On Tuesday, October 3, 2017 at 4:21:58 PM UTC-7, wrote:
We are trying to help teach XC to our fellow club members. I've heard of the Lead/Follow technique with an experienced pilot showing a student how to get around a course. Before we try it, are there any suggestions on how to best do it?

I've heard that if the leader is higher up or in a higher performance glider it is good to sometimes pull the spoilers and get down to the level of the student.

Should it be a 1:1 leader/follower ratio or can you have more than 1 follower?

I suppose a good talk on how to enter/exit and thermal together is the first thing - since they may not have flown gaggles before.

A portable flarm would be good to add to the student's gliders just to be able to track them.

Chris

(my uninformed comments from somebody interested in this, not a leader)

What skill level is the student? Have they flown XC at all in a two seat ship?

I have a bias that XC novices are much better off making first XC flights in a 2 seat medium performance or better glider (i.e. L/D 40 to 1 or more). Clubs like BASA do a good job bringing people into XC with their DG-1000S, Morgan Hall with his Duo at Avenal, both utilizing a soaring "nursery" of relatively easy spring time soaring around Hollister and Avenal, CA.

My impression is many pilots first venturing out on XC really don't thermal well. Varies a lot by when and where they learnt to fly, some student may really just have almost no time thermalling before getting a license. Programs like the Air Sailing Thermalling camp seem a very good idea. Stuff where you are starting to push distance from the local gliderport and work on technique and judgment. Use the ABC badge program and maybe set a goal of local triangles around the gliderport before XC lead/follow...

(and I expect I'm preaching to the choir with the above comments anyhow).

Lead/follow can work one on one or one to few gliders. Issues I've seen are difference in ship performance which makes it frustrating for leader and follower. Another issue is lack of clarity on the plan for when things don't go well. And new pilots assuming they are following somebody around and there was no a super-clear clear commitment from the lead pilot--if there is the leader should be willing to hang in with the pilot struggling, pulling spoilers is the least of it, maybe land out with them if needed (help them on field selection etc.) , what is the retrieve plan, etc. Lots of things to work on together before the flight. And please STFU on the main radio frequencies, there is nothing more annoying than leaders and followers continuously jamming up common frequencies, work out how you are going to communicate at a sane level. Sure FLARM can help, but I think its far from needed especially one on one in relatively non-busy areas.

Try to get the student using a flight recorder and able to analyze their flights in SeeYou.

Do not underestimate the preparation work needed, helping the student loading the right waypoints or marking up a chart, understanding what the student is using for a soaring computer and talking though how they use it (making sure settings, polar etc. are sane). If folks are starting with a soaring computer they can easily overfixate on it.

Ramy Yanetz was an early mentor when I first started going cross country. One early one-on-one lead and follow was a huge help. And lots of flying in that area is technical understanding of convergence, local elevators, sea breeze etc.

Ramy also runs some friendly spring-time "races" which often end up more in group lead and follow where everybody is helping out everybody else and they are very good for newer XC pilots to participate in. Over the years it's been great to see things like Ramy leading a flock of ducklings across the Sacramento delta or be flying near Avenal and see Morgan Hall in his Duo Discus coming the other way with a flock of his ducklings in tow.

Now I've made it impossible for Ramy and Morgan not to reply here :-)