At 04:48 17 December 2003, Bob2nd wrote:
No rumor at all. It did change in 1966 because when
I started in 1967 a CFIG
was required. A friend who started a year earlier
and got his commercial
glider gave instruction that summer at a CAP camp.
He later got a CFIG with
only a show of paperwork. I don't think he even had
to take a written and
certainly not a flight test.

Am I the only old fart on this group that remembers
this stuff?

Bob VanTreese

No!

I am one such. Having learned gliding while attached
to the Belgian Army in Cologne, (60 winch launches
in primaries and a total of 2 short flights in the
Grunau Baby), I came back to North Carolina and helped
start the Tarheel Soaring Club.

I was instructed in aero tow and signed off to solo
a TG-3 by a commercial glider pilot who was not a CFI.

At that time, the examiner was allowed to observe the
flights from the ground and I proceeded to get the
Private Certificate and the Commercial Certificate
from the same examiner while he watched from the ground
and wrote up the paper work. Apparently, all he wanted
to see was a stall and recovery and the landing within
the prescribed 200ft. The glider was the TG-3, a two-seater,
but the examiner was afraid to get in a glider.

We learned a couple of years later that the CFI requirement
was imminent and that any commercial rated glider pilot
with 10 flights and 2 hours of giving instruction would
be grandfathered. I rushed out, got a student and
hustled through this requirement and was issued the
CFI-G just by showing my logbook. So, here was a brand-new
CFI-G who had never been in a plane or a glider with
an examiner for any rating at all!

Lest, anyone worry about this, I let the CFI expire
after about 8 years, finally got a Pvt. SEL rating
30 years later, and then got the CFI-G re-instated
after that by having a proper flight test with an examiner
on board in 1996.