I'm a brand new glider pilot and I've got lots of questions and very few answers. I thought I'd try using this space to post my questions and observations on soaring from a newbie's viewpoint.
First, my name is Tom Berry and I live in upstate New York, very close to Elmira. Soaring pilots in the United States will recognize Elmira as the self-proclaimed capital of soaring. The National Soaring Museum is located on the gliderport that I fly out of (Harris Hill - 4NY8) and the Harris Hill Soaring Corporation is my club. They introduced me to the sport of soaring and taught me how to fly.
I passed my FAA checkride almost two weeks ago and I'm a newly minted glider pilot. According to FAA statistics for 2007, there are approximately 20,000 glider pilots in the U.S. or about 1 in 15,000 citizens. Even rarer are glider pilots who are also certified as private pilots - about 4,500. I happen to be one of them.
I'm writing this blog to record my journey as a new glider pilot. I've found learning to soar much more challenging than learning to fly a powered aircraft. I wouldn't say one was necessarily easier than the other, just that as a glider pilot, there's less room for sloppy decision making. Blow the approach in a Cessna 172 and you just go around until you get it right. Do the same thing in a glider and the outcome ranges from embarrassing to fatal.
Again, it's not that flying powered aircraft isn't challenging. It's more that flying and staying up in a glider is an act that tests your wits in a different way. When you do it right (which for me, at present, is almost never), it is a very satisfying feeling.
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