Does Gliding Make a Better Pilot?

Mike, luckily I’m nowhere near being a Chief Eng (at least not in the car industry), that is even more remote from the sharp end!!

JC

Sorry I misread your post I read Chief Engineer for Senior Engineer. The statement still applies though.

I think being a glider pilot as well as a PPL makes one a more well rounded pilot but not necessarily a better pilot. Flying an airplane is a pitch AND power endeavor and flying a glider only increases your situational awareness with pitch.

Also a lot of the skills that are found piloting a glider don’t transfer (at least not reasonably) to a powered aircraft. When you lose your engine in an airplane you pitch for best glide. In a glider you are able to use the glider and actually increase altitude or search for better lift elsewhere. You’ll find that neither of those options work in an airplane and in fact you’ll be spending all your time with emergency procedures to try looking for lift to decrease your decent rate.

There is a reason that the manual for an airplane is many times thicker than that of a glider.

Could be worse, you could work in Rugby like me!

My limited experience of gliding was much like Moggy’s. You have to have plenty of time on your hands and have noting to do at weekends, i.e. be young. I have to say though a certain aircraft I know after experiencing problems got down safely (before burning itself to toast) at the hands of a gliding instructor who performed very amirably.

If your sole aim is to do a PPL, just get up and go for it. Don’t faff around at Hus Bos for two years before going powered. :p 😉

I’m off for my 5 mince pie this year and also this evening. Do I hear the gym calling?

Mike, luckily I’m nowhere near being a Chief Eng (at least not in the car industry), that is even more remote from the sharp end!!

JC

I don’t get paid for that either (and although we’re working on AA machines it’s a little more complex than that)!! Jaguar pays my mortgage, and the Dak work gets me in trouble at home, gets me filthy, get’s me bloomin’ cold and is a great way to practice REAL engineering. As opposed to project managing and chasing people for pieces of paper (such is the life of a “senior engineer” in a global organisation). I’m not even allowed to pick up a spanner in my “proper job” any more 🙁

Oops that was a rant wasn’t it!

I can see what R means though – and at least gliders don’t p*ss oil everywhere!!

Anyhow chances of getting near a PPL are pretty slim for the foreseeable future unless I can come up with a really cunning plan. One devised by a cunning fox with a degree in cunning from the cunning university (with apologies to Elton and Curtis).

JC

If you enjoy getting dirty and actually performing Hands On engieering and your job as a chief engineer does not allow you to then the rant is justified.

I don’t get paid for that either (and although we’re working on AA machines it’s a little more complex than that)!! Jaguar pays my mortgage, and the Dak work gets me in trouble at home, gets me filthy, get’s me bloomin’ cold and is a great way to practice REAL engineering. As opposed to project managing and chasing people for pieces of paper (such is the life of a “senior engineer” in a global organisation). I’m not even allowed to pick up a spanner in my “proper job” any more 🙁

Oops that was a rant wasn’t it!

I can see what R means though – and at least gliders don’t p*ss oil everywhere!!

Anyhow chances of getting near a PPL are pretty slim for the foreseeable future unless I can come up with a really cunning plan. One devised by a cunning fox with a degree in cunning from the cunning university (with apologies to Elton and Curtis).

JC

Unless they pay you for cutting the grass and cleaning the aircraft as a club supervisor/care-taker when your not tugging. 🙂

And why would John, who has a job working for Atlantique want to give that up to clean gliders?

Moggy

From the ANO:

(ii) he may fly such an aeroplane for the purpose of aerial work which consists
of:
(aa) towing a glider in flight; or
(bb) a flight for the purpose of dropping of persons by parachute;
in either case in an aeroplane owned, or operated under arrangements entered
into, by a club of which the holder of the licence and any person carried in the
aircraft or in any glider towed by the aircraft are members.

he being a holder of a Private Pilot’s Licence (Aeroplanes)

So, yes you can do glider towing on a PPL, but not for payment (you can tell I’m studying air law at the moment) 😮

You would need a CPL before you could do tug work as ‘work’, ie for remuneration. Not sure about doing it on a voluntary basis, I’m sure others can elaborate on that though…

Thanks chaps!

To sum up then, Gliding is a good adjunct to the PPL (possibly better to glide first then go noisy though), however gliding clubs and the gliding scene requires more time and commitment to the club as opposed to just turning up and flying. Gliding is also cheaper!

