Club Glider Hangar?

On Jan 9, 6:51 pm, "noel.wade" wrote:
Hi All,

I'm doing some research for my local club, and one of the things I'd
like to determine is how to increase the usage of our "glass" ships
(Astir, Apis, and L-33 - yes I know the L-33 is metal). All are kept
stored in trailers. These 3 ships (all in great condition) sit in
their trailers, only seeing 20-40 hours of flying per year.

A fair number of our members are older casual pilots who don't fly too
often - so when they show up they simply drag out an L-13 or our
club's 1-34 because its metal, its rigged, and its tied down about 100
feet from the flight-line. Same thing happens with our students and
young pilots - they learn in one of these craft, so they naturally
gravitate to flying what's already rigged and on the line. Not only
is this inefficient, but its also been driving new members to go buy
their own aircraft (having slogged through training in crowded metal
gliders, and never experiencing the glass club ships).

Although some of the blame lies with our club's existing policies and
operating methods, we have quite often had people talk about how they
would fly the glass ships more if they were already rigged and
accessible - but its hard to know how much of that talk is serious.
We do have a few "T" hangars for our towplanes, as well as a small
clubhouse, but no hangar-space for gliders at this time.

So here are my questions:

Has anyone out there been part of a club that bought a hangar in the
last few years?
If so, has storing your gliders rigged in a hangar actually increased
the flying activities and/or number of flights each glider gets?
Do you store powered aircraft (towplanes) in with the gliders? If so,
has that caused any problems?
How much has the cost of the hangar impacted your fees and operations?

I am interested in hearing from folks with actual practical experience
with a club that has a hangar - especially if the hangar was a new
acquisition in the last 5 - 10 years.

Thanks a bunch in advance!!

--Noel

My first club had a small hangar, so all gliders were rigged and
derigged daily. We showed up at 8:30am and were flying by 9am and in
the pub by 8pm. Your 'legacy' members have set the club culture.
IMVHO, you need to change this, but it's not easy. Building a hangar
will have no impact.

Tell me, do you think your club is a success story? What time does
training start and end? How many new glider ratings have come from
your club in the past three years?

Frank Whiteley

On Jan 9, 9:07 pm, Frank Whiteley wrote:
Tell me, do you think your club is a success story? What time does
training start and end? How many new glider ratings have come from
your club in the past three years?

Frank Whiteley

Frank -

This is a bit off topic..... But to be honest, IMHO the culture
appeared to be rotting in many ways. Its not that it was a bad group
of people - it was just aging, insular, and
"tired" (organizationally). Before I did soaring, I was involved in
amateur auto-racing and saw this in a similar club: A small group of
people stopped bringing in new blood, and then after the same people
did all the work for 20 or 30 years, they just burned out and the
thing started coming apart at the seams...

Luckily, we've just merged two local clubs into one, and along with
some newer members (including myself), that seems to have injected
fresh life into things! We are hopeful that this will give us the
boost we need to freshen our fleets, and get more organized about
training and bringing new members in. For years, there was this
attitude that you "couldn't soar" near Seattle - that you had to drive
to the other side of the state for desert conditions in order to
really fly. But some talented and energetic pilots started proving
that long flights were possible over here, and there's been a growing
movement to do more and more flying in our area.

Right now we're evaluating our fleets, our assets (including T-hangars
and such), our training, our fees, and are trying to come up with
revisions that will make this new club (of 150+ members) more vibrant
and sustainable. We're financially sound (although our fleet is
old). The big issue is going to be the cultural changes. "Show up,
fly a little, and leave" has become the norm - and lacking much social
interaction or volunteerism beyond a small core group is holding us
back IMHO.

But we have a cadre of ~20 dedicated people who are putting lots of
hours of work into making things better. If we can start retaining
students with a more formalized training regimen, and get people to
consider the glider operation an "all day affair" where everyone
pitches in, then we'll be in a great position. Its possible, just
going to take a sustained effort.

--Noel