The decline of gliding - a worldwide issue?

On Sunday, March 7, 2021 at 3:06:18 AM UTC-7, wrote:
Good morning,

My name is Douglas and I am a glider pilot here in the UK.

I would like to start a friendly discussion about the decline of gliding and whether this is an issue outside of the UK.

Within the UK gliding has been in decline for decades and according to discussion on gliderpilot.net this is down to a few key issues, which I may go into later in the thread if required.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts on this.

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Douglas

I believe the key to reversing this trend is getting more youth involved. I have a dream to start a club at my local airport. However, I am going solo on this, as there is only one other glider pilot in my area. A friend of mine is the director of the local Boy's and Girls Club, a non-profit organization where kids can go after school while parents are still at work, and get help with their homework, or get involved in a number of other activities they offer. I have presented my idea to him of offering some kind of flight training to kids who are interested. It would involve a mix of ground school/theory, as well as practice using Condor 2 with VR goggles, and would be free to the kids. For those kids who are interested, and do well with this, we could then offer and transition them over into flying a real glider and taking real lessons. I believe this could be a tremendous feeder program for young people who are interested.

My trouble though is two-fold:
1. Money. I don't have the funds to purchase a 2-place glider that could be used for training. I'm saving up for something like this, but at this time it is out of the picture.
2. Experience. I'm still a low-hour glider pilot myself. I only have my private rating. I need to build time and experience flying around my local area, and after that I need to get my CFI-G.

I believe that if we can involve more young people, it will also draw parents in with them. And if we can structure it financially to where it is more doable for your low-middle class income family, it could really take off. Yes, people are more busy these days than they used to be, but some of the reason for that is that finances are tougher. And because the cost in general aviation has risen so much in the last 50 yrs or so, young people are writing it off before they even look at it. One estimate I saw was that on average it costs about $10,000 to $15,000 just to get your private pilot's license these days. However, if done carefully, a glider license could be done for under $4,000. However, if clubs are folding, and the only operations left are the commercial ones, then this number goes up dramatically, and becomes prohibitive for all but those born with a silver spoon in their mouths.

On Tue, 09 Mar 2021 17:12:56 -0800, John Foster wrote:

I believe the key to reversing this trend is getting more youth
involved. I have a dream to start a club at my local airport. However,
I am going solo on this, as there is only one other glider pilot in my
area. A friend of mine is the director of the local Boy's and Girls
Club, a non-profit organization where kids can go after school while
parents are still at work, and get help with their homework, or get
involved in a number of other activities they offer. I have presented
my idea to him of offering some kind of flight training to kids who are
interested.

Sounds like a very good idea.

Have to thought about adding model flying to the mix? Here I'm thinking
about free flight models - uncontrolled, so flying them successfully
needs some knowledge of aerodynamics and trimming. Some suitable starter
models are shown on my website he

https://www.gregorie.org/freeflight/index.html

- I'm thinking primarily of the Easymini catapult glider: the rest of the
topics are more advances and show what yo can do with free flight.

The only fly in this ointment is that the Chinese are currently causing a
world balsa shortage, having bought many of the balsa tree plantations fo
use making wind turbine blades.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org