
aerotow for solo, landings seem to be fine. Usually for solo
this is about half of your 80-100, and the other half is post-solo
and dual practice before the checkride...

This is from an informal recollection of about a dozen logbooks...

Again, I just don't know how this compares to ground launch (winch)
training...


I should have mentioned we do about 80-90% winch launching. A winch
launch will get you 6-8 minutes of flight w/o lift. So it's common to
total more launches during training than in a pure aerotow setup.

I hate to think of encountering someone holding a licence after only
13 flights. We have had power pilots taking up soaring. They are
usually a bit faster, but not a lot, to get to the exam.

The pilots who were previous hang glider or power pilots
really seem to need only 1/2 to 1/4 the # of flights. But the
sample I'm basing this on is pilots with hundreds of previous flight
hours, not just 40 hours...

PS A well organized school with paid instructors,...

With that you are automatically back to the 3000$ Tom mentioned. Or
how little do you think an instructor would want to earn?

There are a FEW clubs that give free instruction in AZ and
in CA (Los Angeles area has one). Bless their hearts...
They also have less expensive gliders and low fees.
But this of course comes with a little less certainty that
one can get a glider and instructor when one wants one, too...

I'm astounded at the graciousness and charity of some instructors.
They are real heroes, IMHO...

I'll tell them. Of our 130 members about 20 are instructors. The rest
shares the other jobs to be done: winch drivers, tow pilots,... all
for free. It's our hobby.

Marcel

Why walk when you can soar?