$75,000 2-33

Maybe 5%.
We are about 50 members, and the inflow of new members is not bad.
Now, if we had trash bins from Schweizer on display, we'd been long gone.
I've soloed and lateron instructed in Ka7's (which could be considered as the "European 2-33", just being 30 years ahead), but that was 30+ years ago. Who wants to dwelve on the middle ages?!

Certainly a Ka7 or your local variety teaches you how to fly, but so does any modern glider.

You can't have 2-33 in a club AND complain about dwindling membership. And yes - even in Europe we had these things, but must club managements managed to build up the switch over time. And tell those folks who claim that dinosaur gliders are the best way to learn the real thing... to go to hell.

So help us understand the economics of your operation. In round figures, you're sitting on about $1M (USD) worth of aircraft when I include our two towplanes. Maybe a little more or a little less depending on how you acquired the Duos and K-21s (used vs new) as well as the Maule, but close enough..

Insurance alone on this would run about $25K. Engine rebuild fund and refinish fund another $10K/year or something like that. Maintenance at least $5K assuming the ships are already in good condition. So,let's assume that operating costs for the fleet alone are in the neighborhood of $50K/year when we throw in a bunch of other stuff like supplies, licensing, hangar rent, etc.. That would be something like $1000/member based on 50 members with no money going into a capital fund (i.e. to acquire aircraft). Given the clubs total hours at around 1200 per the Website (including a fair amount of rides), that means that the average pilot logs a bit over 20 hours per year (though given a usual mix in a club, I'm sure there are a small few who account for a significant percentage).

Even assuming you accumulated $1M worth of ships over 25 years, that would mean averaging another $40k or so going to the capital fund each year on average.

Show me where I went wrong with the math.

Erik Mann

On Monday, March 12, 2018 at 3:04:47 PM UTC-4, Tango Whisky wrote:
Maybe 5%.
We are about 50 members, and the inflow of new members is not bad.
Now, if we had trash bins from Schweizer on display, we'd been long gone.
I've soloed and lateron instructed in Ka7's (which could be considered as the "European 2-33", just being 30 years ahead), but that was 30+ years ago. Who wants to dwelve on the middle ages?!

Certainly a Ka7 or your local variety teaches you how to fly, but so does any modern glider.

You can't have 2-33 in a club AND complain about dwindling membership. And yes - even in Europe we had these things, but must club managements managed to build up the switch over time. And tell those folks who claim that dinosaur gliders are the best way to learn the real thing... to go to hell.

On Mon, 12 Mar 2018 13:06:14 -0700 (PDT), Papa3
wrote:

So help us understand the economics of your operation. In round figures, you're sitting on about $1M (USD) worth of aircraft when I include our two towplanes. Maybe a little more or a little less depending on how you acquired the Duos and K-21s (used vs new) as well as the Maule, but close enough.

Insurance alone on this would run about $25K. Engine rebuild fund and refinish fund another $10K/year or something like that. Maintenance at least $5K assuming the ships are already in good condition. So,let's assume that operating costs for the fleet alone are in the neighborhood of $50K/year when we throw in a bunch of other stuff like supplies, licensing, hangar rent, etc.. That would be something like $1000/member based on 50 members with no money going into a capital fund (i.e. to acquire aircraft). Given the clubs total hours at around 1200 per the Website (including a fair amount of rides), that means that the average pilot logs a bit over 20 hours per year (though given a usual mix in a club, I'm sure there are a small few who account for a significant percentage).

Even assuming you accumulated $1M worth of ships over 25 years, that would mean averaging another $40k or so going to the capital fund each year on average.

Show me where I went wrong with the math.


Your numbers are wrong.
TW is flying in Switzerland, so his numbers are different from mine



But let me tell you some numbers of my club:
www.djk-landau.de

ASK-21
Ka-8b
Valentin Mistral C
DG-300
ASW-24
ASW-27
Duo Dicus XL

Dimona motorglider
Robin DR-300 Remorqeur tow plane.


These are our prices:
https://www.djk-landau.de/fliegen/kosten/


EUR 350 per year, including ALL flying time and ALL winch launches.
Flat rate. Needs to be payed by everone, even by private owners who
never fly a club glider.

Annual fee:
EUR 160 adult
EUR 80 if younger than 21
EUR 120 if older than 21 but without income (students)
EUR 40 for non-active members

That's all.

85 active members, 120 non active members.
Total income of the glider operation about 46.000 (from now on all
prices in Euro EUR).

Numbers from 2017 (only club gliders):
1.600 launches per year, 1.400 of them winch launches


Major expenditures for the glider fleet:
Insurance: 14.000 (Kasko insurance for 21, Duo, Dimona, ASW-27)

Maintenance: 1.500 (only spare parts, we do all the maintenance by
ourselves)

Winch: 12.000 (fuel, replacement cables,...)


Motorglider and tow plane are priced that they pay themselves.

In Germany nearly all clubs, including mine, are doing 90% of their
launches with the winch.

Our DR-300 tow plane has got a Lycoming engine with a TBO of 2.000 hrs
and an overhaul cost of 30.000.
But it only does 80 hrs per year (600 launches) - so we are talking
about an engine rebuilt fund of only 2.000 per year.



All in all we make a profit of about 18.000 per year, which we
currently use to repay the loans for the Duo and the new EUR 250.000
hangar whe built five years ago.

We own our airfield and paid 130.000 DM for it in 1999.




One thing you need to know:
The clubs in Europe never simply buy a new glider from scratch, but
they are usually able to sell their current glider for good money
before it gets old, so the step from a Ka-7 to ASK-13 50 years ago was
about 15.000 (D-mark in these days), from ASK-13 to ASK-21 30 years
ago 55.000, and so on.

