$75,000 2-33

Maybe it's training, maybe it's pilots.
When I have been checked out in a -21, Grob twin, etc., (at several US locations, HHSC was one) once they see my hours in various single seat glass, there is no discussion of the ship (TO, stall, handling, etc.).
The ONLY real concern was, "minimum energy landing, tail first......we HATE fixing the nose wheel!".

As to the rest of this thread, I'm just reading, not commenting. Everyone has their idea, this thread likely won't change anything.
Yes, I started in, and trained others in, the 2-33, but with steam gauges, not a glass panel.
Carry on.

Le mardi 13 mars 2018 14:48:15 UTC+1, ND a écritÂ*:
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?)

I have no problem with you having this opinion. Just don't complain about dwindling membership, or average ages of members being somewhere north of 60....

As for inexpensive... if having 2-33's in your fleet makes that you can't attract sufficient new (and young!) members, that's probably the most expensive way of flying in the long run.

As for sturdiness - we never had a collapsed nose wheel on the ASK21.

On Tuesday, March 13, 2018 at 10:46:07 AM UTC-4, Tango Whisky wrote:
Le mardi 13 mars 2018 14:48:15 UTC+1, ND a écritÂ*:
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?)

I have no problem with you having this opinion. Just don't complain about dwindling membership, or average ages of members being somewhere north of 60...

As for inexpensive... if having 2-33's in your fleet makes that you can't attract sufficient new (and young!) members, that's probably the most expensive way of flying in the long run.

As for sturdiness - we never had a collapsed nose wheel on the ASK21.

ND's opinion comes from growing out of the largest and most active junior program in the US.
They have no problem attracting and keeping young people.
Those kids don't know that they are not having fun learning in 2-33's.
I can say the same for our club.
I have been close to about a dozen K-21's, including 2 in our club. Of those, more than half have had the nose wheel broken(none in our club while we've had them).
We also use our '21's for contest flying as part of our advanced training.
Modernizing the fleet should be a part of a long term plan, but it takes time to build the equity needed to do so. Our 2-33's paid for getting started on our first '21.
UH

On Tuesday, March 13, 2018 at 8:48:15 AM UTC-5, ND wrote:

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?)

1. Not at $75k they aren't! (yeah, unique case, but you see any other 2-33 for sale?)
2. Not really - most of the 2-33s out there are really trash.
3. Yeah, that's what Soaring is all about! Try paragliding, you can hang everything out!
4. 'Murica. Nuff said. PS - Last time I was in France, Germany, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, or the UK, those guys were pretty proud too! And they seem OK with nice German Glass...
5. 2-33s are NOT more robust than K-21s. That's Fake News. They just don't require as much skill to land, and land slower (ie less energy). Funny how we have a problem in US breaking K-21 and G-103 nosewheels, yet nobody else seems to? Could that be because pilots trained in 2-33s are having problems transitioning to the extremely high performance Euro trainers? Naw, it couldn't be that simple...

It's interesting that our club (SLSA) seems to have evolved to almost the same financial and operational structure as the successful European clubs. We own all our assets (field, hangars, aircraft) outright, do our own maintenance, have work parties (although not as demanding as the Euros), and are working towards an all-glass fleet. Although we will keep our 1-26 (for the open canopy) and our K-13 (because: Wood!).

We do need a nicer clubhouse. Plotting underway...

Kirk

At 19:04 12 March 2018, 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
t=
he "European 2-33", just being 30 years ahead), but that was 30+
years
ago.=
Who wants to dwell 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.


OK, how many of you USA RAS posters have belonged to a European
club? There is a big difference between Europe and the USA. In
European clubs ALL members are expected to WORK (no
exceptions) On a flying day, one had to be at the airport by 9 AM
(in my club in Germany) to help unpack the hangar and assemble
whatever was kept in trailers. Once the gliders were ready, there
was a meeting to assign who got to fly what and when. Private
owners were not exempt. If you weren't flying, you were expected
to help wherever you could. After your flight as well. Nobody was
allowed to leave until the gliders had all been put away, and the
hangar doors were closed.

