Ramy wrote, On 8/20/2013 9:04 PM:
This is an excellent idea. Jim, get a nice 2 seater and train pilots
to fly cross country. You actually been doing it all along but you
can do it in a much nicer glider. And hopefully for many more years
than you think. Eric, your take on the advantages of self launchers
is exactly what I would do if I had one, explore as much as I could
and fly from multiple places, but from some reason only a small
percentage of motorglider pilots I know fly like this. The rest
constrain themselves as if it was a pure glider. Or perhaps they are
so good that they hardly need to relight anyway. hmm...

Your observations are the same as mine. I average about 10 restarts
during my 40 to 50 flights a year. That's about right, I think, for
someone of my experience. Most motorglider pilots don't get near that
20% rate, however. Mostly, I think, it's because so many of them flew
towed gliders for a long time, and flew in a culture that did not
respect landouts, but usually considered landing out as evidence the
pilot failed.

I can hardly wait for someone like Tony to get a motorglider. I'm
thinking we'll see a 50% restart rate, but the times he doesn't will be
magnificent flights!

My next glider will have "The road less traveled" written on the side of
it, and I expect my restart rate will climb to 30% or more.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm
http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl