LS10 info

Bert Willing wrote:
In rural France, maybe... but then, who wants a house there :-)


A lot of brits apparently :-)

For an estimation of the "real price" of a glider, real estate is not of
much help. If you compare it to the mean of yearly gross income, you will
find that gliders haven't become that much more expensive.

Income of whom, exactly? If of drug dealers, perhaps, yes. If of honest
civil servants, then salary is straight the same as ten years ago and
gliders are twice as expensive.

And anyhow, looking at 2-years+ delivery times, these prices don't seem to
be a big problem to a significant number of pilots.

So significant that many glider manufacturers went belly up. Let's be serious,
gliders have become out of reach for almost anybody here.


--

Michel TALON

J. N. wrote:
I don`t think you`re right.

In fact, if you take a look at the inflation, gliders have become
cheaper, or equally priced compared to 1980.

So the whole problem isn`t about more expensive gliders but less glider
pilots which mean less sold, which means a larger penalty per glider
for development. Thát`s the problem.

I bought a new ASW 20 C in 1984, which cost me about $28,000 US. This
was during a period of a strong dollar. Using the $100,000 US figure for
a new ASW 27, that's 3.6 times more, or an average of ~6% inflation a
year. I don't know what's it's really been, but that sounds about right.
I have to agree that the price is comparable to 22 years ago. I think
that is remarkable, because '84 was a period of a strong dollar (vs the
Mark), and now is a period of a relatively weak dollar (vs the Euro).

For the US, the results of this calculation will depend a lot on when
you do it, due to the substantial currency variations. In the 30 years
I've been in the sport, I've seen gliders become very cheap twice.


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Slightly OT:

Bob, I applaud your effort, and wish you the best of luck with the
Hp-24. However - I'll never buy one, unfortunately, no matter how
inexpensive and high performance it turns out, because I have
absolutely NO interest in a kit. I want to fly, not build. And I've
got a sneaky suspicion that the majority of pilots in the market for
high performance gliders feel the same way.

I do hope I'm wrong - I'd love to race against a nice shiny new hp-24
some day soon!

Kirk

Chris Reed wrote:

I've only been in the sport a decade, but I think from my reading that
the current "hot" ship has almost always cost substantially more than
the national average wage in a developed country, so the current prices
don't seem to have risen dramatically in real terms.

I have the original purchase records for my Mosquito (the original
owners didn't throw anything away):
$25,000 in June of 78. That's $75-$100k in 2006 dollars depending on
how you calculate inflation.
For an *almost* 40:1 ship with a tube trailer and oldtech instruments.
What's changed more is salaries of the masses, in the US at least. For
lots of reasons, average real wages have dropped for thirty years.
Schempp-Hirth and Schleicher can't influence that much. Of course,
given the economic (and potential political) status of glider pilots,
they could have some influence in growing the sport, rather indirectly.
Hmm "Vote Glider, Vote Democrat in 2008" I like it!

Shawn

It takes a lot of labor to produce a glider, and labor has become more
expensive. So the traditional manufacturers are struggling while new
ones are producing considerable cheaper gliders in countries where
labor is a lot cheaper. (What would a Lak-17A be, about 65.000 euro`s
ready to fly?)
If the prices would have been the problem I think everyone was flying
those ugly Peewee`s. And they`re not.

Stop blaming the manufacturers for the low value of the dollar. Why not
start a sailplane manufacturer in the US of A, labor is cheap over
there isn`t it?

Michel Talon wrote:
Bert Willing wrote:

In rural France, maybe... but then, who wants a house there :-)



A lot of brits apparently :-)


For an estimation of the "real price" of a glider, real estate is not of
much help. If you compare it to the mean of yearly gross income, you will
find that gliders haven't become that much more expensive.


Income of whom, exactly? If of drug dealers, perhaps, yes. If of honest
civil servants, then salary is straight the same as ten years ago and
gliders are twice as expensive.


And anyhow, looking at 2-years+ delivery times, these prices don't seem to
be a big problem to a significant number of pilots.


So significant that many glider manufacturers went belly up. Let's be serious,
gliders have become out of reach for almost anybody here.


I just had my wife's first car refurbished. She is irrationally fond of it, so
the money is well spent.

Some observations - her "mom's taxi" is a high tech airbag equipped 7 seater
with more processing power than the moon lander. An Opel Zafira, it is nothing
special in the school parking lot.

Now her concourse 1976 1275cc Mini GTS with it's 12" rims and 58kw motor, and
leather upholstery DOES stand out in the same car park. It has been returned to
better than original, at a cost of 10x it's original purchase price. The mini
was a popular moms taxi when I was at school. Compared to the house prices of
the time, I suppose the comparison is similar. Both the car and glider are
vastly more sophisticated and more expensive. The house is also vastly more
expensive, but it has changed a lot less relatively.

So - I get to drive a 1970 revision of a 1950s design, that in a nutshell
equates to the comparison between my Std Cirrus and a new Ventus 2Cx.

The modern vehicle is an imense advance over the 35 year old, irrespective of
the condition. And yes, I have an enormous amount of cheap fun in both the mini
and the Cirrus too...


--
Bruce Greeff
Std Cirrus #57
I'm no-T at the address above.