In the winter there was maintenance work to be done every week in
the evening. The club also took on subcontract work making
electrical cables for a local electronics firm. At the end of the winter
work season, all of the man hours were added up and divided by the
number of members in the club. If the number of hours one put in
was at the average or above, one got a "thank you". If one's hours
were below average, one received a bill to pay cash for the shortfall
in hours not worked.

This system worked to counter the problem that most USA clubs
have where only a few dedicated folks do all of the work, while the
rest can't seem to be bothered to help. It seems that most US
glider pilots want a country club atmosphere where they can reserve
a take-off time, show up at the last minute with everything already
set up for them, go fly, and then leave right after landing so that
someone else can put everything away. This may be fine for a
commercial operation, but USA pilots don't want to pay the
commercial operation's higher fees (due to providing all of these
services). The USA pilots want the lower club rates without having
to put the work in themselves.

Most European clubs also started many years ago, so what you see
now are the fruits of many years of dedicated teamwork. The
founders of my old club in Germany went door to door asking for
donations so they could build their first primary glider back in the
early 1950's. It's sort of like the old ant vs grasshopper fable. The
USA grasshoppers are jealous of what the European ants have built
up over many years of working together. The problem I have seen
over many years, is that the typical average USA club members just
don't have the dedication or discipline to follow the proven European
model. Until that mentality changes, the differences between
equipment will continue to be dramatic, and the few hard working
members will continue to realize they are being taken advantage of,
burn themselves out, and leave to do other things. The slackers are
then left asking themselves "What happened?"

RO

Well said, Michael.


On Mon, 12 Mar 2018 20:39:06 +0000, Michael Opitz
wrote

At 19:04 12 March 2018, 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
t=
he "European 2-33", just being 30 years ahead), but that was 30+
years
ago.=
Who wants to dwell 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.


OK, how many of you USA RAS posters have belonged to a European
club? There is a big difference between Europe and the USA. In
European clubs ALL members are expected to WORK (no
exceptions) On a flying day, one had to be at the airport by 9 AM
(in my club in Germany) to help unpack the hangar and assemble
whatever was kept in trailers. Once the gliders were ready, there
was a meeting to assign who got to fly what and when. Private
owners were not exempt. If you weren't flying, you were expected
to help wherever you could. After your flight as well. Nobody was
allowed to leave until the gliders had all been put away, and the
hangar doors were closed.

In the winter there was maintenance work to be done every week in
the evening. The club also took on subcontract work making
electrical cables for a local electronics firm. At the end of the winter
work season, all of the man hours were added up and divided by the
number of members in the club. If the number of hours one put in
was at the average or above, one got a "thank you". If one's hours
were below average, one received a bill to pay cash for the shortfall
in hours not worked.

This system worked to counter the problem that most USA clubs
have where only a few dedicated folks do all of the work, while the
rest can't seem to be bothered to help. It seems that most US
glider pilots want a country club atmosphere where they can reserve
a take-off time, show up at the last minute with everything already
set up for them, go fly, and then leave right after landing so that
someone else can put everything away. This may be fine for a
commercial operation, but USA pilots don't want to pay the
commercial operation's higher fees (due to providing all of these
services). The USA pilots want the lower club rates without having
to put the work in themselves.

Most European clubs also started many years ago, so what you see
now are the fruits of many years of dedicated teamwork. The
founders of my old club in Germany went door to door asking for
donations so they could build their first primary glider back in the
early 1950's. It's sort of like the old ant vs grasshopper fable. The
USA grasshoppers are jealous of what the European ants have built
up over many years of working together. The problem I have seen
over many years, is that the typical average USA club members just
don't have the dedication or discipline to follow the proven European
model. Until that mentality changes, the differences between
equipment will continue to be dramatic, and the few hard working
members will continue to realize they are being taken advantage of,
burn themselves out, and leave to do other things. The slackers are
then left asking themselves "What happened?"

