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Indeed....SOSA is the competitive pilots home turf and was where I learned ....without a lot a confidence it is not for the faint hearted as competitiion pilots have little patience with noobs.

Many airline pilots also fly sailplanes as it is real flying instead of bus driving and a lot of fun, also towing gliders up builds up flying hours for power pilots without cost to them.
The guy that landed in the Hudson was a sailplane pilot as was the Gimli Glider pilot. Useful skill set.
I miss it.
Many fly well into old age if they can pass the medical and flight checks each year ....one instructor when I learned was ex Luftwaffe :eek: ....in his 80s and still instructing. Even beyond flying solo, pilots can fly with an instructor aboard.
It is far and away the least expensive way to get a pilots licence as well as the transition to power is straight forward cept you get do-overs if you stuff the landing :rolleyes:
It is very worth spending $150 for a ride.
3 weeks in the spring/summer/fall and about $2500 you can get your solo licence. Was a big bucket list check mark for me.
 
Sailplane tutor (y) ....cool...many fine memories. SOSA?
View attachment 60223
My fav plane at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington. BTW that's a really good long weekend destination. Shuttle, Blackbird, Enola Gay, Concorde and many more there.
You don't have to drive into Washington ...it's on the outskirts.


Oh yeah go for a ride at SOSA or York Soaring near the Forks.
With the Air Cadets. Civvie soaring is pretty awesome, haven't done that much of it though. We're more like a driving/riding instructors at a driving/riding school teaching noobs for G2/M2, whereas the soaring club guys are like track day guys.
 
Indeed....SOSA is the competitive pilots home turf and was where I learned ....without a lot a confidence it is not for the faint hearted as competitiion pilots have little patience with noobs.

Many airline pilots also fly sailplanes as it is real flying instead of bus driving and a lot of fun, also towing gliders up builds up flying hours for power pilots without cost to them.
The guy that landed in the Hudson was a sailplane pilot as was the Gimli Glider pilot. Useful skill set.
I miss it.
Many fly well into old age if they can pass the medical and flight checks each year ....one instructor when I learned was ex Luftwaffe :eek: ....in his 80s and still instructing. Even beyond flying solo, pilots can fly with an instructor aboard.
It is far and away the least expensive way to get a pilots licence as well as the transition to power is straight forward cept you get do-overs if you stuff the landing :rolleyes:
It is very worth spending $150 for a ride.
3 weeks in the spring/summer/fall and about $2500 you can get your solo licence. Was a big bucket list check mark for me.
Yeah our airline guys get confused sometimes about having to use rudder or not being able to push a button to get on a heading 🤣
 
My day job is team leader with a certain federal agency whose employees have just voted to strike. The job is meh; the pay is meh; benefits are on-par with similar office jobs, and the pension is supposed to be good, but I'm still a ways off and who know what happens by then.

My hobby job for the last 20+ years has been teaching kids (teenagers) how to fly gliders. Pay is pretty much a non-factor, but it allows me to stay connected to aviation, mingle with and live vicariously through "real" pilots, and sometimes wear a uniform.
Can you stay on strike for a while please? I really can’t be bothered filing a return right now.
 
Can you stay on strike for a while please? I really can’t be bothered filing a return right now.
I say strike!

If it's a good long one, it might help the budget balance itself.
 
@crankcall file online with direct deposit...I filed ours back in late February and within a week, both hubby and I had our refunds in our bank accounts...

now my sister has to pay, so she wants me to wait a bit before filing hers LOL
 
@crankcall file online with direct deposit...I filed ours back in late February and within a week, both hubby and I had our refunds in our bank accounts...

now my sister has to pay, so she wants me to wait a bit before filing hers LOL
Iirc (and check to make sure) but I am pretty sure you can file now and you have until may 1 to pay.
 
Many competitive sail plane pilots are jerks and prima donnas with no time for noobs, especially at SOSA which does not particularly cater to new pilots. It can be very intimidating for new comers and there is always some level of internecine warfare going on. ( all pilots have a degree of arrogance IMNSHO - it's a complex headspace between safety and ability to react to dangerous situations with confidence, creativity and firm decision making ).

A great part of it is the confidence and to a degree the spatial skills the noob brings to the table......there are noobs that will never get their solo licence and should not.
By the time I was asked to instruct after a couple years there were some wannabe pilots not yet solo who started when I did, partially their own fault, partially the environment.
A poorly prepared pilot in training can kill
...when I left there was still a lawsuit going on over the training of a newly solo pilot who pulled one of the top acrobatic ( power and sailplane ) pilots in Canada who was towing into a crash that nearly killed him.

York Soaring on the other hand caters to noobs, has lots of training planes, there were no factions and tensions. I would never recommend SOSA as a training ground...the area itself is dangerous while York is wide open spaces to accommodate the errors that always crop up as you learn.

You want to and have the money to compete?? SOSA has the fleet and environment.

Sailplane clubs do not have paid instructors, it's all volunteer and to a large degree the student has to manage and choose their instructors carefully.
The power plane instruction world is far different.
 
There's nothing wrong with SOSA from a safety or operations standpoint, they hold national championships there!!!
...it's just not suited to most noobs the way a club designed for training like York is.
No mention of competition on York's website.
I flew friends up and lots of intro flights at SOSA. Very fond memories,

Y'know I spent years at SOSA and went from first flight with Barbara Turnbulls dad for a wonderful intro flight of an hour to solo in 5 weeks.....it can be done in two weeks. I'd flown side seat for a few years in a friends small plane around Ontario and to Chicago for a trade show. I loved flying the Blanik on that first flight.
PSU Blanik.JPG

Joined and spent five enjoyable years.

On a demo flight you will fly the sailplane if you like.
The president was at the time was one of my customers and I cycled through all the various roles needed in the club as a member pilot but chose not to move on to instructing despite being asked.
I have my xcountry badge, my gold climb ( to 10,000' - actually went to 14,000') and could have gone higher but no oxygen and I've flown in France,
We put on shows at Pearson to recruit new members.

I then continued at York soaring as they had a underused Grob single which I loved and could rent anytime a nice day appeared, unlike SOSA which had high demand for the better planes.
Grob G102 Astir - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

I've flown in France, and at Estrella which cost in a week what SOSA cost in a year.

Neither bad facts nor bad info but I really have a hard time with a bad attitude questioning what I lived. :unsure:

Wish I had one of these.
 
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I say strike!

If it's a good long one, it might help the budget balance itself.
Well GL with the balanced budget when tax revenue dries up because everyone think it's a tax holiday.
 

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