J. N. wrote:
It takes a lot of labor to produce a glider, and labor has become more
expensive. So the traditional manufacturers are struggling while new
ones are producing considerable cheaper gliders in countries where
labor is a lot cheaper. (What would a Lak-17A be, about 65.000 euro`s
ready to fly?)
If the prices would have been the problem I think everyone was flying
those ugly Peewee`s. And they`re not.

Stop blaming the manufacturers for the low value of the dollar. Why not
start a sailplane manufacturer in the US of A, labor is cheap over
there isn`t it?

Ford just announced 30,000 jobs cut. I think you're right!

Shawn

Earlier, wrote:

Slightly OT:

Bob, I applaud your effort, and wish you the best of luck with the
Hp-24. However - I'll never buy one, unfortunately, no matter how
inexpensive and high performance it turns out, because I have
absolutely NO interest in a kit. I want to fly, not build. And I've
got a sneaky suspicion that the majority of pilots in the market for
high performance gliders feel the same way.

I do hope I'm wrong - I'd love to race against a nice shiny new hp-24
some day soon!

Nothing wrong with that point of view; you're probably in the majority
of sailplane pilots in that regard, and I respect it completely.

However, I'd observe that what we're talking about is a matter of
degree. There's kits and then there's kits. When it comes right down to
it, the glider you are flying right now is probably a kit - you do have
to get the wings out of the trailer and put them together, right? So
there must be some sort of threshold value of "kittishness" that you
won't cross, and it sounds like you draw the line at well under an hour
of assembly. That's fine, but still a far cry from "never."

And it's worth noting that the kit glider I'm developing, like most of
the current crop of kit sailplanes, bears almost zero resemblance with
the kits of the 1960's and 1970's or even 1990's. What you get is a
complete fuselage shell, with the right and left halves already bonded
togther. The top and bottom wing skins come pre-assembled, with the
spar installed. There's still a lot of work for the builder, but the
major part of it is systems installation and bonding together
pre-indexed parts. I figure that it'd run on the order of 350 hours or
so, maybe less. That's still a bunch of time, but it is less time (and
much less finnicky work) than it takes to refinish an old ASW-20.

I prefer to think of it like IKEA furniture; it's not really a kit,
there's just some assembly required...

Thanks, and best regards to all

Bob K.
http://www.hpaircraft.com/hp-24

Lots of good comments about relative prices of gliders and personal
incomes now and in the past. It's a mix of currency flutuations (we've
been whipsawed in both directions in the U.S.), inflation, the high
proportion of labor in manufacturing costs, etc. It's hard to blame the
manufacturers. Their order books are full. And the marketplace seems to
be working the way it should: i.e., weaker or high-cost manufacturers
exit and new and/or lower-cost makers enter.

A few other factors that I think have changed:

1. Avionics: my instrument panels 30 years ago were full race...with an
altimeter, airspeed, compass, a couple of variometers, an audio, a
radio, and a cardboard final glide calculator. Today one vario is an
expensive flight computer driving a PDA. And now (at the competitive
level) you need at least one IGC-approved flight recorder (read: low
volume, high price).

2. Time: in the "old days," most of us had much more time to save money
through do-it-yourself, ranging from building your own glider to
building a trailer to (in my case) building a couple of RST radios.
Forget that; I don't even have time to do the wing smoothing and other
tweaking I used to do. I'm lucky to be able to fly every few weekends
if the weather is good.

3. Joint ownership: at least in the U.S., I believe there is far more
reluctance to own a competition glider with one or more partners. The
first Libelle 301 I ever saw was owned by three pilots in the midwest
(including one Wil Schuemann). Many guys had partners, the lucky ones
having found someone with absolutely no interest in contest flying. The
easiest way to cut the cost of a glider in half then and now is sharing
the cost. But it seems that a lot more of us (myself included, I'll
admit) are so stressed for time and uncertain about our schedules that
we choose to go it alone (because of my work, I typically "lock in" on
a contest for sure the week before, including the nationals).

I'm also curious as to the relative price of used gliders vs. personal
income. My family was always able to sell one glider for more than we
paid to help finance the next one, whether we were selling a glider we
bought new or used. Unlike what is still true for real estate, that
seems extremely unlikely to happen this time (if I am ever able to
afford/justify a new glider). Much of it is due to currency swings, I
think. But has anyone done any calculations to see how the prices of,
say, five- or ten- or twenty-year-old gliders have behaved vis-a-vis
inflation and/or personal income?

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"

Bob,

Interesting comparison, but you will have a real hard time convincing
me my nice old LS6 is a "kit" just because I rig it every time I fly
it. Using that definition, everything that has any maintenance done on
it is a "kit". From my perspective, I see a lot of difference between
rigging my wings and building them!

But an "A" for originality and effort, nevertheless!

And I know there are a lot of people out there who will jump in and
build a kit - especially one that sounds as complete and well
engineered as the hp-24. But those people also take a lot of pride in
building something with their own hands. And I have no problem with
kit furniture. But no way can I see myself building a kit glider. As
another poster has beautifully pointed out - I just don't have the time
anymore - too many other things to do when I'm not flying!

Cheers,

Kirk