davidk@dartvax.UUCP (David C. Kovar) (12/03/83)
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I am very interested in learning to fly, eventually looking to get
both a power and glider rating. The question is: which to get first?
Major problem right now is money. I am a student, working 10 hours
a week when I have the time to do so, and not exactly rich. I would
assume that it would be cheaper by far to get my glider rating now
and wait until after the summer to get the power rating. Will this
be more expensive in the long run? Will it be harder in the long run?
I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that experience with a glider would
cut down on the amount of time needed for the power rating. And since
the glider hours are much cheaper, this would be a savings in cost.
Could someone please enlighten me on these points? Thanks in advance.
--
David C. Kovar
Usenet: {linus, decvax}!dartvax!davidk
ARPA: kovar@MIT-ML (Infrequent)
U.S. Snail HB 3140
Dartmouth College
Hanover NH
03755
"The difficult we did yesterday, the impossible we are doing now."Gobbel.pa@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (12/07/83)
From: Randy Gobbel <Gobbel.pa@PARC-MAXC.ARPA> Not yet having a power rating, and having recently obtained a glider rating, I admit to being biased, but I think that getting a glider rating first is a good idea because it presents you first with the real basics, helps you get really familiar and comfortable with slow flight, stalling, spinning, and one-chance landings, BEFORE you also have to deal with the added complication of a powerplant. Besides adding complication, the other thing an engine does is it lets you get away with glossing over all those important basics, a fact which later comes back to haunt some pilots. As far as cost goes, it's not clear to me that either way has significant advantages over the other. At least around here, I find that glider instructor time is significantly more expensive than power instructor time, probably because the time a glider instructor spends in the air during a typical week is considerably less than a power instructor would. Also, the low cost of aircraft rental is offset by the cost of tows, which can be much more than the cost of rental for short training flights. Neither of these points applies after solo, of course, when there are no instructor fees, and you'll presumably be going up when conditions are good enough to stay up for a significant length of time. Also, joining a club can in some cases make either kind of flying vastly cheaper - check on local organizations, as I have found enormous differences between individual clubs. I have been told by several people that can I expect to take about 3 months to get my power license, starting with a private glider rating. The flight experience requirement in the FAR's is 40 hours, with no restrictions on what sort of aircraft that time is in. Legally, your 40 hours in a free balloon will count towards your power license, though of course any sane instructor will make his or her own judgment about when you're actually ready. For transitioning in the other direction, most people seem to take about 10 flights before they're signed off for their glider flight test, but I've heard horror stories about power pilots who transitioned to flying gliders, and did just fine until one day they got into a situation where they needed an engine, but unfortunately didn't have one - a case in point is an accident that happened a few months ago at the field I fly out of. A recently-transitioned power pilot got low in a Schweizer 1-26. He passed over several perfectly landable fields to do a straight-in approach to a gigantic field that just happened to have a ditch and a fence right across its middle. The pilot was unhurt, but the glider was a write-off. A straight-in approach is fairly standard in power flying, but is a major no-no in a glider, because it doesn't give you the opportunity to look over the field before your one and only chance at landing. It's the sort of mistake that someone who was trained from the beginning in gliders would literally never think of making. -Randy