On Saturday, March 10, 2018 at 9:40:53 AM UTC-7, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Saturday, March 10, 2018 at 12:57:30 AM UTC-5, Frank Whiteley wrote:

Switching from 2-33 to BlanÃ*k
A positive experience for instructors and students

Four years of club experience from 1993-97 is DATA, and those insights are still true 20 years later.

Grounding the L-13s sure hurt soaring in the USA. We all agree on that.


On Friday, March 9, 2018 at 7:54:22 AM UTC-5, Tom wrote:

there are things that the 2-33 teaches uniquely/efficiently and it can be a lot more economical to learn in.

I'm sure that Tom knows what he is talking about, but let's look at the complete pictu 'His' training fleet (Sugarbush's training fleet) includes ONE fully restored 2-33, ONE ASK-21, TWO practically new PW-6, ONE fully restored 1-26, and ONE Grob G102. Sure, the 2-33 is the best and most economical tool for parts of the training task, and interleaving 2-33 flights with PW-6 and ASK-21 flight stretches your flying muscles. (One young guy at Sugarbush, who was training for CPL, choose to fly five different glider types in one afternoon.)

Students benefit from switching back and forth between the 2-33, the 1-26 and the glass trainers, and they eventually progress to the G102. That is completely different from what happens at gliding clubs that have one lonely 2-33.


Tom wrote:

the completely gone through and restored 2-33 was in the high $40s and a B model, not yet certified, was around $58k.

there are little or no good 2-33s on the market or the condition of the fleet is so poor there needs to be a heavy investment into reconditioning.

Patching up the old 2-33 for one more year is not much of a path forward. I sincerely hope that no 2-33 tow hooks spontaneously detach from their airframes this year.

I applaud the clubs that are flying well maintained 2-33s, and those who're investing in a complete restoration of their 2-33 are doing it right.

Speaking of DATA. At the 1997 SSA Convention, Roy Edwards from NZ gave a presentation on the churn of national soaring organization memberships. He presented that member churn was almost universally 20 percent, except for the US, where it was 30 percent. Some of us surmised that a factor was the predominance of the 2-33 in US fleets.

Frank Whiteley