On 26 Dec, 20:26, Marc Ramsey wrote:

How can anyone be assured of a 1000+ production run in a shrinking
market that has never seen 1000+ unit production of any design?

Over 2,500 Blaniks, 1,400 Ka-6's (all variants) and 1,100 Ka-8's were
built. I can't offhand think of (or find) any other 1,000+ runs, but
there have been some pretty big productions. There were at least 800
Grunau Babies, 776 Pirats, 700 Schweizer 1-26's, 700 ASK13's, 620
Bocians and 600 Standard Libelles.

The
glider manufacturers are smart, but I think they are in a death spiral
of building ever more sophisticated designs for a shrinking population
that can afford them.

And just to make matters worse, the long lifespans of plastic gliders
mean that second-hand performance is comparatively cheap. Glider
pilots generally - I think - prefer performance to newness, so a
£15,000 mass-produced glider would be up against hordes of second hand
Libelles, ASW-19's, Pegases, Astirs, Jantars and so on. That, I think,
is what killed the PW-5. About the only country where it did well was
New Zealand where - as I understand it - there was a large fleet of
elderly Ka-6's and the like and little by way of more modern
fibreglass trickling down through the market.

Ian