Short Wings Gliders

At 12:30 31 January 2009, Jim Beckman wrote:
At 21:45 30 January 2009, Derek Copeland wrote:

Many European clubs have a ballot for the club gliders with a limit on
the
time you can local soar, although cross-countries are unlimited. If you
don't *win* a glider in the ballot, and you don't mind waiting around
for a few hours you can usually get to fly later on in the day.

But if you want to fly XC, then flying later in the day doesn't do you
any good, really.

If you "lose" the ballot on one day, does that give you some sort of
priority for the next opportunity?

No, but as I have already said, you can almost always take over a glider
once the first pilot has finished with it, and the ballot will balance
itself out over the year. I have done 200 km cross-country fights after
taking over a glider in mid afternoon.

My club will also allow you to book a certain number of the club gliders
for the day, or the week, in advance, if you want to do something bigger
or enter a competition.

The club system allows me to fly gliders that I couldn't possibly afford
to buy myself. Think of it as being a big syndicate.

Derek Copeland

On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:45:03 +0000, Derek Copeland wrote:

At 12:30 31 January 2009, Jim Beckman wrote:
At 21:45 30 January 2009, Derek Copeland wrote:

Many European clubs have a ballot for the club gliders with a limit on
the
time you can local soar, although cross-countries are unlimited. If you
don't *win* a glider in the ballot, and you don't mind waiting around
for a few hours you can usually get to fly later on in the day.

But if you want to fly XC, then flying later in the day doesn't do you
any good, really.

If you "lose" the ballot on one day, does that give you some sort of
priority for the next opportunity?

No, but as I have already said, you can almost always take over a glider
once the first pilot has finished with it, and the ballot will balance
itself out over the year. I have done 200 km cross-country fights after
taking over a glider in mid afternoon.

My club will also allow you to book a certain number of the club gliders
for the day, or the week, in advance, if you want to do something bigger
or enter a competition.

The club system allows me to fly gliders that I couldn't possibly afford
to buy myself. Think of it as being a big syndicate.

Other clubs have variations. My club has five single seaters - two
Juniors, two Discus 1s and a Pegase.

The Juniors can be flown by anybody, but early solo pilots have first
dibs and are encouraged do all three Silver legs in them. If flown off
the winch you only pay for the launch and any flight time in excess of 15
minutes.

The Discii and the Peg are collectively known as the High Performance
Fleet and are operated as a syndicate, the HPF scheme, which is limited
to 12 members. HPF Scheme members buy blocks of time up front and get
priority booking for these gliders. They are expected to be flown xc, can
be taken to Interclub League events (two day meets) and have been flown
in Regionals as team entries (I did that one year. We had a ball).
Anybody else can fly these gliders when no Scheme member wants them.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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