On Tuesday, March 13, 2018 at 10:46:07 AM UTC-4, Tango Whisky wrote:
Le mardi 13 mars 2018 14:48:15 UTC+1, ND a écritÂ*:
On Tuesday, March 13, 2018 at 3:55:41 AM UTC-4, krasw wrote:
Many contributors argue that everything should be cheap, and even cheaper is better, because low costs means more new pilots. Yet no evidence of this causality is available. We got to stop pretend that this is cheap hobby, it is not. But at the same time it is not expensive compared to many other activities. Gliding is in the reach most educated/working adults, they can afford it IF THEY WANT. I know clubs that offered introductory flights at ridiculously low price to attract new pilots. Nobody came, they thought that "it probably is not much fun because it is so cheap". Then they implemented hefty price increase and voila, flights were booked full. Price is the product?

you want the answer why we still use them?

•because they are inexpensive to purchase, fly, and own
•there's a ****load of them here
•it's fun to hang out the rear window while a student flies
•we americans are a proud race, and they are american gliders (ok no but really, people here just like them) im intensely displeased at the lack of options when it comes to american made options.
•students beat on aircraft, and 2-33's are robust. (how many times has your club had to repair the nosewheel of a k-21?)

I have no problem with you having this opinion. Just don't complain about dwindling membership, or average ages of members being somewhere north of 60...

As for inexpensive... if having 2-33's in your fleet makes that you can't attract sufficient new (and young!) members, that's probably the most expensive way of flying in the long run.

As for sturdiness - we never had a collapsed nose wheel on the ASK21.

ND's opinion comes from growing out of the largest and most active junior program in the US.
They have no problem attracting and keeping young people.
Those kids don't know that they are not having fun learning in 2-33's.
I can say the same for our club.
I have been close to about a dozen K-21's, including 2 in our club. Of those, more than half have had the nose wheel broken(none in our club while we've had them).
We also use our '21's for contest flying as part of our advanced training.
Modernizing the fleet should be a part of a long term plan, but it takes time to build the equity needed to do so. Our 2-33's paid for getting started on our first '21.
UH