How did we poor (my pay was around $10 per week, but
the armed forces do get cheap flying) pilots manage
nearly 50 years ago when I started gliding? The club
invested in a barograph from membership fees. Every
time anyone used it to claim a badge flight, they put
about $5 equivalent in a fund, and when it built up
enough bought another.

A simple (EW Microrecorder) is under $800. In todays
money, an extra $20 for a badge flight is less than
the round of beers you buy. 40 badge flights and you
can buy a second one. Pretty soon, you hold a club
meeting to decide what to buy next once there are enough
recorders.

Soaring is cheap compared to most other sports (if
you play golf too, how much did that bagful you tote
around cost? And as for boats.......)


At 21:48 14 February 2008, Papa3 wrote:
On Feb 14, 10:36=A0am, 'Tim Mara' wrote:
actually....no.....in our smallish club with 20 or
so members I know of on=
ly
one data-logger equipped glider (LX21) and it can't
easily be just carried=

along in any glider since it still requires external
power connection and
the owner has the antenna more or less permanently
mounted.....moving it
would not be a spur of the moment thing...and besides,
if it's there the
owners there and wants to fly his glider (or he would
stay home) and it ru=
ns
GPS data to his PDA

Another key point that Tim raises. It's hard to explain
to someone
who might be part of a large club that there are literally
scores of
clubs out there without a single IGC approved logger
in the existing
fleet. It's not as if rich members are out there
being selfish;
there just isn't a single one in the fleet of either
club-owned or
private ships. Couple that with the issue than many
of the units are
installed in the panel or in other semi-permanent settings,
it does
become an issue for those 'grass roots' organizations
which we need to
encourage to grow to the next level.