On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 13:53:36 +0000, Bill Gribble
wrote:

As a complete outsider that had finally decided to take the plunge, just
walking onto an airfield involved a considerable degree of uncertainty
and required a tremendous amount of resolve to follow through. It's an
utterly alien environment to somebody whose only other aviation exposure
has been as an occasional punter on a commercial airliner.

That's interesting, and a point I hadn't considered. I think it never
occurred to me because I've been walking onto airfields for years to
fly Free Flight models.

Had my wife not been fool enough to have brought a trial lesson voucher
as a Christmas present, odds are I'd have never have done it for myself.
If nothing else, what I *perceived* as being the costs involved with
gliding were utterly prohibitive in my mind.

I think the costs are commonly overestimated by outsiders. By that I
include both the capital costs and the (very odd) cost structure of
running a glider based at a wire launch site.

However, this is a decidedly UK-centric view because here the costs of
gliding are a *lot* less than power flying, under £30 an hour to rent
a club glider vs. the £90+ I've been told that power flying costs and,
of course with free instruction within a club. By contrast,
discussions I've had in America seem to show that the usual way of
learning, at an FBO, can amount to 80% of the cost of learning power
flying.

Comments, anybody?

On the other hand, awareness begins locally. And for something like
gliding, I'd be tempted to argue that the biggest payback is from local
and regional publicity, because that's where your new members come from.
And most local rags will happily print something of local interest if
its given to them as a done deal. But how many times has your club been
mentioned in the local paper in the last year?

We've certainly found that to be the case. Local papers are happy to
run stories and so, interestingly, are the local TV stations.

--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :