Safer Soaring ...Made Easy!

Personal preparation, assembly and preflight preparation, launch and climbout, free flight, and approaches and landings are all covered. Covers the common causes of the large majority of serious accidents and shows you how to help yourself, and help your soaring friends, to avoid them.

This is the most comprehensive treatment of gliding safety and of aeronautical decision-making available.

Recommendation by Burt Compton - Master NAFI / SSA Instructor & FAA Designated Pilot Examiner, Marfa Gliders, west Texas
Read Wander's "Safer Soaring" on patterns. That book is a goldmine of brilliant observations. Read his "Sinking Airmass" and "Spin Training" chapters - essential for the 21st Century CFIG.

Author's Notes
Safer Soaring ... Made Easy! Is my twelfth book about soaring. It has been very exciting and satisfying to write this book and to prepare it for publication. It's an appropriate choice to make an even dozen.

Most soaring pilots were initially attracted to soaring because it's beautiful. And it is! But we all know that the beauty of soaring is marred, from time to time, by the ugliness of a serious accident. Many of these accidents - almost all of them, in fact - are preventable. This book aims to help prevent those accidents from occurring in the future.

Some books are meant to be read from page one straight through to the last page of the book. You can use this book that way, if you like. I have organized the book so that the sequence of chapters follows the phases of a flight: Pilot preparation and assembly come first, then launch considerations, then free-flight considerations, then landing considerations. But, if you prefer, you can read the chapters in any order that you like. Re-reading chapters in months and years to come will help you keep sharp, and reinforce good safety habits.

For a number of years I have had the opportunity to travel all over the USA and present safety seminars to soaring pilots and their organizations. These travels have taken me all over the USA, ranging from Anchorage to San Diego to Boston to Atlanta and dozens of other cities in between. During these travels I have met hundreds of soaring instructors and literally thousands of soaring pilots. It has been a tremendous learning opportunity to meet, and to listen to, so many talented soaring people. Many of the chapters in this book are based on presentations that I have developed for these road shows. In each city, after each presentation, talented and thoughtful soaring people would come to talk to me and offer their thoughts on the topics at hand and suggest additional topics or considerations to include in future offerings. I am grateful to them all.

Finally, when my son Max asked what this book would be about, and I told him it was about identifying the main causes of serious accidents and recommending strategies to prevent them, he said that this is the book I should have written first. That's good enough for me!

Note To Glider Flight Instructors
Safety of flight is every CFIG's main concern. You can use Safer Soaring... Made Easy! to enhance safety of flight for every soaring pilot with whom you come in contact.
Chapters 1 through 9 can be assigned, one at a time or in groups, as study units for any pilot at any level of training or licensure, from pre-solo student pilot to commercial pilot or fellow CFIG seeking recurrent training.
Chapters 1 and 8 satisfy the Aeronautical Decision-Making and Judgment Training requirements of FAR Part 61.105 (Private Pilot applicants) and FAR Part 61.125 (Commercial Pilot applicants).
Chapter 10 (Recurrent Training) can be used as a guide for recurrent training for any soaring pilot at any level of expertise.
- Bob Wander