On Thursday, April 5, 2018 at 9:42:00 AM UTC-4, Roy B. wrote:
Friends:
I am trying to learn more about how different clubs with active XC pilots flying privately owned gliders handle the problem of determining "Is everybody back safely?" - before everybody at the airport goes home.

In my club we frequently shut down training operations around 5:00 pm or so and the day's Duty Officer, the instructors and tow pilots will all leave, but we will often still have pilots out on course sometimes as late as 7:00 pm or later. Some pilots have landed back to find that they are the only ones at the airfield. It has happened to me several times.

It seems that there is a real risk of an accident happening on course and nobody realizing it until the next day, or a risk that somebody lands out safely but that fact is not communicated back to the airfield (with a lot of unnecessary worry and confusion).

I'm trying to come up with a procedure that makes sense for our club and so I was hoping people would share here how they try to solve this problem.

Thanks
Roy B.
GBSC Chief Pilot

New for 2018... we've suggested to our XC pilots that they adopt cell phone, spot or inreach tracking and we will have a screen set up in the clubhouse that shows live tracks. Most are opting for cell based solutions (glidetrack for iOS and IGCdroid for Android). This is extra important at Post Mills because most of our cell phones do not receive calls or txt at the airport (however cell based tracking works fine in the traffic pattern and beyond).

best,
Evan Ludeman / T8