Would that be accurate?

So moving on a stage (or 10) would one need a CPL for tug work? I’m speculating here, but would being in a gliding club for a few years and getting a powered licence put one in a good position for becoming a tug pilot? Not a serious question – just thinking as I go along!

Probably all academic as I doubt I will have any spare time in the coming couple of years due to work and Dakota commitments.

JC

I fear Moggy has been spoilt by tooo much time in that noisy milking stool with wings he calls an aeroplane. Gliding is most definitely NOT the way to fly if you just want to turn up and do your flying then go home again, gliding is very much a social event as well as a way to get your flying fix to keep the gremlins at bay for a while. A well run club makes it a fun day out. At the gliding clubs I’ve been to the place has been a family day out and the people who just went along with their partner but did not want to fly used to look after the tea/coffee/foood making plus keeping the site log and looking after the cash box and the flying roster. All told it was a very friendly,pleasant atmosphere. But I have strayed from the original question. I think gliding does make a better pilot if only from the point of making a more accurate pilot, it’s surprising how much it sharpens your skills knowing that you can’t just open the throttle and go round again if you get your approach wrong.
My first club also had another way of encouraging you to get it right first time. The field we used was at the same level as the farmer’s field at the end of the runway without a hedge or fence dividing them so it was possible to land on the edge of the farmer’s field and run on to the launch area without doing any damage to the glider. For this reason the club had a sliding scale of ‘fines’; tail skid in the field = a beer for your instructor, main wheel in the field = a beer for everyone in the bar, whole glider in field = a barrel of beer. It works, I only got 2 free beers in three years 😡

Moggy, I have flown at Snitterfield a couple of times. The first time was brilliant, the instructor once he knew I was a PPL let me fly from half way up the winch launch to touch down. No control input from him, just very good advice. Flight lasted 75 minutes.
The second time, I got the anti brigade, so you’re a PPL, not real flying is it. An instructor who would not let go of the controls, left pissed off, never been back.
Seems to me many of them wished they had a PPL, but would’nt admit it.

My view for what it is worth.

Gliding in UK clubs is extremely tedious.

You will turn up at 8 in the morning and be instructed in how to make the tea, how to wash the dishes, how to unlock the hangar, where to hold the gliders so the wings don’t fall off.

Then you will spend most of the morning dragging gliders out of sheds.

For a change you will be allowed to take a cup of tea to the winch man, and as a big treat they’ll let you ride on the landrover that goes and gets the bit of string when the glider has finished with it.

Lunchtime you’ll have some indifferent food.

In the afternoon you are senior enough to hold the wing of a glider when they start to pull on the bit of string. You will also learn to wave your arm from side-to-side.

Around about 5 o’clock you’ll help put some gilders away (Nice smart, streamlined plastic ones)

About half five the CFI will ask “Have you had a flight yet?” On hearing you haven’t he’ll cast around for something to fly and come up with some hefty wooden pre-war job from behind the clubhouse.

This flies like a brick and will enable you to do one brief circuit whilst the CFI tells you how wonderful the lift was at 11 am and how you should have been flying then.

Trust me John, unless you are retired or unemployed you don’t want to know. Particularly where you are located. I’ve flown from Snitterfield and it is pretty tedious. Somewhere like the Long Mynd is much better, but then you’ll have to set off in the dark in order to get there for a full day of dragging other people’s gliders around.

Moggy

But does mean a poor glider pilot will still be a good ppl?
All very well flying a glider,from a thousand feet you can go a long way, but when the donkey stops on the Yak it glides like a brick.
You will be a better pilot if you fly tail-draggers, tri-cycle, do aerobatics, do your IMC, fly different types, gliders, microlights, twins etc…
I personally would go and do my PPL, now if I had the funds and the time, I’d do both!

Based on various articles I have seen written over the years, the over-riding impression is that it is highly recommended as, if for no other reason it teached you to fly more accurately and to stop using the rudder pedals as foot rests.

I don’t know about a better pilot, but it does teach you to use the rudder more!

DME

I say yes! Learn gliding first, it’ll give you a feeling what the air is all about. And it’ll give you confidence that you can handle a plane when the engine malfunctions.