Salut Michel,

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 10:14:48 +0000 (UTC),
(Michel Talon) wrote:


The glider factories seem to think that glider buyers are like Ferrari
buyers, who will accept to pay any price for their toys.

Facts prove that exactly THIS is what happens at the moment.
..
Just look at the sales numbers of new gliders: By far most of them are
18 meter class ships, half of them self-launchers. They hardly perform
better than a 15m glider (if better at all - some folks doubt this),
are nearly twice as expensive - and yet noone is buying 15m gliders
anymore.

You cannot afford to buy a new glider? Plenty of cheap, used gliders
on the market.
At least in Europe with its huge market of 2nd hand gliders, there's
simply no need to produce a cheap glider.


A closely previous post mentioned that Schleicher was paying heavy fees
to Delft University to get his computations done. Compare this to the
Pegase which was computed at ONERA for free. I have the impression that
the Pegase was the last glider whose aim was allowing a lot of people to
fly.

And incidentally, it shows that one can build a 15m glider of
reasonable simplicity, with performances not that different from the more
complex ASW 20, easier to fly, and much cheaper.


Hmmm.... Pegase... wasn't that the carbon copy of some German
design... fromm... err... aforesaid Schleicher...!?

Let's face it: Schleicher did 95 percent of the design work for the
Pegase (I already hear the French contributors to this group cry out
and start their protest postings).

But it's a completely different case if you are the competitor on a
market who needs to design technology that has to be leading-edge for
the next 15 to 20 years. Schleicher is still market leader... while
Centrair is gone. Clear case who made the right decisions on the long
run.