Parachute dropping/glider towing

[IFMU]

Originally Posted by Spruit

please excuse my ignorance here but what does one of these entail?

It's just flying out to another airport to bring somebody home. Thinking back on it, I've actually done 4. Two at real airports, two at farm/ultralight strips. Twice we've had somebody run the wing for us, and twice we didn't. Not having a wing runner is a skill that the average 14 year old in my club is good at.

Originally Posted by Sedbergh

Piper Porno is definitely the best option

There's a piper model I'm not familiar with. Sounds distracting! I've done 3 retrieves with a pawnee, one with a cub. One of the retrieves I wish I had the cub rather than the pawnee. It was a short, narrow, very sloped farm strip. It sloped up to the north. At the north end, there were big trees. Wind was from the south. Between the trees and the slope, the only practical way to land was North. It took me two tries to get the pawnee in. Getting out was a breeze, between the downhill run and the headwind on takeoff. The cub would have been much easier to land.

-- IFMU

[MIKECR]

Did 23 aerotows today, mostly to 4000'(a couple higher!), feeling rather tired now, got to do it all again tmrw though!

[MartinCh]

I'm so envious.

I gave up on paragliding when I moved to the UK.
I eyed microlight club east of Edinburgh two years ago.
Gliding (soaring) is the best recreational flying ever. No engine howling, just pure flying. I'd like to do some gliding and FW PPL later on.

Yeah, I'm going to do rotary PPL as it's part of my career plan over coming years. But glider towing and gliding is great. Anyone seen Ushuaia with Nicolas Hulot gliding about? Yes, you guys know what it's like.
Awesome.

I find it very interesting way to do some gliding for fun and up the hours helping out in the club as FW PPL with all the training etc.

As I can see, tailwheel planes such as Cub or Pawnee are useful to be familiar with. Shouldn't be a problem later :-D

as for 'reading' the skies, I've got some touch already from some PG flying. Though, very frustrating not being able to reach thermals far from take off hill, when the wind speed or direction aren't best. Or too strong wind for basic paraglider, taking off right into thermal licking the hill or just sinking to LZ when soaring in front of hill isn't an option or easy.

What better way to kill the non-flying blues (was hard to push out paragliding from my head) during week at school or work? All in the UK.
Popping in to local club on a weekend or so and up we fly :-D

Safe flying

[Piper.Classique]

Female equivalent of balls of steel?

Iron bladder?

Titanium titties?

Dunno. Once did seven hours straight in the Lasham 180 cub.
Only stops were for fuel for the cub, water and a wee for me.

[JBGA]

The bottom line is there are hundres of wannabe tug pilots queueing up at gliding clubs to fly the tug. Who wouldn't want to get dozens of hours and hundreds of rotations in for free, especially at a gliding club which isn't tied up with procedures and ATC etc. So most clubs already have experienced glider pilots and power pilots from within their ranks and from other gliding clubs in the country queueing up at the door. Even if you are one of the lucky ones and you get your name on the tug pilot roster you can usually only expect to get a few days a month. If you can't fly midweek that drops to half a day once a month.

So it's not necessarily that flying the tug is difficult, or that power pilots can't learn to be good tug pilots, or that gliding clubs have a clique but that if you have little or no gliding experience there is always going to be someone else who is better than you.