On Mon, 12 Mar 2018 13:06:14 -0700 (PDT), Papa3
wrote:

So help us understand the economics of your operation. In round figures, you're sitting on about $1M (USD) worth of aircraft when I include our two towplanes. Maybe a little more or a little less depending on how you acquired the Duos and K-21s (used vs new) as well as the Maule, but close enough.

Insurance alone on this would run about $25K. Engine rebuild fund and refinish fund another $10K/year or something like that. Maintenance at least $5K assuming the ships are already in good condition. So,let's assume that operating costs for the fleet alone are in the neighborhood of $50K/year when we throw in a bunch of other stuff like supplies, licensing, hangar rent, etc.. That would be something like $1000/member based on 50 members with no money going into a capital fund (i.e. to acquire aircraft). Given the clubs total hours at around 1200 per the Website (including a fair amount of rides), that means that the average pilot logs a bit over 20 hours per year (though given a usual mix in a club, I'm sure there are a small few who account for a significant percentage).

Even assuming you accumulated $1M worth of ships over 25 years, that would mean averaging another $40k or so going to the capital fund each year on average.

Show me where I went wrong with the math.


Your numbers are wrong.
TW is flying in Switzerland, so his numbers are different from mine



But let me tell you some numbers of my club:
www.djk-landau.de

ASK-21
Ka-8b
Valentin Mistral C
DG-300
ASW-24
ASW-27
Duo Dicus XL

Dimona motorglider
Robin DR-300 Remorqeur tow plane.


These are our prices:
https://www.djk-landau.de/fliegen/kosten/


EUR 350 per year, including ALL flying time and ALL winch launches.
Flat rate. Needs to be payed by everone, even by private owners who
never fly a club glider.

Annual fee:
EUR 160 adult
EUR 80 if younger than 21
EUR 120 if older than 21 but without income (students)
EUR 40 for non-active members

That's all.

85 active members, 120 non active members.
Total income of the glider operation about 46.000 (from now on all
prices in Euro EUR).

Numbers from 2017 (only club gliders):
1.600 launches per year, 1.400 of them winch launches


Major expenditures for the glider fleet:
Insurance: 14.000 (Kasko insurance for 21, Duo, Dimona, ASW-27)

Maintenance: 1.500 (only spare parts, we do all the maintenance by
ourselves)

Winch: 12.000 (fuel, replacement cables,...)


Motorglider and tow plane are priced that they pay themselves.

In Germany nearly all clubs, including mine, are doing 90% of their
launches with the winch.

Our DR-300 tow plane has got a Lycoming engine with a TBO of 2.000 hrs
and an overhaul cost of 30.000.
But it only does 80 hrs per year (600 launches) - so we are talking
about an engine rebuilt fund of only 2.000 per year.



All in all we make a profit of about 18.000 per year, which we
currently use to repay the loans for the Duo and the new EUR 250.000
hangar whe built five years ago.

We own our airfield and paid 130.000 DM for it in 1999.




One thing you need to know:
The clubs in Europe never simply buy a new glider from scratch, but
they are usually able to sell their current glider for good money
before it gets old, so the step from a Ka-7 to ASK-13 50 years ago was
about 15.000 (D-mark in these days), from ASK-13 to ASK-21 30 years
ago 55.000, and so on.

Therefore there might be a huge value of the glider fleet on paper,
but a big part of it was paid by selling older gliders.

Nearly all clubs in Germany, Austria (both countries where gliding is
cheap compared to other parts of the world) don't pay any hangar rent
- all the hangars were built (and are owned) by the clubs.

Nearly any club owns a club house which makes a stay on the airfield
cheap and hels a lot to create comradeship.#

No paid line runners, no paid aircraft maintenace guys, no paid tow
pilots, no paid tower crews.


Did this posting answer your questions?



Cheers
Andreas