Self-launch and motorglider endorsements

The structure nobody explains

Pilots coming from the powered world expect a rating. Aircraft that behave differently get different ratings; a motorglider clearly behaves differently from an unpowered sailplane; therefore there must be a motorglider rating. There is not.

What the FAA did instead is treat the whole family as one category — glider — and then regulate the thing that actually varies, which is how the aircraft gets into the air. That is a defensible design once you see it, because launch is where the differences are concentrated and where the accidents happen.

The mechanism is 14 CFR 61.31(j), and it establishes three parallel requirements. No person may act as pilot in command of a glider using:

• ground-tow procedures — winch or auto tow;
• aerotow procedures;
• self-launch procedures;

unless that person has satisfactorily accomplished ground and flight training in that method and received a logbook endorsement from an authorized instructor certifying proficiency in it.

What that means in practice

Three separate endorsements, and holding one says nothing about the others. A pilot trained entirely on aerotow at a US club has, in regulatory terms, no ground-tow privileges at all — which is why turning up at a winch site involves training rather than a briefing, and why British pilots arriving in America and American pilots arriving in Britain both discover the same thing from opposite directions.

Self-launch is the third of these and is treated no differently in structure. If your logbook does not contain a self-launch endorsement, you may not act as pilot in command of a glider using self-launch procedures, regardless of how many hours you hold, how many gliders you have flown, or whether you also hold an airplane certificate with several thousand hours behind it.

Two things follow that people get wrong in opposite directions:

It is not aircraft-specific in the regulation. 61.31(j) endorses you for the procedure, not for a make and model. There is no regulatory requirement to be re-endorsed for a different self-launcher.

Which is not the same as saying you are ready to fly one. A high-performance self-launcher with a pylon-mounted retractable engine and a touring motor glider with a nose-mounted engine and a feathering propeller are enormously different aeroplanes to operate, and the difference is concentrated in exactly the phase of flight the endorsement is about. Your insurer will very likely have a view even where the FAA does not, and the insurer's view is the one that decides whether you fly.

The 1997 grandfather clause, read carefully

61.31(j) contains an exception: the holder of a glider rating issued before 4 August 1997 is considered to be in compliance with the training and endorsement requirements.

The scope of that is narrower than it is usually quoted. It covers the specific operating privileges the holder was already qualified for. It is not a blanket exemption that lets a pilot who trained on aerotow in 1994 go and self-launch without training. It preserves what you had; it does not grant what you did not.

If you hold a pre-1997 glider rating and you are unsure what that covers in your case, the person to ask is a CFI-G, and the answer will depend on what you actually did before that date rather than on what the certificate says.

The advisory circular everybody cites no longer exists

This matters less than it sounds for the legal requirement — the requirement lives in 61.31(j), which is unchanged — and more than it sounds for training content, because the AC was where a syllabus came from for instructors who did not have one.

In its absence, the sensible sources are the aircraft's own flight manual and manufacturer training material, which are aircraft-specific and therefore better than a generic circular ever was; the Soaring Safety Foundation, which publishes material on motorglider certification and training; and the Auxiliary-powered Sailplane Association, which exists specifically for this corner of the sport.

If someone hands you a training syllabus that cites AC 61-94 as its authority, that is not a reason to reject it — the content may be perfectly good — but it does tell you when it was last reviewed.

Logging, and the trap in a TMG

Time in a motorglider is glider time. All of it, whether the engine was running or not, because the aircraft is a glider. This is straightforward and it is where the straightforwardness ends.

The touring motor glider is the awkward case, because it looks like a light aircraft, operates like one for much of a typical flight, and is not one. The consequence that catches people: a TMG in a tailwheel configuration cannot be used to obtain a tailwheel endorsement applicable to an airplane rating, nor is the time airplane time, unless its airworthiness certificate says it is certificated as an airplane. Pilots have flown a great many hours expecting them to count toward something and found that they counted toward something else.

Check the airworthiness certificate of the specific aircraft before you build a plan on what its hours will do for you. Not the type, not the brochure — the certificate in that airframe.

Currency, and a gap worth naming

61.57 requires three takeoffs and three landings within the preceding 90 days to carry passengers, performed in an aircraft of the same category, class and type.

Glider is a category. Within it there are no classes and, for these aircraft, no type ratings. So the arithmetic works out as follows: three aerotows in a two-seater satisfy the letter of the currency rule for carrying a passenger in a self-launcher you have not flown in a year.

We are not suggesting anyone does that deliberately. We are pointing out that the regulation permits it, that nothing will flag it, and that if your personal standard is "I am legal" then this is a case where legal and prepared have come apart quite far. Powered launch decision-making is perishable in a way that circuit currency does not maintain, and the aircraft most likely to be affected is the one flown eight times a year by an owner who is very experienced in gliders generally.

Why the training exists

Without straying into instruction, it is worth being clear about what the endorsement is for, because "I can fly gliders and I can fly aeroplanes, so I can fly a powered glider" is a genuinely reasonable-sounding argument that keeps being wrong.

A self-launching glider has a glider's wing, a glider's approach speeds and a glider's inability to go around, carrying a powerplant whose failure during the launch leaves you low, slow, in a machine whose drag configuration has just changed, and possibly with an engine partly extended.

The decisions available in that situation are few, they are time-critical, and they are specific to the type. That is what the ground and flight training exists to rehearse, and it is not something either of your existing skill sets rehearses on its own.

Getting the endorsement

The practical difficulty is not the syllabus. It is finding a CFI-G with self-launch experience and access to a suitable aircraft, because both are thin on the ground and the intersection is thinner. Some routes that work:

• The dealer or importer for the type — transition training is frequently part of the sale, and it is the best version of it because it is type-specific.
• The SSA and the Auxiliary-powered Sailplane Association, both of which can point you at instructors.
• Clubs that operate a self-launcher or a TMG, which are more numerous than they used to be and are usually happy to be asked.

Budget more time than you expect, and do not schedule it for the week after the aircraft arrives. The most common version of this story is an owner with a new motorglider in the trailer waiting several months for the training that lets them fly it, having assumed the certificate they already held was sufficient.