grumpy_o_g
Well-Known Member
The licence is a direct result of the EU. Until we signed up to the EASA requirement you could theoretically buy a glider and, as long as you had third party insurance, quite legally jump in it and fly it. In practice everyone realised you needed a few lessons, somewhere to fly from and someone to launch you so you went to an airfield with a BGA-affiliated club, were trained by a BGA-qualified instructor and took what were basically the same as scout badges as you progressed. I was even legally allowed to to teach people to fly glider professionally as a full-cat instructor yet had absolutely no involvement with the government whatsoever. Funnily enough the Germans French and Dutch all regarded our flying standards to be at least as high as theirs and often higher.
Quite how fixed-wing gliding is repetitive I'm not sure. Even if it's a windless day, it's flat as a witch's tit and you're simply bashing out circuits as talking ballast, each flight will be different. ANd I've tea, coffee, soda, sandwiches and all sorts when flying a fixed wing glider - I've even had a Blanik drop a Tunnock Bar into the cockpit of the T-21 I was flying once though I bet he couldn't do it again if he tried. Bizarre comment.
I'm not quite sure how you take off on your own from a flat field in a paraglider so I'm struggling to work out the difference there but I'll take you're word for it. Personally I've landed in an awful lot of fields (more than I should have) and always been retrieved quite successfully. I would liken a paraglider to a foiling moth that can't do more than 4 knots personally. It may be exhilarating for a while but performance machines they ain't.
