Chris Reed schrieb:

Many glider pilots can't practice because cloud flying is generally
illegal in their countries.

In most countries, it's prefectly legal. France is an exception, also
Spain and Italy, if I recall correctly. It's just not too common in most
countries.

4) You can train yourself.

For each and every activity, there has always been at least one person
who had to train himself. It's just the survival rate which was
sometimes less than desired, though.

An artificial horizon is clearly easier because it gives you bank and
pitch simultaneously. However, as the earlier poster who actually uses
one points out, you need a T&S as backup in case the horizon fails.

The T&S is more than a backup. It's absolutely indispesable for cross
reference.

Each artificial horizon has some drift over time (even if it doesn't
tumble). (Only for those multi thousand dollar high tech ring laser
systems drift can be neglected.) And then, these (mechanical) horizons
were typically built for straight and level flight, not for tight
circling in a bumpy cloud. Stay 15 minutes in such a cloud, which is a
reasonable time, and most horizons will show more or less wrong bank.
Only the T&S will *always* show the correct data, due to the
construction principle (as long as it's not broken, of course).

Definitely no, if you mean horizon/T&S/horizon. Other instruments
(except, I understand, a Bohli compass in the hands of an expert) are
little or no use for maintaining control in cloud.

Definitely no. Of course you can cloud fly with minimal instruments, but
it's the redundancy of a full panel (and you being able to use this
redundancy) which makes it safe. And of course you need a compass (plain
old whisky works fine, if you know how to interpret it) to leave the
cloud in the desired direction.

Stefan