Skycop wrote:
Call one of them; if unsure, call the unit you are closest to ... Surely all glider pilots are taught this from an early age? It's pretty basic stuff.
This demonstrates the huge gulf of understanding between powered and glider pilots. From a gliding perspective this is not basic stuff, and ATC radio communication is not taught at all.
Why?
First, ATC is completely irrelevant for the majority of glider flights. We cannot use Class A airspace because we cannot comply with ATC instructions (if only I could "Climb to .." whenever I felt like it!). Class D is in theory usable, but in practice it's hard to get access in a glider, so I'm told. What this means is that almost all flights are planned to avoid controlled airspace.
Second, a FIS/RIS/RAS is also pretty useless to me. I almost never fly in straight lines for more than a few seconds, so being informed of traffic 5 miles away heading in my direction is unlikely to be of interest - by the time it arrives I'll be somewhere else, and I don't know where that will be. This means I need to rely on seeing traffic to avoid it - radio won't help. The mental workload in flying a glider is too high to try to build a mental picture of what is happening outside my field of view, as I'm constantly (every few seconds) revising my course and speed to find the best air to fly in.
Third, I don't have an RT licence - it doesn't come automatically with the glider "licence", unlike powered PPLs/NPPLs - and I can't justify the time to obtain one (effectively following what I believe is an AFIS (correct acronym?) syllabus which is 90% irrelevant to any use I might make). Thus I'm confined to the gliding frequencies and 121.5.
The main reason I frequent this site is to find more about what other users of the same airspace do. One benefit of this thread is that some airspace users now have a little better idea about what gliders do.
If you think this is a frightening gap in the training of glider pilots, just consider for a second the scary gap in IMC training for power that this thread has revealed.
There are a number of pilots who have posted here who previously flew IMC in class G under three erroneous beliefs:
a. Gliders aren't allowed at all;
b. Other aircraft aren't allowed if not transponding;
c. All IMC flight in class G are in receipt of some kind of radar service.
None of these are true. How good was
their training?