View Single Post
  #6  
Old March 14th 17, 02:51 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Tango Whisky
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 402
Default We need an ASW-19 rebirth for $25,000

That topic comes up every 8 years or so, mostly driven by people how have no idea where the cost for airplanes comes from.

You have the materials cost, which you can limit by staying away from carbon fiber.
You have to amortise setup cost (development, tooling, certification). You can reduce this by taking over an old design, as ASW19 or LS4.
You need to pay the labor. That's about 150 hours for a streamlined production. It does not vary with the performance of the glider, but it does vary with the surcae.
You need to pay overhead.
You need to make profit.

There is no way that this would sum up anyway near $25.000.

And then you would have to sell it, and compete against tons of pre-owned gliders which are in the $25k-40k range, can be flown tomorrow, are at about 10-20% of their lifetime potential and are in the 35-40:1 range.

The most recent try on this was to set up a production of LS4's in Eastern Europe (with Eastern Europe wages), when Rolladen-Schneider went belly up.
Nobody ordered.

From what I see, money is not the reason for declining numbers of pilots. Its the countless possibilities for instant-gratification-activities, some of which are significantly more expensive than flying a whole season in a club's Discus or LS4.

Le mardi 14 mars 2017 13:09:32 UTC+1, a écritÂ*:
What we need in soaring is a new glider built for a reasonable price. $150,000 for a new glider is just not even a consideration for most people. Let's face it, you can get a low mileage Ferrari for half that price!

The PW-5 was a terrible failure. The engineers made the wingspan too short, without a common T-tail and failed to have the gear retract.

What we really need is something that looks like an ASW-19 bare bones that is brand new for $25,000.

It needs to have only the basics:
-15 meter wingspan
-T-tail
-Retractable landing gear
-Hinged canopy
-Airspeed
-Altimeter
-Basic VSI (no audio)
-Tube trailer
-Mag compass

With a basic tube trailer similar.

If the PW-5 can be made for around that price, so could something like this.

Just to get a basic sailplane for $25,000 that has a 35:1 to 40:1 glide ratio, pilots could once again afford this sport and it would be one less reason for pilots to not get into soaring.