Cheap sailplanes

Robert Ehrlich wrote:

Gliding is suffering for excess of regulation.

Of course you're right. But don't let THE MAN get you down.
When glider pilots ask me why I'm so supprotive of
Sport Pilot, I borrow a quote from the movie "The School of Rock"
"I'm doing like you taught us, I'm stickin' it to THE MAN."


In fact among things that decided me to stop
sailing and sell my boat, there was two changes in the regulation I
considered as stupid, the first one reducing the maximum distance allowed
from a shelter from 100 to 60 nautical miles, making the direct travel from
Scilly Islands to Ireland impossible, the second one no more allowing the
same inflatable dinghy to be used both as a tender and as a rescue boat,
and I didn't had place for both.

Even seemingly small regulations have huge dampening effects. Alan Greenspan
is famous for (among other things) pointing this out to the U.S. Congress.
The use of more incentives vs. regulation to shape commerce is an example of
his (partial) influence.

Overregulation can really impact an industry. The worst is when it
happens incrementally, in tiny steps that don't quite get a radar
return. Over time, airplane instructors needed a commercial
license, and then an instrument rating. C'mon, all that to instruct
in a Piper Cub? Glider pilots needed a commercial license, then
an instructor license, to instruct. C'mon, if someone passed a private,
why do they need to pay for a commercial checkride too
(with no PTS difference except +/-100 feet for landing vs. +/-200 feet,
and +/- 5 instead of +10/-5 for airspeed and bank angle) before
taking a CFIG test?

These incremental overregulations over time gradually hurt the
aviation industry. It looks like the FAA is slowly moving towards
requiring transponders in all aircraft above 10,000 feet. Yep,
that'll incrementally cut some flying. Then I suspect they'll try to
require transponders in all aircraft at all altitudes, eventually.
And each one will be required to emit a unique ID, for "safety" reasons.
Sounds like THE MAN to me...

That's why I joined AOPA (for a little fee).
As the song goes, "Freedom isn't free, it's a buck-o-five."

I don't know why despite a similar amount of related hassle, sailing is
still growing while gliding is declining. Certainly the medias, TV, radio
and nesspapers play some role.

Certainly. Every airplane crash of a Cessna 152 or 172 or Piper is reported
on the evening news. The same number of deaths in a car seldom makes the
news.

Two drunks taxi an airliner from the gate, and it's national news.
Two drunks light a building on fire and maybe it makes the local paper.

The knife cuts both ways.

I heard about the Salon Nautique in the
radio, I heard about the Vendee Globe, the one man race around the world,
I never heard about gliders. However, when I started sailing about 30 years
ago, it was almost ignored as gliding is now. Another thing maybe that
sailing may seem most "obvious" and/or "natural" to most people, as sailing
boats exist since thousands of years, while most people are even not aware
that gliders exist, as the first ones were built about only one century ago.


--

------------+
Mark J. Boyd