The Decline of Soaring Awards

On Tuesday, March 24, 2020 at 7:32:45 PM UTC-4, wrote:
There is some merit to the "nest egg" comment. Follow me here. The sucessful clubs in the world (almost all European) have enjoyed decades of equity growth in both equipment and experience. These are true clubs that pool their resources and have a significantly greater experience to offer members and prospective members. Conversely in the USA we share almost nothing financially or in knowledge.
A new member must be willing to pay through the nose to train in a P.O.S. with an "instructor" who's never left the pattern. IF they earn their certificate they need to bootstrap a cross country program on their own or retake the same check ride twice and spend their days in the back of a 2-33 as an "instructor" themselves. The system doesn't work. Save your stories about how if you did it anyone can do it. The general public isn't buying it, so I'm not either.
On the bright side there is enough experience to tap into, the proper aircraft exist. What is needed is people giving back. I see the entitlement issue differently. Recently a friend claimed to "play in his own sand box" meaning he had his own glider and was insulated from the problems soaring faced. That is the entitlement! "I got mine, **** everyone else!" Until we pool our resources and give back our FAILED sport will continue to circle the drain in the USA.

Fortunately, my experience in US clubs has been rather different than what you describe.

My current club's growing, and we're all about XC, we give back. There's no real magic here (that is to say: you could do it too).

Our secret weapon, if we have one, is our HpH 304c. It's a big draw to guys looking for a way to get into a high performance XC machine without breaking the bank. That machine is a motivator. Student pilots will work their tails off to get rated and get qualified to fly this delightful bird... then once they do, the motivation goes up still another notch and the hook is often well and truly set. The vast majority of our "304 graduates" buy their own gliders, often within a year or two of taking their first flight in the 304. Joining our club costs $400 initiation and $400 annual dues and another 70-something for the SSA. Last year, tows were $38 to 2K and instruction is free.

None of this looks like failure to us.

Evan Ludeman
Post Mills Soaring Club
Post Mills, VT

Someone mentioned the 5 hour requirement (the “big sit�) for Silver. I agree it’s silly because it is the same 5 hour requirement for Gold! It should have been maybe 3 hours for Silver.

The Five Hour in many ways is actually the biggest accomplishment of the Silver Badge. That's the tough nut to crack and it takes a lot of effort and perseverance to get it.

To do it on thermals is tough. My club requires it to be done on thermals as flying the ridge back and forth for five hours is simply an endurance contest.

But on thermals it requires a wide range of skills. For one, you need to pick your day. After you do your 5-hour, you'll find it isn't so hard to fly many hour flights. Most XC flights are 3-5 hours in length. But many flights just happen to end up around 4.3 to 4.8 hours. It just seems at least in the east coast that 5 hours is a special threshold on pure thermal days.

So you learn to pay attention to the weather forecasts and distinguish what days are good.

And when you get out to the airport, you have to time your launch just right. Too early and you fall out and miss your window. Too late and you fall out on the back end of the day. Many pilots have gotten 4.9 hours while trying their 5 hour duration.

During the day, conditions will usually cycle in and out over certain areas.. You can't just stay in one place. You will probably need to fly 5 miles away for a while and then go 10 miles from that spot, to the other limit of gliding distance of your airport. You may have one or two critical points that will decide whether you stay up or fall out. Maybe you even have a 1500ft save or two in that process.

There's a lot of decision-making that goes into it.

After you do it, you KNOW you have the skill and confidence to go cross country. You know that getting out of gliding distance on a two hour flight in the "meat" of the day is totally manageable. You know that when you get stuck in a thermal at 1500ft, working hard and climbing at .2 knots, that you have a lot of mental energy left in the tank. The Silver Distance feels "easy"!

Uniformly, the 5-hour is one of those things that people who don't have it, complain about its logic and usefulness. And then the people who do it and then progress to their Silver Distance, appreciate it for the wonderful accomplishment that it is.

My club requires a 5 hour endurance before taking our club ships cross country and it works very well as a training milestone. I think it's a great experience and a great goal for advancing gliderpilots to aim at.

All the best,
Daniel

On 3/25/2020 8:22 AM, Daniel Sazhin wrote:
The Five Hour in many ways is actually the biggest accomplishment of the
Silver Badge. That's the tough nut to crack and it takes a lot of effort
and perseverance to get it.

Bulk of good post snipped to save electrons in this time of global crisis...)

My club requires a 5 hour endurance before
taking our club ships cross country and it works very well as a training
milestone. I think it's a great experience and a great goal for advancing
gliderpilots to aim at.

All the best, Daniel

Consulting the Way Back When Machine, my first - and only - intentional,
semi-planned, Big Sit died with the day at around 4 hrs 45 minutes in my
club's 1-26. The good news was it was about 4 hours longer than I'd guessed
was likely before I took the tow, the bad news...well, use your imaginations!

So not long thereafter, licensed, proud 1/3 owner of my instructor's kit-built
1-26 with another of his recently-former students, there we wuz in eastern
Ohio flying in a Labor Day fun contest. 1st Day - my straw won, I finished an
~30-mile task (ridiculously high) after only ~3 hours (12mph IIRC!), whupping
the reigning World Champeen 1-26 pilot (Ted Teach - he landed out, along with
about 1/3 of the field), and I had an in-flight brainstorm. I radioed my
instructor (surely an instructor would have chops with the contest big wigs,
no?) to see if it would be OK for me, instead of landing immediately, to
remain aloft to bag my 5 hours (that's how high I finished!). It was. I did.

Point being, circumstances depending, it doesn't HAVE to be 'a Big Sit.'

Bob W.

