Originally Posted by
Pace
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Surely it must be the more experienced glider pilots in the expensive high performance gliders who need to be in clouds or at higher levels and they should like the rest of us have to meet the cost of having a transponder.
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As I understand it (I'm sure someone will tell me if I'm wrong!), cloud flying in gliders has got
less common as performance has improved. When you are flying an old wood glider with a low best L/D value you need to wring every last bit of height out of a climb (so that you might get to the next one), even when it goes into a cloud. With more modern glass ships (and I don't mean new exotic ones, Mary's Pegase has far better performance than a Skylark and the design is getting on for 30 years old) one fly a lot, lot futher from a given height hence on can make XC programs with climbs are taken to cloud base (or thereabouts) rather than up into the clouds.
It's also something that looks as if it may well change under EASA pilot licencing - there will have to be specific training to do it.