I always advise anyone who wants to learn to fly an airplane, to first learn to fly a glider competently. You learn the real essence of flight when you don't have an engine to provide power for you to sustain flight.
The quietness (no engine) and the smoothness of gliding through the air (no engine) allow you to really feel the glider as part of you. Every gentle control input you make, you can feel it in the seat, in the shoulder harness, on your heels, in your gut; and you can see the slightest yaw change in that little tuft of wool in front of your windshield.
Your judgment becomes sharpened each time you descend to land; especially in the old fabric Schweitzer that I flew in with a glide ratio of 13:1. If you're coming in too high or too fast, then you need to bleed some of that speed (energy) off before you over-shoot your landing strip. You do that by bringing up the spoilers from the wing to "spoil" the airflow on top of the wing, which decreases lift, or you can slip the plane in. Slipping is to yaw the glider’s nose away from the direction of flight to increase drag with the side of the fuselage and to mess up the air over the wings. If you're not careful, you can stall the trailing wing in the wake of the fuselage.
My flight instructor would put two road cones out for me to land and stop between them. The distance between the cones would decrease each time I land. Most glider training uses grass or dirt strips, so there's more friction to slow down, although there are brakes on the one wheel in this trainer glider. After a while, you can land and stop within 50 meters.
I got my glider training and license after I got my power license, and I noticed a big difference in my landings in a power plane after glider training. They were always very smooth, quiet, and no bouncing.
The German Luftwaffe pilots were some of the best pilots in WWII. One reason was because they started out in gliders (Treaty of Versailles); at least those who trained before 1940.
In a powered airplane, you cannot circle up in a thermal with a hawk on the opposite side of the thermal with you without a little power. The quiet peaceful serenity in a sailplane is perhaps analogous to a sailboat. You need to learn about mother nature's forces, your sail craft, and your own capabilities.
When soaring, you look for thermals, circle up to gain altitude, and then look for another. The longest glider flight was 1,015 miles.
Warning: do not fly in a high-performance sailplane on a hot sunny day with lots of thermals around without a large empty bottle. Some of my friends could not come down for many hours from too many thermals around.
May the Thermals be with you.....
