BGA Instructor Requirements

At 15:42 26 April 2007, Nyal Williams wrote:
snip
As I understand
it, the BGA allows beginning level instructors for
this basic instruction. I'd be more interested in
seeing a tiered instructor level like that for the
US than a wholesale requirement that all instructors
be required to have a gold badge.
snip

AFAIK, a Basic Instructor is effectively limited to
upper air work (but I'm sure someone will correct me
if I'm wrong about that), so someone new to gliding
fairly quickly needs an Assistant or Full instructor.
Where I fly has an evening for ab-initios and another
for the Bronze group, all instructors for those are
AIs or FIs. As to gold badges - one of our Bronze
instructors must have enough diamond flights for a
tiara of his very own, but thankfully he's not that
sort of guy! (and fitting it under the canopy without
damaging him, it or the canopy might be problematic)
Two more of the four do XC flying (and I'm pretty sure
have gold), will ask the 4th next time I see him.

My view is that we are very lucky to have these guys
teaching us, especially as they all normally give up
an evening a week for 7 months of the year.

126Driver wrote:
The three levels of instructor is interesting and makes sense.
Another difference seems to be orientation in that there is some
expectation that the student may fly cross country some day. I don't
think this is part of USA instruction.

During my recent checkride for PPL-G, the examiner asked a lot of
questions about landing out, probably more on that than on any other topic
aside from maybe reading sectionals, which has similar applicability. My
instructors similarly asked me about landing out, mainly when we were in
the air and they could show real examples. I fondly remember one wave
flight where we spent probably half an hour picking out fields and
discussing how to land in them.

More advanced topics than this generally were not covered. I think the
idea is that you should know enough to save yourself when you can't make
it back, but anything more is up to you to learn (and get training on, if
you wish) afterwards.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software

On Apr 25, 7:10 am, 126Driver wrote:
Would a USA instructor easily qualify as a BGA
instructor. Or would they need additional training.

My experience of this is over 20 years ago. I returned to UK after
earning my US CFI, Gold, and 2 diamonds and with 150 hours in my log
book was quickly granted a UK assistant instructor rating. I probably
was not given a full briefing on the restrictions as the CFI ( the C
is Chief for the US folks)had a little word with me after I soloed a
student without talking to him first.

I did some training at Lasham for full cat and would have received it
except that I got tired watching the rain while I waited in the hope
of flying and returned to US.

Andy

The FAA criteria for a CFI-G in the US are apparently
based on old criteria from the 1920s and 1930s with
some updating in the pursuit of safety.

In my view, it would be useful if the SSA devised two
or three levels of SSA Instructor recognition similar
to the BGA standards. I don't believe I would base
this on badges; we have many pilots who fly cross country
but don't bother with SSA badges. Further, in the
proper location, one can earn all the diamonds without
having made a dozen X/C flights, and further still,
one could have earned the badges decades ago and not
have done any X/C flying since that time. I believe
some combination of total hours of X/C, the number
of X/C flights, total distance flown, and recency of
this experience would provide a better indicator of
qualifications.

We already have SSA Instructor, and SSA Master Instructor;
why not elaborate that a bit and give it more publicity
and status?

At 20:12 26 April 2007, Andy wrote:
On Apr 25, 7:10 am, 126Driver wrote:
Would a USA instructor easily qualify as a BGA
instructor. Or would they need additional training.

My experience of this is over 20 years ago. I returned
to UK after
earning my US CFI, Gold, and 2 diamonds and with 150
hours in my log
book was quickly granted a UK assistant instructor
rating. I probably
was not given a full briefing on the restrictions as
the CFI ( the C
is Chief for the US folks)had a little word with me
after I soloed a
student without talking to him first.

I did some training at Lasham for full cat and would
have received it
except that I got tired watching the rain while I waited
in the hope
of flying and returned to US.

Andy

Not directly on topic, but a variation of a review of training philosophy.

http://www.gfa.org.au/ops/training.php

Overview of the BGA system, for the interested:

http://www.gliding.co.uk/bgainfo/ins...quirements.htm


Dan

On Apr 27, 7:07 pm, Dan G wrote:
Overview of the BGA system, for the interested:

http://www.gliding.co.uk/bgainfo/ins...quirements.htm

And further, explaining the limitations on what a BI can teach:
http://www.gliding.co.uk/forms/Basic...nformation.pdf