FAA to ground 80% of Glider Training Fleet... it's just a question of when

On Apr 5, 9:38*am, David Salmon wrote:

Apologies if I say something that has already been said, but I haven't read
all the postings. You are obviously in a similar situation to that which
the UK was in many years ago, no local manufacturers, so the only place to
go was Europe, which most clubs have done.
However, you are a lot further away, and by the sound of it, there could be
a good market, so why does not some composite aircraft manufacturer try for
a licence? Why re-invent the wheel? There are a number of good designs
available.

Dave, those are excellent questions!

Part of the genesis of the Aurora project was the suggestion that a
license might be obtained to manufacture ASK21s locally. The question
then became, how would you manufacture them cost-effectively, with
minimum ramp-up time, and what might you do differently?

One of the big issues is that of obtaining production certification.
You don't just have to obtain license to manufacture a design that has
been certificated to meet regulatory requirements. You also have to
prove to the authorities that you can manufacture it so that every
single unit meets certification requirements. And that means
developing and implementing a variety of technologies that ensure that
you stay within allowable tolerances in several dimensions.

These considerations led to the idea that a training glider should be
designed from the start with the idea of making it as cost-effective
as possible to meet both design and production certification
requirements. And that led back towards a clean-sheet design. But this
isn't reinventing the wheel. This is developing a wheel that meets our
current needs, not someone else's needs from a bygone era.

Thanks, Bob K.