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Preparing for your first XC

Going cross country for the first time can be very intimidating, and of course, many pilots never bother going XC, preferring to stay on the ridge and develop their skills there - which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, of course, and there is no obligation to go XC.

However, going XC can be very rewarding, and challenging, and does mean you need to perfect your skills like thermalling, landing out, etc. However, before you go XC, there are certain other things you need to do:

• Buy some airmaps and learn how to read them. There is a lot of restricted airspace around our sites, and it is essential that pilots intending to go XC do not infringe that airspace. Landing in the middle of an RAF airfield is not a good idea!.
• It is definitely worth buying a GPS with MapSource, i.e. a GPS on which you can load the airspace, so that you know exactly when you are approaching somewhere you should not be! This does not replace buying and understanding airmaps, but it does make navigation when you are flying a lot easier.
• Get your Pilot P qualification. This involves study and an exam, covering airlaw, meteorology and principles of flight. Study guides are available from the Isle of Wight web site. It’s very important to get this because, without it, you have no third party insurance when you go XC. Hopefully you will never need this - but each year, there are claims on it, and imagine the cost if, for example, you take out a power line (as has happened). Once you are ready to take the exam, contact Dave Thomas (coaching@longmynd.org) and we will arrange a time and place for you to do it. You can also download a list of tasks for the pilot rating and the Pilot exam syllabus.

Other sources of information are

• pilotnotes.me.uk - courtesy of Graham Taylor - loads of information - really good.
• wessexhgpg.org.uk/ - a good test with an on-line multiple choice exam, courtesy of the Wesex club
• eqnx.co.uk/ - some exam information
• flyingfever.net - what to learn - courtesy of Flying Fever
• southdownshanggliding.co.uk - theory of flight, courtesy of suth downs hang gliding school

Helping you go XC

From time to time, club members will run XC courses and guiding on our sites. There are also various other sources of information:

• Some podcasts on going XC can be found on Judith's podcast pages
• Her pages also include some XC tips
• You can also download, in Word format, a series of exercises designed to help you prepare for going cross country. Thanks to Roy Dade for these.
• We also have some short tasks which you can do to help your develop your general flying and XC skills. The idea behind these tasks is to encourage low airtime pilots to take the next step and fly XC, learning how to fly away from the ridge whilst using a GPS receiver and flying to a waypoint or set of waypoints as you would do in a competition. See the tasks page.