It is absolutely correct that in Germany, there is no sigificant sponsoring of soaring by the tax payer. The few individuals who are having fun in Worcester every winter are "Sportsoldaten", i.e. members of the German army which has a section of athletes being sponsored by the arny during 12 months. That does not include the procurement of the gliders.
The wealth of German club has been brought on by... the members of those clubs during a well planned growth over decennies. And many of these clubs (like my club in Switzerland) doesn't see any decline. Most of those clubs have gotten rid of their wood & fabric gliders long ago (maybe with the exception of an ASK13 here and there).

In France, there have been quite some subsidies going into soaring, one big chunk has been the supply of free tow planes (MS893) from the air force. Now that these tugs are getting old and need to be replaced (and the air force doesn't run this program anymore), clubs are running into problems.

Le mardi 16 mars 2021 Ã* 23:37:25 UTC+1, AS a écritÂ*:
On Monday, March 15, 2021 at 7:40:43 PM UTC-4, ProfJ wrote:
On Thursday, 11 March 2021 at 01:33:23 UTC-7, wrote:
I think that we have discovered a workable solution between us.

4. Publicly execute people who don't pay tax

You say that like it's a bad thing...

Seriously, though, those young folks who you do see promoting the sport are all coming from countries where gliding is heavily subsidized by....wait for it...taxpayer money.

The stunning videos of coastal soaring in South Africa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OOX...l=StefanLanger - were, I believe, taken by competitive pilots who were heavily subsidized to spend the NH winter in the south, keeping up their training, and who are to all intents and purposes professional pilots. I'd go so far as to say that if it wasn't for European, and especially German, government support, we'd all still be flying 1-36's.


Seriously, though, those young folks who you do see promoting the sport are all coming from countries where gliding is heavily subsidized by....wait for it...taxpayer money.
Care to cite the countries in which gliding is heavily subsidized by taxpayer money?
And while you are at it, care to cite the tax codes under which such heavy subsidies are being doled out?
Fair warning: don't mention Germany in your list, because there, it ain't so currently and hasn't been so in the last 40+ years.
I am talking about West-Germany and the now reunified Germany, not 'East-Germany', where the state-run GST (Gesellschaft fuer Sport und Technik), the virtual extension of the HJ ('Asshole with narrow mustache'-Youth) was provided with state money/equipment to seek out talents for their armed forces, etc.!
There is no federal money flowing freely into the coffers of the soaring clubs so they can order the latest glider model every time the ashtray is full! There is a very modest subsidy on the state level by a program called 'Sporthilfe' (Sport Aid) and the club I belonged to would receive maybe 500 Euro per year after filling out reams of applications for it.
All clubs carrying the suffix 'e.V.' in their name are the equivalent of a 501c(3) organizations, which gives them some tax relief. However, matters get really complicated when for instance the club operates its own fuel pump for the tow plane, motor-glider and winch and actually sells fuel to the occasional visiting plane. They have to fork over the sales taxes to their IRS and get audited on that regularly. In addition, clubs are now required to self-certify that their book-keeping is transparent and no money laundry is going on - with an audit about that looming over their heads!
Source of the above: I am related to the person who was the managing director for our club for a very long time and we talked about these matters at length.
So, please get the facts straight before you repeat what your sister's babysitter's third cousin once read on FB!

Uli
'AS'