Winter Glider Pilot Ground School

Dear Soaring Leadership-

Please let me introduce myself. I am Phil Klauder, and I am the chief flight instructor with the Philadelphia Glider Council.

Here in the northeast, the grass has stopped growing on our runways, so field is wet and muddy. This time of year we can only fly on mornings when the ground is frozen solid, and only if it isn’t covered with snow. So each winter we teach a glider pilot ground school. We’ve been teaching our members and those from some local clubs for decades, but when Covid hit, we started teaching the ground school on Zoom. Once things settled down we went back to the clubhouse, but kept the Zoom option so others could join us from around the country. For the last two years, we have had about 30 students in the classroom, and 75 students on Zoom from all across the US.

We have found that the more the merrier. It is very rewarding to have participants sharing their experiences from different areas and different kinds of operations.

I have attached our two page flyer describing our ground school. I’m writing to you today in hopes that you will pass this flyer onto the pilots who fly with your organization. The SSA gave me your email address because a few of the SSA directors have participated in our course and believe that it would be valuable to the rest of the country.

Please reach out to me if you have any questions.

Thank you very much.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gZzqfotkG5tWJ2VLKqHfpa-ARG5Tmvrx/view?usp=drive_link