BUGS — Our Glider

The Stemme S6

The heart of our club, our Stemme S6, is a self-launching motor glider, capable of taking off on its own. It is powered by the Rotax 914 engine, famous world-wide for its reliability and performance. There's just nothing else like the Stemme S6, nothing with its perfect blend of flight characteristics, independence, and operational profile. And we are thrilled to have one we can fly!

★ It's the platform our students train on to work toward their Private Pilot License – Glider (PPL-G).

What makes it special?

Unlike conventional gliders that demand a small army to get airborne-- two planes, two pilots, a wing runner, and a golf cart to tow the plane out to the launch site-- a Stemme needs a student, an instructor, and a runway.

That independence is evident up and down the training calendar. When the lift works, we shut the engine down and soar; when the weather makes tow pilots and wing runners want to stay at home, we fly pattern work.

What Makes the Stemme S6 Perfect for the Job?

The Stemme never apologizes for what it is: it's built like a glider and flies like a glider. Stemme is the only manufacturer in the world that builds cruise-class self-launching gliders with the wing behind the pilots, not under nor on top. The result is the same panoramic view as a pure glider, letting Stemme pilots safely join other gliders in thermals, on ridges, and in wave. Its engine, the S6's Rotax 914 engine is like no other.

The Stemme S6 in flight, its wing set behind the side-by-side cockpit

It's Perfect for Instruction

Because of its fantastic flight qualities and similarity to pure gliders, students who start in the Stemme don't overspecialize. They learn genuine glider instincts, making transitioning to pure gliders easy, instead of daunting.
The engine allows students to perform a dozen approaches in the time a normal glider can do just one. Landing is the skill that takes the most repetition to build, and back-to-back approaches are how it sticks. It takes a certain number of pattern landings to teach a student to think like a glider pilot, and the Stemme can do this in just a few afternoons.

Our Stemme's side-by-side seating helps instruction, as the instructor sees what the student sees, watches their hands, and can point rather than describe only!
It fits better with the students' weeks. A lesson at a towed operation is a full-day commitment, and that's hard to justify when students have other commitments. A Stemme lesson is scheduled like any flight lesson: preflight, fly, debrief with no need for scheduling more lessons, spaced out throughout the year. Students fly more often, and frequent lessons keep skills from decaying between flights.