I've flown for years on a public airport (Braunschweig) in Germany with a
CTR, jet aircrafts, parachuters and 4 double-drum winches operated by 5
clubs. Winch launch was the standard method, aerotow something we did once
in a while.

--
Bert Willing

ASW20 "TW"


"Ray Lovinggood" a écrit dans le message
de news: ...
Andreas has a point. Of course, I'm biased, since
I used to belong to his club.

The winch should make soaring more affordable. But
a problem I see for clubs such as ours is that we operate
from a public use airport. We are guests on the field
and have been there for over 18 years now. But I doubt
if we would be allowed to perform any type of ground
launch method. Plus, not using a tow plane would reduce
the amount of fuel we buy from the FBO to nothing.
I think our relations with the FBO are enhanced by
us buying fuel, renting ramp space, getting some maintainence,
etc.

But to have a rope or cable up in the airspace is probably
something our airport folks wouldn't want to contend
with.

Sure, our own private field would be nice and would
be even nicer if there were enough room for safe ground
launches. But I don't see that happening with our
club.

Andreas points to the youth in his club. It was the
same way in the mid Eighties when I was a member there.
At least the field wasn't too far out in the boonies
and those too young to have driver's licenses could
ride their bikes there or get a ride with friends or
parents.

In America, it seems the glider fields are out in the
boonies and getting to them requires a car. Club members
come from all over and sometimes, getting a ride isn't
so easy. Parents have to come out and they might not
be willing to spend all day at the field.

Also, the youth members (me too) enjoyed driving the
Lepo when it wasn't our turn to fly. They were too
young to drive on the road, but that didn't prevent
them from driving the Lepo.

(Bonus points to those who know 'Lepo.')

Yea, I enjoyed the winch launching at Andreas' club.
Always a blast! And it was very inexpensive.

Ray Lovinggood
Winchless in Carrboro, North Carolina, USA


At 17:31 01 February 2005, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On 31 Jan 2005 09:24:22 -0800,
wrote:


At the same time the
German sailplane industry is killing this sport. Plain
and simple. Do
you know that LS-8 made by DG nowadays cost 65000 Euros?


How many 65.000 Euro gliders have been sold and how
many 25.000$
(PW-5, Russia, et cetera)? The low-priced gliders are
a very minor
fraction.

If raw prices of the gliders were what was killing
the sport,
low-priced gliders would be selling a lot more units
than they
actually do. But they don't.


Maybe in
Germany everybody is rich and they can afford this
type of prices but
here in the U.S.....many people making just about 30,000
U.S. Dollars a
year...in some states like Montana or the Dakotas even
less....and just
because of the income does this make those guys or
gals less qualified
pilots?

The explanation has been mentioned a lot of times now:
CLUBS. WINCH LAUNCHING.

It's very hard to spend more than $1.000 in Germany
per year for
gliding if you choose to stick to club gliders. In
fact, in my club
(and most other clubs in Germany) it's a lot cheaper.

Not to mention that usually you are buying used gliders
here if you
decided to have an own one. An ASW-15 costs 15.000
Euros including a
re-finishing that makes it as good as new. There is
absolutely no need
to buy a new 65.000 Euros glider - for 20.000 you get
an ASW-20, for
example.


No, but if the Germans will become more realistic and
adjust
the prices to the world level maybe we would have more
pilots and those
factories could sell more sailplanes...
It's not a question of being realistic - it's a question
of sheer
production cost and quality.


and then maybe we could see
that pilots with lower income, which translates directly
to what they
fly, will prove that is not the amount of money but
the pilot
skills...

Fly club class - and look which gliders are dominating
there. The hot
gliders for club class due to their Index are Libelles...
8.000 Euros
per piece here. Any questions left?


BTW: Most of the really active members in German clubs
are students
with really low income.



Bye
Andreas