Ian wrote:
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.

OK, I was wrong (such a rare thing 8^). Given the current worldwide
soaring market, however, I can't see how anyone could count on producing
1000+ units of any design, unless it offers wicked high performance for
a ridiculously low price.

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.

You need a fairly robust market (lots of people moving up to the latest
and greatest) for these hordes to materialize. When people buy fewer
new gliders (as seems to be the case in the US now), they keep their
older ones...

Marc