Eric, SparrowHawk aside..............so, what if an American
Manufacturer came up with a sailplane that was designed and made in the
USA. I wonder if it would sell. Elsewhere in this thread it's been
stated that only the latest from Germany is what most want.

I think what needs to be done is a simple, elegant looking sports class
machine; designed from the ground up to be self-launch using an
electric motor. 15m, with an LD of aroud 40:1, this would not be the
latest hot competition ship, and would not even pretend to be, it would
be a fun flying, good performing sailplane that those of us who want to
fly for fun and don't have huge salaries could afford.

Maybe this isn't possible, but at least someone could try.

Cheers,
Brad


Eric Greenwell wrote:
Doug Hoffman wrote:
Eric Greenwell wrote:
GK wrote:
[snip]
(Honda) Which builds their cars in the USA...

So, maybe we'll see a corporate buyout of Windward Performance, and the
glider renamed the "HondaHawk". I like the sound of that!

You like the sound of another foreign company taking over US jobs? It
may be true that, for example, Honda builds (some of) their cars in the
USA. But what does that really mean? It means that the US employees
are generally doing the grunt work of manual labor. Most all
Engineering and Management jobs there have been shipped overseas. So
what kinds of jobs will our children, grandchildren, etc. have?
Working on an assembly line bolting together Hondas (be they cars or
gliders)? Not a pretty picture in my view. So no, I don't like the
sound of that.

Lighten up, Doug - almost all our new gliders come from Europe now, so
we're talking about adding jobs, not losing them. I think it would great
if a foreign company with a lot of money would bankroll a USA company to
design and build gliders here, the situation I (humorously, I thought)
suggested. Production is the hard part of getting a glider into the
customer's hands, not the design. I'd like to see Greg Cole get back to
the designing the DuckHawk instead of chasing production issues.

Building gliders isn't just "grunt work" but also involves a lot of
skilled labor, and that's a big part of the production problem: finding
people that can do the work, and having enough work to keep them busy so
they can do the work efficiently, and you can afford to pay them. These
aren't minimum wage workers that you can pull off the streets.

And while it is only a fantasy that Honda would manufacture gliders
here, they will be building the Hondajet in the US.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

"Transponders in Sailplanes" on the Soaring Safety Foundation website
www.soaringsafety.org/prevention/articles.html

"A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org