On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:36:17 -0700 (PDT), GliderDriver
wrote:


Over 100 Russia AC-4 and -5 variants were manufactured, sold &
delivered (including a few kits). IIRC, 90+ were to North America,
with a handful to the UK and one, two, or three to the EU.

Well... success is something different, isn't it?


IMO, the presence of a market for a reasonably-priced, reasonable-
performance (30:1, 36:1) sailplane is indisputable.

Well.... to repeat myself:
If there was a market (and if it was possible top get down production
costs), someone would have been able to sell a couple of gliders.
There have been many attempts.

We had the gliders you describe a-decade-and-a-half ago: ASK-23,
Mistral-C, Astir. "Good enough" performance, about 20-25 percent
cheaper than the latest state-of-the-art standard class ships (DG-300,
Discus, LS-4). Yet people (especially clubs) were buying the more
expensive standard class ships.
None was ever able to bring down production costs sufficiently to make
lower-perfomance-gliders interesting.

Production may
need to be in Eastern Europe or other lower-cost labor market, but
build it and it will sell.

Looking at the prices of gliders from Eastern Europe (Lak, HPH) I am
getting the impression that the lower-cost labor market doesn't exist
anymore. They are not much cheaper than somehting from Poppenhausen or
Kirchheim-Teck.

Maybe the Cessna way is the answer: Production in China...


Cheers
Andreas