Would you rather fly a Sailplane?

On Saturday, April 28, 2012 12:54:01 AM UTC-5, gotovkotzepkoi wrote:
Forget trying to recruit paraglider pilots. It's too much fun. And when
you are young and full of **** and vinegar you'd rather run off
mountains with the wind in your face than sit in a bubble....Older ones?
Hauling a paraglider up a hill is no more strenuous than pushing a
sailplane onto take off position.

Fun is relative. I like being in a quiet, hi-tech bubble, with my neat electronics, cruising at 100 knots at cloudbase over the Grand Canyon. Or doing 80 mile final glides finishing with a low pass after a 5 hour flight into the mountains and back. Or flying on a windy day, looking for wave. I think sitting in a chair going back and forth over the trees might be fun for a while, but then I'd get bored of being SLOW!!!

Just like there are lots of power pilots who think gliding is stupid - they enjoy (?) the precision of instrument flight and couldn't care less what is outside the window until at decision height.

And BS about the effort involved. With good rigging and towout gear, there is very little effort needed to rig and launch a glider - a LOT less than is needed to hike up a mountain! So from the physical aspect, paraglider pilots may be interested in transitioning to gliding as they age, or move somewhere where it is less practicable to paraglide (Try Phoenix, AZ, in the summer, for example!).

Kirk
66

I was referring to the usual carry of a PG from the car or cable car to
the take off point, not hauling the thing on your back up 3000 vertical
feet. Yes, that is very hard. I have done that 100s of times. I have a
light PG with super light harness. I like the workout of climbing up for
3 hours in the early morning and a quiet, quick glide back home for
lunch. But you are right, for effortless flying at speed nothing beats
the coffin with a view.

gotovkotzepkoi

"the coffin with a view"? Really? At 17,000' it's kinda essential to have - there is no way you are going to survive hanging out in the open in the 13 knot thermal to cloudbase I found last weekend on my way to the Grand Canyon.

But you are right, for effortless flying at slow speed going nowhere, nothing probably beats the swing seat with a view...

It's all fun!

Kirk
66
(and yeah, I know para's go XC...chill.

As a hang glider pilot that transitioned to glass a few years ago I do tend to be very surprised at the general lack of awareness of what hang gliders and even paragliders are capable of. Experienced sailplane pilots marveling at the fact that hang gliders can climb in thermals and go XC. Really, really long XC.

Hang glider and paraglider pilots that have thermal and XC experience make fantastic sailplane pilots. Here on the central coast of California, the PG pilots tend to be primarily coastal ridge lift flyers. Very little interest in XC and thermals. A few exceptions of course, but mostly they love the convenience of a quick drive to a coastal ridge and are up in flying in minutes.

I routinely post about my XC flights and experiences in sailplanes, but haven't sucked anyone in from the PG/HG club here. I've given demo flights in my Duo and blown their minds with the performance, but cost/convenience seem to be the primary motivators.

It's still a fantastic group to try to tap into, but the conversion rate is still pretty low. The main difference is how quickly an experience HG/PG pilot will pick up and transition into sailplanes and want to start going XC. Nowhere near the fear and trepidation around landing out when all you've ever done is "land out" in a hang glider. Yeah, I worry more about field selection and the obvious things to keep from damaging the plane or myself, but generally speaking the process is very well known to me.

Another great source of potential pilots are the RC glider clubs.

More than anything, I think the power pilot population represents the group most likely to take up and continue soaring. They are already used to the cost and preparation around flying an airplane. You just have to wean them off the throttle and onto the mental game that soaring is.

Morgan

On Sunday, April 29, 2012 12:44:33 PM UTC-7, kirk.stant wrote:

I was referring to the usual carry of a PG from the car or cable car to
the take off point, not hauling the thing on your back up 3000 vertical
feet. Yes, that is very hard. I have done that 100s of times. I have a
light PG with super light harness. I like the workout of climbing up for
3 hours in the early morning and a quiet, quick glide back home for
lunch. But you are right, for effortless flying at speed nothing beats
the coffin with a view.

gotovkotzepkoi

"the coffin with a view"? Really? At 17,000' it's kinda essential to have - there is no way you are going to survive hanging out in the open in the 13 knot thermal to cloudbase I found last weekend on my way to the Grand Canyon.

But you are right, for effortless flying at slow speed going nowhere, nothing probably beats the swing seat with a view...

It's all fun!

Kirk
66
(and yeah, I know para's go XC...chill.

I came to sailplanes from paragliding, and love and enjoy both, for
their unique qualities, as well as their commonalities. I have always
felt that many paraglider pilots would go for sailplanes, if given a
good introduction -- one which overcame the many stereotypes
attributed to each form. I remember waiting on the paragliding launch
at Ellenville, NY, on a day with winds too high to fly, watching a
sailplane ridge-soaring overhead, and hearing another PG pilot state:
"Sailplanes are a rich man's game." The reality is that the cost per
hour may actually be lower in sailplanes, when you factor in the
enormous number of hours spent driving to the paragliding site,
waiting for the small window of acceptable weather conditions to open,
and driving home. Living in the Northeast, it was the fact that my
driving-to-flying ratio was vastly better in sailplanes than
paragliders that got me. A $15,000 SGS 1-35, which retained all it's
resale value, also looked pretty good relative to $3500 worth of PG
gear that depreciated rapidly as available gear improved from year to
year.

I could go on for days on this topic. But in a nutshell, when we
bemoan the "graying" of the SSA membership and wring our hands about
the difficulty of recruiting younger members, I think we are missing a
real opportunity by not reaching out to thousands of soaring pilots
who are mastering soaring in "low performance" (8:1 L/D) gliders.

I've always thought that the SSA and USHPA should offer each other a
page in the respective magazines which guest authors could use to
share their experience and perspective on the sports, so that each
pilot population could start to learn more about the other, and to
encourage "bi-wingualism."