Therefore there might be a huge value of the glider fleet on paper,
but a big part of it was paid by selling older gliders.

Nearly all clubs in Germany, Austria (both countries where gliding is
cheap compared to other parts of the world) don't pay any hangar rent
- all the hangars were built (and are owned) by the clubs.

Nearly any club owns a club house which makes a stay on the airfield
cheap and hels a lot to create comradeship.#

No paid line runners, no paid aircraft maintenace guys, no paid tow
pilots, no paid tower crews.


Did this posting answer your questions?



Cheers
Andreas

Le lundi 12 mars 2018 21:06:16 UTC+1, Papa3 a écritÂ*:
So help us understand the economics of your operation. In round figures, you're sitting on about $1M (USD) worth of aircraft when I include our two towplanes. Maybe a little more or a little less depending on how you acquired the Duos and K-21s (used vs new) as well as the Maule, but close enough.

Operation of a glider (all included) comes to about $5000 in fixed cost per year.
We spend something like $30k in various rents. In total, the soaring operation is about $70k in fixed costs p.a.
Members pay an annual fee of $650, regardless wether they fly their own glider (about 15 owners) or club gliders.
Those flying club glider either buy a slot of 30 h for $700, or 70 h for $1400. These slots can't be brought into the following year. Very few actually pay by the hour.
We do quite a number of introductory flights, which generate some revenue.
Tugs are self-financing, and rates are $5-7 per minute. Tug pilots are not paid.

No-one gets paid any money. Every member is required to put in 4-5 days per year for ground operation or maintainance. Instructors are excempted as they put in an average of 10 days riding the back seat.

The fleets was built up over a span of 50 years, so incrementals were small (and covered by net cashflow). "What's wrong with a 2-33" - guys don't exist in our club, or don't exist anymore. The last financially significant switch (changing 2 Pilatus B4 for 2 Discus) was done 15 years ago, and 5 years ago the Discus were switched for LS8-18.

Many contributors argue that everything should be cheap, and even cheaper is better, because low costs means more new pilots. Yet no evidence of this causality is available. We got to stop pretend that this is cheap hobby, it is not. But at the same time it is not expensive compared to many other activities. Gliding is in the reach most educated/working adults, they can afford it IF THEY WANT. I know clubs that offered introductory flights at ridiculously low price to attract new pilots. Nobody came, they thought that "it probably is not much fun because it is so cheap". Then they implemented hefty price increase and voila, flights were booked full. Price is the product?

I don't get it. How do clubs leverage selling older two seaters for a good price to fund new ones if everyone is doing it? If everyone is on the upgrade path who would pay a high price for ASK-13 to allow the purchase of ASK-21? And where are they now, are there low budget Euro clubs using old stuff?

Le mardi 13 mars 2018 13:28:12 UTC+1, a écritÂ*:
I don't get it. How do clubs leverage selling older two seaters for a good price to fund new ones if everyone is doing it? If everyone is on the upgrade path who would pay a high price for ASK-13 to allow the purchase of ASK-21? And where are they now, are there low budget Euro clubs using old stuff?

There is a time window where you can do this. Getting rid of a Ka7 for an ASK13 was a good thing in the seventies, and then you would swap them maybe 15 years later for an ASK21. At that time, in main two-seater in France (the Bijave) had been grounded, so there was a high demand in France for ASK13's.

If you just kept on flying the Ka7 throughout the ninties, you just missed the train (and there are still a lot of clubs in Europe who fly old fleets).. One reason for that is that in order to keep your fleet at an attractive level, you do need some cashflow, and this is tricky when your club is too small, and/or mainly consists of these old guys who think that there is no reason to incrementally change to a decent fleets.

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 05:28:09 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

I don't get it. How do clubs leverage selling older two seaters for a good price to fund new ones if everyone is doing it? If everyone is on the upgrade path who would pay a high price for ASK-13 to allow the purchase of ASK-21? And where are they now, are there low budget Euro clubs using old stuff?

Key factor is to sell the older glider early as long as it's still
valuable and the successor still halfways cheap. The difference gets
bigger the longer ypou wait to sell the older glider.

There are still many clubs in Europe that are using older trainers
like ASK-13 or Puchacz, nearly all of them from the former Eastern
Block where private gliding clubs could only start after 1990.

On Tuesday, March 13, 2018 at 3:55:41 AM UTC-4, krasw wrote:
Many contributors argue that everything should be cheap, and even cheaper is better, because low costs means more new pilots. Yet no evidence of this causality is available. We got to stop pretend that this is cheap hobby, it is not. But at the same time it is not expensive compared to many other activities. Gliding is in the reach most educated/working adults, they can afford it IF THEY WANT. I know clubs that offered introductory flights at ridiculously low price to attract new pilots. Nobody came, they thought that "it probably is not much fun because it is so cheap". Then they implemented hefty price increase and voila, flights were booked full. Price is the product?

you want the answer why we still use them?

•because they are inexpensive to purchase, fly, and own
•there's a ****load of them here
•it's fun to hang out the rear window while a student flies
•we americans are a proud race, and they are american gliders (ok no but really, people here just like them) im intensely displeased at the lack of options when it comes to american made options.
•students beat on aircraft, and 2-33's are robust. (how many times has your club had to repair the nosewheel of a k-21?)

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 06:48:13 -0700 (PDT), ND
wrote:

and 2-33's are robust. (how many times has your club had to repair the nosewheel of a k-21?)

Since 1986 when we purchased our ASK-21 (which now as 7.000 hrs):
Never.