Hi There,
After the last couple of posts I could not resist putting my opinion across.
We seem to be getting into a GA vs Gliding debate and as a regular of both I feel able to comment.
We only seem to be considering high performance competition gliders at the moment. I would suggest that the reality is that most gliding is carried out in simple wood/fabric/steel gliders with almost no electrical system – often no radio. The concept of retrofitting the UK’s entire glider fleet with a ram air turbine, strobe system and transponder is simply totally impractical and would double the cost of many aircraft. Many people choose gliding because they can afford it – less than £25 per hour in many cases! FM immunity might seem painful but GA regularly flies in all manner of airspace where aircraft do rely more on technology for collision avoidance – gliders do not!
As an instructor I always tell my students that the best way to stay alive in any cockpit is to scan every visible part of the sky every few seconds. You might not spot the glider until quite late but I bet it’s not too late – and that’s what matters!
We are just coming up to 100 years of powered flight (and a few more for gliding) – for how many of these years has flying been relatively safe and for how many years have we had TCAS, GPS and all the other gizmo’s?
Keep Looking!