Simviation Forums

Got lucky with the weather yesterday, so club member Pavel and I were able to do our checkrides on the same day (his private pilot-glider, my commercial- glider).
The glider DPE we use is very laid-back but thorough... my oral test was pretty quick and easy, but productive learning-wise.

The flight test consisted of two flights: first one had him pull the release on me as we were climbing through 300 after launch, which I did not expect!

Hi,

glad to hear you passed, is 300 the normal height for the release, I'm certain that mine was much lower, so low that only a straight ahead landing was possible and that was just for check before going solo plus everything else you've mentioned.

At a later stage, poss what we called stage 4, we had to cover up airspeed and altimeter, Instructor took off, we had to call out speed at various points and what height we thought we were at, we had to approach and land on a runway that we could no land on at any other time.


I miss the gliding now, had slipped disk in 94' and had to give up the aerobatics at the time.

Good luck with your first passenger ( victim ).

I'll never forget my instructor saying to me (after neg g exercise) 'you didn't like that did you' No I replied, 'good' he said ' you can do it again'


That's was close to the point where instructors were just spare ballast

enjoy your future flying, I'm jealous!!

I have aflight coming up next March with a difference for me, I'm not landing in the plane at 15,000 ft I'm jumping out for charity.

regards

steve

Steve:
Our minimum for emergency-planning purposes is 200 AGL (to attempt to turn around); I thought for sure it was almost that low, but the tow pilot later confirmed it was 300. At our airport, it would be pretty dicey intentionally releasing below 200... even if we got down OK, we don't even have a trailer for the 2-33, so getting it back to the airport would be difficult (there's not a lot of airport property beyond the ends of the runway, so such a landout would take us off-property).

The no-instrument takeoff you describe is sometimes done with initial applicants here; I know of only one current member who did the PP-glider as his first pilot rating, and I think he was tested in that manner. But for add-on ratings, the whole thing is less intensive, usually.
I am looking forward to carrying some paying pax...but I've given several rides already, to friends and strangers, on my dime. It will be sweet, though, to fly for free... next summer, I might have to start hanging out by the fence, luring in customers, like the barnstormers used to do.

Congratulations and well done...