I belonged to the above ISS club back in the 80's , they were talking about outlawing zoom launches , in fact one member who designed the 2 meter gnome ,( once you fixed the design flaws was a good flyer) had a one design contest and we used highstarts cause i could out launch him ...

Originally Posted by lincoln

I'm a glider pilot, mostly, not really a sailplane pilot. Not because my gliders don't go up in thermals sometimes, but because my ego isn't powerful enough to be a "sailplane" pilot. And then there's the ink shortage....

I am not even a glider pilot, I am a lowly glider guider

Originally Posted by lincoln

I even could be called a part time slimer. .

Heck, go full time, it pays better...

It's any hobby. I was at a large r/c hobby shop a decade or so ago and was a few people back in line when I heard the guy behind the counter say to another cashier "Hobby Gnomes" in reference to a couple of guys arguing over decals.

IPSC lawyers, Paintballers ('specially the tourney scene in the early 90's where every game ended in a fist fight), mountain bikers...we're all pretty much like that. We're about 1.5 steps above the guys who collect Ninja swords or Franklin Mint stuff.

WOW..........what a thread............ I don't understand the appeal of the club. I just go to the sports field when noone is around, fly, have fun, go home. How simple can it be?

Bob in Seattle

I'm a loner...definitely don't need/want to be around people.

Some folks die inside if they aren't around others.

Hi Cityevader,

Well, at least there are two of us lone fliers out there.

Bob in Seattle

I sympathize with Leadchucker.

We all do get along! The ABQ soaring club is pretty good (but almost everyone but me is retired )

E-Gliders, who cares? Launch to a few hundred feet and motor is out of the equation. Just shut it off - then we have a pure glider. Simple, right? I cut my teeth on a Radian and don't regret things a bit. A friend and I both launch to same altitude, cut the launch mechanism, and glide to see who flies longer.

Soaring is awesome. You can never achieve perfection. Always a student of the skies. My basic thermal suggestions are:

1. The airplane knows how to fly. Let it do that.
2. Don't f**k with the plane while it is doing what it does. All you have to do is point the thing in the best direction. Don't touch it until it tells you it wants to be touched (almost like a woman )
3. All you have to do is put the plane in lift. Keep it there. There is no magic (although I certainly feel it is magical almost every day I get to fly).
4. Wing goes up, turn into it.
5. Hesitation will kill you. If you think there is lift, turn into that thing. If it don't pan out, no biggie, if it does, have fun at 1000'
6. There is so much literature out there - read that s**t.

I would put this at "7" but I'm not sure it is warranted. The best pilots I have seen tend to be those with full-scale experience. I think most of the advantage here is the knowledge that maintaining proper airspeed is key, regardless of attitude or apparent rise/fall rates. Just keep that speed up and DO NOT STALL. It can be hard, our meager minds [mine at least] tend to pull up when we sense getting too low, the opposite reaction is seen in seasoned pilots. Keep speed where it needs to be so "the airplane can do what it does." I struggle at times, especially low to the ground.

I fly by myself sometimes, maybe more often than not. However, I like flying with the clubs I belong to (1 RC, 1 FF). Nice groups of people. I'd go out there once in a while even if I didn't have anything to fly. Not nearly as often, of course.

That instinct to pull up can be a powerful one. I don't get along very well with glo engines. Many years ago we were having a club pylon race. My engine was leaning out, so I rolled inverted. That worked, but then I got nervous, the plane started to go down, and I pulled up. OOOPS!!

A guy in our club was getting blown downwind, even though he had a reasonably fast glider. I tried to get him to put the nose down for about a minute, but when he got a bit low, I took the transmitter and brought it back easily with just a tad of down elevator.

BTW, if you cut your teeth on a Radian, you need a dentist! ;-)

Nothin' wrong cutting the teeth on a Radian. Made me a soaring addict. Can't go back now....All sailplanes in the hangar

-Matt

I also am mostly a loner - built and crashed my Spirit numerous times. Always just going it alone or reading. Occasional input from the LHS guys. Wish I would have sought out some help early on. Would have saved me a lot of frustration. But I have really loved the hobby.

Then this past year I met Matt and now I much prefer having a flying buddy. I re-kit less, have become a better pilot and builder, and have a good friend. At one point, I almost made the decision not to fly alone anymore because I made fewer dumb mistakes when we were both at the field.

Perhaps we tend to fly like a couple of loners, (just using a big open space when no one else is there) but there are a few other guys who come out at times and join us. And one or two we are trying to get interested. And e-power is no problem with us, even if all we have flyable are "pure" gliders.

Just throwing in my thoughts. I'm sure it is much more challenging in more densely populated areas.

Lots of ways to learn, and RCGroups is one of them.

So true...whilst I am a loner, I still prefer flying with my one single friend (Diceman89 here) because we can bounce ideas off each other, do some close-in combat, try our own thing in entirely different quadrants in open sky...
but that said, i'm NOT a "club guy".

But still, I can't imagine slamming the "clubbers" because they don't fly alone, or the lone guy at the vacant lot with some silly electric that's so badly designed it couldn't fly with an expert pilot, or whoever for whatever...we're here to fly.

That said...may I digress?

At the (only once ever in the last 20 years) "club flying Saturday" I showed up for the first time ever, to see what it's all about. I tried to seek out the "leader" based on the internet info of the day in question. Anyways, the first person that talked to me gave me the preaching against my FM system, saying there was a known "jammer guy with a dial-a-crash to shoot down our planes" and that 2.4Ghz was the ONLY way to go.
"It's nice to meet you for the first time, too, sir!" was my reply, as I continued to successfully fly. I tried to restrain my inner laughter at the next guy, with 2.4Ghz, shouting "I've lost 'er!" and the subsequent carnage. All the "clubbies" immediately congregated to give "there's a software fix for that" or "My JR gave me so many issues on 2.4 but there's a fix for it" and what-not.
I guarantee if I'd crashed my FM plane, they's have said "We told you so!"

And thus, I have proven there is a terrible generalization OF ALL PEOPLE based on ONES OWN SMALL EXPERIENCE of the world around us.

Com'on GUY"S quit ya' snivelin...

Taylor Swift - Mean (4 min 4 sec)

I flew occasionally with the Albuquerque group while I lived in Clovis, NM. Great bunch of people... I do not understand the anti-club mentality that some have... but then, to each his own...

Originally Posted by schrederman

I flew occasionally with the Albuquerque group while I lived in Clovis, NM. Great bunch of people... I do not understand the anti-club mentality that some have... but then, to each his own...

It really depends on the club. Some day I may take the liberty to share with you the details of my very first experience with one on my local clubs but for now I will say only this. Some clubs are more welcoming than others and as a string launching sailplane pilot I was definitely the red headed step child in the group. Their dislike of my sailplane was made abundantly clear to me after I paid my yearly club dues even though I explained to them that I wanted to fly hi-start launched gliders prior to my joining. Yes it was a power club, but there were no sailplane clubs within 90 miles. I stopped flying my sailplane there after only a couple of months when I overheard a few club members talking behind my back about how "this isn't a glider club, he shouldn't be flying here".

I became a lone flyer for over a year after that experience. I found other places to fly my sailplanes that were not tied to either of the existing clubs. Shortly after that I started Rochester Soaring as a place for other "unwanted sailplane flyers" to fly. All in all I guess it worked out for the best but only because I was willing to put in years of effort to get the word out, to organize events and to locate places to fly. Had I not been willing to do all this I would still be flying solo.

Wayne