>>1162199I agree that glider experience is immensely valuable, though not necessarily in all the areas you listed. I never did get my rating, but I did solo a glider at 15 long before I got my PPL. Personally, the areas that I found the experience to be most valuable were:
>Stick AND rudderGliders have boatloads of adverse yaw, so you're really forced to use your feet in a way that most modern airplanes don't always demand.
>Mountain flyingWhen the combination of density altitude, vertical drafts and terrain threaten to overwhelm your little airplane's climb performance and smash you into the rocks, it's invaluable to have basic soaring techniques to fall back on. Things like remembering to favor the lee side of a valley, to quickly dive away from strong sink instead of trying to outclimb it, and to turn downhill if you find yourself boxed in.
>Emergency OpsWell, engine failures in particular. Pretty obvious for the most part - if know you can make the runway, commit to it. Don't try to finesse it and hit the numbers. Landing long and rolling off the end is better than coming up short. After takeoff, always make a note of when you're high enough to complete a turn back to the runway if the rope breaks (err... engine quits).
As for viewing everything in terms of energy, I honestly can't say flying gliders did much for me on that front. Maybe it should've. But it didn't. Maybe it's because my instructor was too conservative. Maybe it's because I never tried a proper high-performance glass ship. Or maybe it's because I never got to fly a glider with a total-energy vario. But whatever the case, it only *really* clicked with me much later through READING (not flying) - and not about gliders, but about fighter jets and Boyd's E-M theory. Only after that did I circle back to that clever bastard MacCready and make the connection with the zero-thrust case of soaring, and the equivalence of the ol' Iron Thermal to it's untamed convective counterpart.
