Let me strongly second using Condor to accelerate your training. If you do go this route it is worth getting rudder pedals though - much better for training the feet. Scott Manley has an excellent course outline and lessons on www.glidercfi.com. After taking a flight lesson you can go home and try to reproduce the flight on Condor.

On Monday, March 28, 2016 at 11:06:48 AM UTC-4, Bruce Hoult wrote:
On Monday, March 28, 2016 at 5:28:21 PM UTC+3, Reuben Bakker wrote:
Just wanted to say hi, and if you have any advice or things you wish you had known when you were starting out, let me know!

If they'll let you, do your training in the Duo Discus, not the 2-33. In reality, it's not any harder to fly, and it's far more representative of other gliders you'll fly later. If you learn in the 2-33 then you'll have a big conversion process later.

Even if it costs more per hour, your training flights will be a lot longer on average, so you'll spend less on the tow plane.

For about the last ten years my club has done all training in DG1000, which is the direct competitor to the Duo Discus. The DG has a sprung undercarriage which makes it more tolerant of bad student landings, but there's very little difference other than that. (we also use the DG in 18m wingspan configuration vs the fixed 20m for the Duo, but that's not a huge deal) Before the DG, we used late 70's Grob Twin Astirs, which are also a big heavy fiberglass glider.

Get a copy of Condor Soaring simulator and use it with a gaming joystick such as Thrustmaster Top Gun Fox 2 Pro or Logitech Extreme 3D. Set the twist to be rudder, the throttle lever on the base as airbrakes, and a pair of buttons on the top of the stick under your thumb as elevator trim up/down. I also like to make left and right on the hat be "glance" left and right.

This sim can vastly decrease the amount of expensive air time needed to understand from basic concepts of the aerotow, flght and landing right up to cross country flying. Spend some early time with an experienced glider pilot to guide you into good habits.

Unfortunately this program is Windows only, but it runs fine in virtual machines such as the free VMWare Player (I use this), and I believe also in CodeWeavers CrossOver.