

The learning curve
Surely nothing can be as frustrating as the learning curve? Just when you think you’ve got the hang of it, something happens to show you that you don’t really know what you’re doing (yet). It’s like a real-time, real-life game of snakes and ladders. You take what you think is the biggest ladder, and then you just slide down the biggest snake almost back to the start.
In flying that invariably means you are on the ground looking up, probably at pilots flying over your head and almost certainly at cloud streets stretching to the horizon. Your watch says 2.30pm and it will be at least three hours before you get back to where you started. You have a long time to think about your mistakes, and what you should have, would have, could have done better.
It can take a long while before you stop sliding down the snakes each time you take off or catch a thermal. The progression to being able to thermal effectively and then to link those thermals together into cross-country flight can be difficult and long. Landing satisfied at the end of the day, goal reached, triangle closed, personal best distance covered is so elating because it’s hard.
In this issue we have taken the idea of “progression” and explored it. It will mean different things to different pilots, depending on where you are at. But like clouds, we’ve tried to look at it from both sides: from the intermediate pilot wanting to develop new skills; and the experienced pilot who wants to perfect them.
Because the truth is of course that we are all, always on that learning curve. Sure, the learning slows down and we can plateau, but the road to mastery is long.
The start of the year, ahead of a new season for many, is a good time to reflect on what we want from our sport in the year to come. What we want to achieve will dictate how much time and effort we will need to put in. Reassuringly, the two things are related: work hard and you will succeed.
Success of course comes in all forms, but if you are in the air, and if you can learn something from that day’s flight, regardless of outcome, then that in itself is success. That’s learning, that’s the learning curve. Enjoy the ride!
Ed Ewing, editor
In the Core: People, news and insight
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