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Old 16th Sep 2005, 16:11
  #33 (permalink)  
Nimbus265
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Top part of Hampshire
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Are you suggesting that power pilots don't? An electric stall warner goes off 5-10 knots BEFORE the stall break, therefore one learns to recongise buffet, sloppy controls etc .... if you didn't, I'd ask for a partial refund from your instructor And by the way, most Cessna singles don't have an electric stall warner anyway.
I'm not suggesting that at all, and perhaps I should have phrased that slightly differently. I'd reitterate that I fly both power and gliders and can see both sides of the argument.

What I was driving at is that IMHO glider pilots are more sensitive to changes in small attitudes through feel than power pilots, and this may be because on average glider pilots are exposed to greater ranges of the aircrafts flight envelope - and this may in some part answer Windy1's last question.

A glider is just a different type of flying machine, but it needs a different set of skills to fly it. The generalised style of flying is also very different. When I fly GA I generally taxi, take off, transit to somewhere on a pre-determined course at a fixed speed and land again, with minimal risk of a PFL. Generally I don't deviate too much from planned course and if I can avoid it, don't go anywhere near the stall, VNE or make 60 degree banked turns - I don't lke pulling much G either. (Perhaps I'm a boring power pilot!!)

Totally different when I'm flying gliders; I'm happy to spend an hour or 2 flying cross-country, or staying locally and never being outside of gliding range of the airfield. To spend 2 hours locally and never go anywhere far, means that you use the time flying gliders very differently to that of a powered aircraft; by their design and the way that they are flown, glider pilots are therefore exposed to a greater percentage of the flight envelope and become more atuned to the aircraft sensitivities:

Thermalling to stay up (at various bank angles and G loadings)/ various techniques to increase the rate of climb (near to or beyond the stall!) practicing inter-thermal flying, aerobatics etc are all 'the norm' and just to use the time up I'll throw in a normal stall, hammer head stall, mushing stall, high G stall - then find some lift, climb away, go and do some spinning then finish the flight with a sideslipped landing into the undershoot for good measure... and why not? - its just different.


It's also worth mentioning that the ETPS course have for the past few years included a week of gliding in the course, to enable the ETPS students to understand how different a glider is when compared to a normal aircraft, how much more of the flight envelope a glider uses, and how a different set of skills are needed to fly one.
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