When I first started flying model airplanes, I started with an RTF electric called the Aerobird. I joined a club and they taught me how to fly my plane. However, most of the pilots in this club were glider pilots. Their gliders didn't have motors. This was 2003, and batteries were big heavy NiCd packs. Motors were brushed motors that were relatively heavy, and not very efficient. Certainly there were electric gliders, but not a lot of them. So, if you wanted to go thermal soaring, you flew a pure glider. But how do you get it up into the sky?

The hi-start was my first way of launching my first glider. I launched gliders with 2 meter to 3.4 meter wing spans using that hi-start. It was a lot of fun.

Today, most of my thermal soaring is done with electric-powered motors in the nose of the glider. Today's batteries are light, and today's brushless motors are powerful. However, I still have that hi-start and still use it to launch my pure gliders. In fact, I was using it a couple of weeks ago to launch a glider with a 10-foot wing span. It was just beautiful going up.

I presume most new glider pilots are using electric-launched gliders. They are easy AND they provide a degree of safety that we don't have with pure gliders. If you are thermal soaring or slope soaring with a pure glider and you lose the lift, you can end up in a tree or a field or even the water. In this respect, pure gliders are more challenging, but I love flying them, and a hi-start is a great way to launch them.

With an electric glider, if you got too far from the field and the lift dies, or the wind comes up against you, you can power up the motor and get back to the field. I spent many an hour trying to get a glider out of a tree because the lift disappeared, and I could not make it back safely to the landing area.