Average time to solo a student

On Thu, 07 Jun 2018 10:10:30 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:

On Wed, 06 Jun 2018 20:13:45 -0700, Papa3 wrote:

So, do many European clubs have a formal process to do something like
this? Use aerotow to get some air-time early on to develop the basic
stick and rudder skills followed by winch to enable multiple patterns
(circuits) cost-effectively.

My club, Cambridge, does almost all training on the winch. I think the
only aero-tows I had pre-solo were for spinning exercises, and that was
and is still pretty much the norm. I didn't get an aero tow solo
sign-off until I'd been solo for a year, and I only worked for that
because I knew I'd be flying on your side of the pond that October -
2001: I was at Lost Hills, CA for the World Free Flight Champs and
Sacramento for the Sierra Cup and got to fly gliders at Boulder, Avenal,
Williams and Minden, so a good trip from all points of view.

Back then we used a flying list rather than the current booked two-seat
flying system, so there tended to be more people at the launch point. As
a result, if a group of us worked at it we could hit 18 launches an hour
on a two-drum winch but that did require one person dedicated to driving
the cable retrieve truck and another two ground handling helpers - thats
in addition to the usual launch marshal and log keeper - and needs all
student-instructor briefing to be completed before they're at the head
of the two parallel launch queues we normally use. Fun to do!

Now, with booked flying, the reduced waiting time at the launch point
means the experience is better for those learning to fly, but the
reduced number of people at the launch point limits the launch rate to
10 an hour or less.

Just curious,

Hope that's useful input.

I should have added that the BGA provides a booklet listing the
accomplishments needed to solo. All students have a copy that the
instructor uses to sign off items as they're completed satisfactorily.


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Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org