On Jun 30, 9:52*am, Ryan Spicer wrote:
Beyond reading the Knauff books and seeking continuing instruction,
what recommendations does the group have for continuing to improve
skills and be better, safer pilot after I pass the practical?

I have four safety related articles on my web site at

http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/soaring/safety.html

As noted in the last of them, be particularly careful in imitating
more experienced pilots' exploits such as outlandings, close-in ridge
soaring, and low passes. Depending on your threshold for risk (we all
take some risk or we wouldn't soar!), these can be done with
acceptable risk. But I've heard some experienced pilots talk of (or
demonstrate) these maneuvers without adequately mentioning the risk
and that they shouldn't be performed by newer pilots without proper
training and experience.

And, even experience pilots can get killed doing them. I've received
two requests to reprint that article from clubs which lost experienced
pilots in the kinds of situations discussed there.

Another good source of information is the NTSB accident database

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/query.asp

Search on gliders and fatal accidents. Not that getting paralyzed is
to be sneezed at, but the fatal accidents will really get your
attention.

Hoping this helps, and welcome to soaring!

Martin