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On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 07:22:06 -0700, Daniel Sazhin wrote:

The Five Hour in many ways is actually the biggest accomplishment of the
Silver Badge. That's the tough nut to crack and it takes a lot of effort
and perseverance to get it.

Agreed.

To do it on thermals is tough. My club requires it to be done on
thermals as flying the ridge back and forth for five hours is simply an
endurance contest.

But when flying over flat land, thats all you've got.

Uniformly, the 5-hour is one of those things that people who don't have
it, complain about its logic and usefulness. And then the people who do
it and then progress to their Silver Distance, appreciate it for the
wonderful accomplishment that it is.

In the UK you need to get Bronze before tackling Silver, Bronze being 50
solo flights with two exceeding 30 minutes (winch) or 60mins (aerotow)
followed by flying and written tests.You also need the Bronze XC
endorsement (selection, field landing and navigation exercises, all done
in an Scheibe SF-25 at my club).

Our instructors will insist on you having Bronze with XC endorsement
before tackling Silver Distance, but won't stop you doing longer flights
while getting Bronze, so a lot of us got our Silver Height and Silver
duration while working on Bronze.

So, for most of us, Silver Distance becomes our first solo XC flight.
Mini-triangles count as local soaring since they stay within 5 miles of
home and a lot of our new pilots will have gone XC in two-seaters, often
during competitions, before soloing.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

I believe when I did my 5 hours, was before the bronze badge existed, and I did it in an ASW-20 while doing gold distance/diamond goal.
Eastern US.
Thermals.
Film (no logger/GPS).
One film was cut mid flight, one was processed in a mall type color machine.... the Replogle barograph got me the 5 hours, but not distance.

A year or so later, I did the same flight during a drought in the northeast....took about 3 hours on thermals, but I got them.

Yes, since early '70's, our field has had CFI-G's that do XC as well as contests. We tend to shove peeps out and/or lead them out.
We always have people going somewhere, from kids to a "ripe old age".

XC/badge flying is not for everyone, but usually good to keep people in the sport for more than a year or so.

‘XC/badge flying is not for everyone, but usually good to keep people in the sport for more than a year or so. “

I second that. It has always been pretty clear that the folks who set personal goals in soaring like the badge program, continue in the sport, where the guys who get their ticket but never venture out in xc or contest flying don’t stick with the spirt for long.
Dan

Doing five hours while hovering around the airport is like flagpole sitting (at least at Moriarty!) It just shows you have a large bladder and a small imagination :-) Don't mean to be snarky, but western US soaring conditions are exceptional.

I've done lots of 5+ hour flights in hang gliders and sailplanes, with flight distances of 150+ km in hang gliders and a personal best of 745 km in my sailplane. I don't have ANY badges.

Gold Hat: "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!" (From the film, "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," Alfonso Bedoya as "Gold Hat," 1948)

“Badges? we don’t need no stinkin badges!�..Blazing Saddles.

On Wednesday, March 25, 2020 at 2:40:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:

I second that. It has always been pretty clear that the folks who set personal goals in soaring like the badge program, continue in the sport, where the guys who get their ticket but never venture out in xc or contest flying don’t stick with the sport for long.

Some people may need to fly XC to stay interested in the sport. This seems to be more true for some personality types, and maybe it is true for people who fly in places with less interesting terrain, or who fly very high above interesting terrain, or maybe for people who fly in places with generally strong soaring conditions. And it is certainly true for people who lose interest and stop flying soon after they pass their checkride, or the many who're frustrated by slow progress in weekend only training and dropout before they even take the checkride.

For 10 years, people have told me that I will surely quit soon if I do not take XC seriously.

I've 400 hours in my logbook and I own a medium performance glider and a hangar. I fly 30-40 days a year in a beautiful and challenging location. I'm active in gliding clubs in two hemispheres (I just returned from NZ).

The XC pilots at my home airport, pilots who own beautiful high performance gliders, gliders that sit assembled in the hangar and unused for most of the season (and several more parked in trailers), tell me that I'm going to quit soon if I don't fly XC. I'm also told that 'Good XC days' at our location are few and far between (most years).

Owning a high performance glider at a place with routinely weak conditions and low cloud base relative to ridge lines, seems like a trap. If I bought a high performance glider at my current location, I would probably need to take up XC and competition, or move to NM, CO and like places. ... or quit..

On the other hand I've found that there are many days when it is a satisfying struggle to stay up for an hour, and that there are lots of days when I can figure out where to go (and where to avoid) to stay up for 2-3 hours. Its satisfying to 'figure out' the day especially when other pilots (including XC pilots who try for a 'local flight') are dropping out of the sky. Its even more satisfying to climb out of a low tow on a day like that.

Flying often, I remain current and proficient, and I get measurably more proficient every year. I've been told that weak days are just 'too easy' and boring in a high performance glider, and that when you can't reasonably expect to get back over the ridge lines (once you've crossed over), you can only go up and down the valley, but not too far. Yeah. Boring. Plus you're missing the thrill of XC (I have enough experience to know that XC can be thrilling).

Having my glider assembled in the hangar and living close to the airport means its easy to try to fly on a lot of weak days. Figuring out when to launch to get that 1-2 hour flight is part of the fun. I have time and energy to do something else before or after my flight. I enjoy ground operations and the people. I enjoy working on projects in my hangar before or after a flight. I'm fortunate to be in this unique situation.

I'm not saying anything against flying XC and competitions. I'm just saying that there is more than one way to enjoy and stay enthusiastic about soaring. When people discount my way of enjoying the sport, when they tell me that I'm still a beginner, and occasionally say 'so you're not a real glider pilot', I just nod and move on. Okay. Maybe I am a beginner. I still have a beginner's enthusiasm about soaring.