No, you do not need an IGC-approved flight recorder to compete in most
countries. In the US, you only need one if you want US Team points, a
$100 Garmin handheld is fine, otherwise.

True. You don't "need" a flight computer either, but it helps.
Practically speaking, it's also helpful to have a device that records
pressure altitude in a form acceptable to the rules. In the U.S., that
usually means an IGC-approved flight recorder. I used a Garmin handheld
as a backup this year and it downloads traces that overlay those from
my Cambridge GPS-NAV almost perfectly. But the altitudes recorded are
often enough different that I'd have occasionally busted the start
cylinder ceiling if flying the altimeter or given up several hundred
feet at the start if flying the Garmin. We can argue all day/all
night/all day/all night about whether we should switch over to GPS
altitude but until the rules makers agree, GPS receivers that have
pressure sensors (that don't recalibrate themselves automatically based
on GPS altitude) are highly useful. And they are an expense that
compares unfavorably to the Kodak Instamatic cameras I used for a long
time.

Having jointly owned a number of gliders, I have to say that the savings
are not quite as much as they might seem. The single biggest
non-capital cost for most of us is insurance, and insuring a glider for
two costs 1.6 to 1.7 times insuring it for one. Maintenance costs are
also higher, since it gets flown more. The primary advantage, to me, of
joint ownership is the reduction in the amount of hard cash I have
invested in a toy.

I agree, based on my own experiences with joint ownership, although
until the premium for insuring two named pilots passes 100%, it's still
cheaper to share the cost. Hangar/tiedown/storage costs, annuals,
registration fees, etc., get split 50:50. I personally haven't noticed
that my maintenance costs vary much with hours flown, but I supposed
there are some items, such as trailer tires, for which it could be
true. Even for tires, batteries, and the big one--gel coat--though, age
seems a more typical criterion than hours flown.

Regardless, operating costs are probably not what prevents people from
buying a glider. It's ponying up $70,000 to $100,000, as you say,
that's the biggest hurdle. And joint ownership is a very effective way
of chopping that down to a smaller size.

But has anyone done any calculations to see how the prices of,
say, five- or ten- or twenty-year-old gliders have behaved vis-a-vis
inflation and/or personal income?

Any such calculation has too many fluctuating variables to be useful. I
suspect that as long as one has a perceived completive German made
glider in hand, it is possible to flip it for the latest and greatest
every five years or so at a relatively small (10%?) incremental cost.
If you have anything else, you are subject to the whims of the
marketplace...

Actually, I see very few pilots, even at the top, "flipping" gliders
every five years. The switching costs alone are pretty imposing
(freight, duty, insurance, and the time/expense to install new
instruments). And I think someone with an analytical bent could draw
some interesting conclusions from a study of used glider prices over
the years, perhaps comparing prices of previous generation sailplanes
of a certain age against new prices of the succeeding generation.
Multiple regression analysis has the ability to prove almost anything
if you add enough factors to a few data points but those with more
brainpower and time than I possess could doubtless tell us whether or
not gliders are still the great investment that my dad convinced my
mother they were back in the 1960s.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"