I'd deffinetly recomend Gliding , engines, who neds em?
I flew the Grob Viking with 662 VGS at RN Condor and loved it (first launch scared the S*** out of me though).

Piper - PA-38 - Tomahawk.

Got my licence on it but still prefer anything else 

Hagar's piccy above is of a Grob Twin Astir I believe.

My first Instructional flight was in one of these.
My thoughts......... If the Instructor has a heart attack or does something really stupid..... I can handle it! Might not be pretty, but I'll walk away!

I had been flying sims for thousands of hours before the first flight.

I shared time in my early training between the Grob (a high performance sailplane) and a Blanik L-13 (lower performance).

I found that by flying both aircraft in my early training (in all weather conditions), gave me a lot of confidence and verified what I had learned on simulators.

This had the side effect of my instructors believing I was over-confident when I actually had the ability.

I went solo after 10 hours of instruction and on reflection, this was only just enough time to be safe.

On my third solo, I was thermalling at cloudbase and realised I didn't know how to read the metric altimeter in the Blanik. I had always flown "seat of the pants" using angles, sound and judgement with occasional reference to the airspeed indicator for verification of launch and landing speeds.

I think soaring in sailplanes is one of the purest forms of flight because you fly an extremely efficient and controllable machine using weather as an energy source. I love it.

Quote:

This shows the difference between now & 40 years ago. In June 1959 when I took my first gliding course on the T.31 it was somewhat different.
Minimum requirement before being allowed solo = 20 launches.
Qualify for A & B civil gliding licence = 3 solo flights.
Total = 23 launches.

I qualified in the minimum time on the second day of the 1 week course. I still have the licence although it is no longer valid. Unfortunately I lost my logbooks some time ago. Remember the average time for each flight was 2 1/2 minutes. 2 1/2 x 23 = 57 1/2 minutes.  

PS. Total cost of the course, including rail warrant & meals was 8 shillings (or 40 pence).

Hagar, I soloed in the L-13 Blanik, flight no. 41, so I guess my flights were about 15 minutes average. This included a few flights of over an hour. And we get about 1800' AGL on the winch launch which gives us a bit of time to find a thermal.

My first lesson was in a Piper Comanche out of Flying Cloud field (KFCM) in Minnesota.  Part of an MAC community of airports including (KMSP), Minneapolis/St. Paul International.  I loved it even though it was a little complex for a training flight, retrac gear and all.  From there I flew a Piper Tomahawk twice, then on to 6 or so flights in a Piper Warrior II.  Other traing I have is one half hour in a tailwheel, Boeing Stearman, 2 summers ago.  Lastly, a few hours in a Beechcraft/Raytheon King Air B200 out of Anoka (KANE).

Mike

The only aircraft I flew in just for fun and could not count any time in is a Cessna Caravan on floats.

Piper Pa-28-150