Future Club Training Gliders

At 16:42 09 November 2010, bildan wrote:

If they persisted, they got pitched a $7,000+ "training package" in a
2-33. Once they looked at the 2-33, that deal became a really hard
sell.

A few of them walked over to the club to find they could train in a
well maintained G-103 or DG 505 for a small fraction of the cost, then
passed the word around. The 2-33 deal became nearly impossible to
sell.

I'll bet the commercial operator really appreciates the competition. Do
you not advertise? Why would *anyone* patronize the commercial operation
if you guys are available on the same field?

Certainly if a club can afford to put that kind of gliders on the field,
it's a much better situation than flying 2-33s (at least in some ways).
But my club would have to sell off our entire fleet of five gliders (wanna
buy a Blanik?) to finance just half the price of an ASK-21. It's really
hard to see how we get from here to there, particularly in these
hard-pressed times.

Jim Beckman

On Nov 10, 10:50*am, Jim Beckman wrote:
Certainly if a club can afford to put that kind of gliders on the field,
it's a much better situation than flying 2-33s (at least in some ways).
But my club would have to sell off our entire fleet of five gliders (wanna
buy a Blanik?) to finance just half the price of an ASK-21. *It's really
hard to see how we get from here to there, particularly in these
hard-pressed times. *

It's a tricky decision.

There are all kinds of people in our club, from students and
unemployed, to the merely struggling, to some reasonably wealthy
people. We are fortunate in that over the years some of the more
wealthy members have been prepared to lend money to the club at quite
nominal interest rates (e.g. 3%).

We recently bought two 18m fixed gear DG1000's (and one nice Cobra
trailer, and transponder and Cambridge 302 in one of them at present)
to use for everything from rides to basic training to early solos to
serious cross country.

In order to do this we sold a PW5, a Std Libelle, a Janus, and 2 x
Twin Astir. We also owe approximately 2/3 of a DG1000 to a club
member, which will take 5 - 10 years to pay back at current usage
levels.

I personally was opposed to turning 8 bums on seats in the sky into
only 4 (actually 9 into 5 as we retained another PW5), but the reality
is that it was a very rare day that all 8 were in use, especially as
there were only two or three in the club who liked the Janus (and half
the instructors weren't even rated in it) and the four 1970's aircraft
were starting to become more maintainance-intensive.

I'm now convinced that it was well worth turning 3 two-seaters into 2.
The DGs clearly outperform everything except the Janus, and are far
more pleasant to fly, especially the accommodations in the back seat.

I do think we would have been well-advised to keep the PW5 though.
Selling it shortened the loan payback hardly at all, and they're
excellent for early cross-country exploration. We've already started
to see early-solo students accidentally outlanding the DG1000's
(safely so far) but it's putting a hard to replace asset at more risk
than may be wise.