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Dans l'article
, "Ian
Johnston" a écrit :

That is true. It is, of course, no reason to sneer at paraglider
pilots, who seem to enjoy their sport, and it's even more reason to
get frustrated about the typically short flight time limits on club
gliders ...


I have no reason to sneer at paraglider pilots, as I have frequent
friendly discussions with these people who are flying here, some of
then are also sailplane pilots. But from these discussions, my conclusion
is that the common opinion that hanggliding is cheaper and easier than
sailplane flying is mainly an illusion that most facts contradict. Several
hangglider pilots agree with me on that. This doesn't mean they all are
going to switch to sailplanes, as one thing remains for su it is much
easier and cheaper to continue in the way you have started, invested and
gained some experience than to switch to another one and restart from
scratch.

In a well managed club, there is no reason that flights should be short
and people get frustrated about that. It is not the case in my club. In
France most clubs encourage long flights by having the flight time after
the 2 or 3 first hours for free, or by proposing unlimited flight time
in the year for a fixed amount payed at the beginning of the season. In
my club there are a very few day in the year when 2 or more pilots have to
share a club glider and so the time of their flight is limited, although
no time limit is imposed and all relies on mutual agrement between the
pilots sharing the glider. But this is rare. In the past, more than 10
years ao, when I was not already member, there was some periods of growth
when shortage of available gliders happened, but the growth in income
generated by the growth in membership allowed in this case the club to
buy new modern gliders (a LS4b and a Discus) to correct for that. All others
glider owned by the club where bought as used gliders and some of them
refinished in the club. Now we are in a phase of declining membership, as
almost everywhere, and the fleet follows, as the number of our gliders
decreased from 25 10 years ago to 19 now, but as there is some hysteresis
between the 2 decreases, most of the time we have more gliders available
than pilots, this is the only good side of a bad thing.