> My club has an ongoing problem which the RPL proposal also addresses: > We don't have enough instructors for the activity of the club. We > have enough pilots (mostly sub-200 hours) to run a day on all 104 > weekend days per year and lots of non-weekend days... yet we cancel at > least one weekend day every 3 or 4 weeks and almost never fly on > weekdays simply because all the instructors are too busy with their > personal lives to supervise an operation. This is plainly -stupid-: > The fact that the GFA regulatory scheme leads to occasions where > *nobody* can fly for no good reason whatsoever, even though the CFI > trusts the pilots involved to handle themselves adequately, is > absolutely contemptible.
Yes, my club has a similar situation. A couple of years ago we had six instructors, but only two students. Both students were on the large side, so that only the lightweight instructors could fly with them. As a result the large-size instructors didn't get enough instructing hours to keep their ratings, and lost them. Now we're down to three instructors, which is so few as to be scary. And with no students right now, I can't see that we'll be qualifying any new ones... that instructor currency requirement made a pretty big hole in our club's viability. Without independent-ops ratings, the active glider pilots would often be unable to fly because there wasn't an instructor on the field. Since a club has to have a CFI, and any instructor has to do "enough" instruction to keep the rating, a club cannot exist long-term without students. The GFA scheme doesn't seem to allow for any kind of club other than a training club. I'm with Mike on that one, I think it's a deficiency. Why would an instructor be the only type of person who can SUPERVISE operations? Sure, they're well qualified, but it's not an INSTRUCTIONAL task is it? Our ex-instructors are current pilots with long experience, and would be perfectly able to supervise a day's solo flying by junior pilots - but the GFA rules say they can't do it. For that matter, is this supervision really needed for "standard" qualified club pilots? I was a member of a very active power flying club, which used duty pilots to control the immediate operations - qualified pilots were still responsible for their own actions, weather judgement etc - the duty pilot need be no more than a PPL. Instructors were around during the day but they didn't have to approve every flight. Isn't that different to the gliding scene! IMO at some point glider pilots should be trusted to take their own decisions and consequences, rather than needing an instructor on the field. If the proposed rec licence makes recognition of that level of trust a *mainstream* milestone, rather than an obscure, optional and difficult add-on rating (ind-ops), I'm for it. -- * You are subscribed to the aus-soaring mailing list. * To Unsubscribe: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] * with "unsubscribe aus-soaring" in the body of the message * or with "help" in the body of the message for more information.
