On 31 Jan 2009 22:15:02 GMT, Jim Beckman
wrote:


Only 22 pilots? Now the numbers starts to make sense. What they actually
tell us is that your club gliders don't really fly all that much
cross-country. Which is fine, of course.

Well.. let me put it this way:

In 2008 club members made 53.000 kilometers in the OLC (similar to
your club), placing us in the top ten percent of Germany's flying
clubs, most of them situated in far better thermal conditions than our
airfield. 30.000 kilometers of those were flown in club gliders.
Nearly all pensioned members don't even try to fly XC on the weekends
because they fly during the week were the other pilots need work (but
they appear on the airfield to help and to have a good time). You'd
need to add these 10 to 15 people to the 22 pilots which are on the XC
reservation list.
BTW: At the moment the entire German 15m-class national team consists
of pilots of my club
I'm pretty content with the situation.


Which also makes sense - about a quarter of the fleet flown XC by about a
quarter of your pilots. I would guess that our own club in Blairstown
does about that well with XC in club gliders, although our fleet looks
shabby indeed next to yours.

We're having this dicussion since at least a decade: One
state-of-the-art glider (e.g. ASW-27) or two older ones which are
hardly inferior (e.g. ASW-20)? So far we have more than sufficient
gliders for XC pilots, but we just bought an old Mistral-C as a first
single seater after the 21 because we got so many new student pilots
last year (THIS is what is missing: a basic trainer, compatible to the
ASK-21, and affordable).

But it's interesting: Most XC pilots of my club are pretty content if
they fly two to three hours and return with 200 to 250 kilometers. The
number of hardcore XC pilots who try to fly as far as possible
whenever the weather allows it is very limited - less than five (I'm
one of them - fortunately I have exclusive access to a pretty good
private glider).
Looks like most members of my club regard gliding as a pretty
recreational sport - few of them are ambitious.

Maybe one cause for that is that we have a very good social life (and
an own club house) - on weekends there's always an afternoon tea,
dinner and lunch, lots of wifes and children around. Many good causes
to land and have a coffee and some self-made cake...
I guess this is what makes many German clubs different from US clubs:
The social life often plays a part that is nearly as impoortant as the
flying.