I fielded a call from a prospective flyer last night. He wants to learn, but wants to learn on an E-Glider. I told him I have not tried training anyone on such a plane, but it seems to me there might be several advantages. Light wing loading, inherent stability would seem to be two of the major ones. Has anyone had any experience teaching a student on an e-glider as their first plane? Would you recommend it? If so, which plane would you recommend?

Brad

My first RC plane was a Gentle Lady. I highly reccomend gliders as first planes. The rudder-elevator polyhedral wing glider is basically a free flight airplane that the pilot occasionally interferes with. He will be off of the buddy cord in almost no time at all.
Soaring i.e. finding thermals, on the other hand, is not so easy.

I’d highly recommend instructing someone on an e-powered glider. It has some of the most forgiving flight characteristics you’ll find, and does everything like it’s in slow motion. It will be different though as you need to climb up to altitude, shut down the motor and spend the time gliding back down, then repeat. How many times you can climb on one charge depends on the airframe, motor and battery size – I’ve flown one e-powered glider that had 25 minutes of power flight and did thermal, but is was also a 110” span and weighted close to 5 lbs (quite heavy). If you haven’t flown gliders before, it will take a couple minutes to get used to flying that slow, and not having much of a sink rate. And it’ll seem to float for ever on landing – just watch diving it as you may pick up enough speed to land at the far end of the field, if not beyond.

Oh, one last word of caution – once you catch a thermal and get a 30+ minute flight you may become hooked.

Hogflyer