RO

On Monday, March 12, 2018 at 4:45:06 PM UTC-4, Michael Opitz wrote:
The problem I have seen
over many years, is that the typical average USA club members just
don't have the dedication or discipline to follow the proven European
model. Until that mentality changes, the differences between
equipment will continue to be dramatic, and the few hard working
members will continue to realize they are being taken advantage of,
burn themselves out, and leave to do other things. The slackers are
then left asking themselves "What happened?"

RO

Hey Mike,

I asked the question because I wanted to get these sorts of responses. Having flown extensively in UK and Europe, it's exactly the above that leaps out. The clubs do all of their own work and have the facilities required to do that work (shops and hangars). Being one of the guys who is becoming burned out (two full refinish projects in the last 5 years), it's that community that's missing in many clubs in the US (though not all).

One related thing though is that issue of owning the airfield. I noted the large club that bought their field for 190,000 DM in 1999 as mentioned by Andreas. If we tried to buy our airfield 20 years ago, the asking price was $5,000,000 (five million) and today it's north of $9,000,000. Because of land use policies in the US, there is little separation between City/Town and "country", so anything within 100 miles of a major population center is going to be incredibly expensive.

It's been my observation that most of the more successful clubs (again with some exceptions) have ownership of the airport. One of the big problems (as your club knows quite acutely) is that being able to afford an airport in the US anywhere near a major population center is a challenge. So, you either end up "out in the boondocks" (for our EU friends, that means a 2 hour to 3 hour drive from where people live) or you end up coexisting on a busy public use airport with a lot of issues (such as not being able to winch launch).

It's not that Americans are (all) stupid or stubborn, but the economics are fundamentally different. And yeah, some of us are incredibly stupid and stubborn.

Erik Mann

You could buy a farm with sufficient space to grade and seed your own
runway.Â* The farm house would make a terrific club house and the barn
would be turned into a shop.Â* That would be a lot cheaper that $5-9
million and wouldn't have to be too far away from population centers.

On 3/13/2018 10:10 AM, Papa3 wrote:
On Monday, March 12, 2018 at 4:45:06 PM UTC-4, Michael Opitz wrote:
The problem I have seen
over many years, is that the typical average USA club members just
don't have the dedication or discipline to follow the proven European
model. Until that mentality changes, the differences between
equipment will continue to be dramatic, and the few hard working
members will continue to realize they are being taken advantage of,
burn themselves out, and leave to do other things. The slackers are
then left asking themselves "What happened?"

RO
Hey Mike,

I asked the question because I wanted to get these sorts of responses. Having flown extensively in UK and Europe, it's exactly the above that leaps out. The clubs do all of their own work and have the facilities required to do that work (shops and hangars). Being one of the guys who is becoming burned out (two full refinish projects in the last 5 years), it's that community that's missing in many clubs in the US (though not all).

One related thing though is that issue of owning the airfield. I noted the large club that bought their field for 190,000 DM in 1999 as mentioned by Andreas. If we tried to buy our airfield 20 years ago, the asking price was $5,000,000 (five million) and today it's north of $9,000,000. Because of land use policies in the US, there is little separation between City/Town and "country", so anything within 100 miles of a major population center is going to be incredibly expensive.

It's been my observation that most of the more successful clubs (again with some exceptions) have ownership of the airport. One of the big problems (as your club knows quite acutely) is that being able to afford an airport in the US anywhere near a major population center is a challenge. So, you either end up "out in the boondocks" (for our EU friends, that means a 2 hour to 3 hour drive from where people live) or you end up coexisting on a busy public use airport with a lot of issues (such as not being able to winch launch).

It's not that Americans are (all) stupid or stubborn, but the economics are fundamentally different. And yeah, some of us are incredibly stupid and stubborn.

Erik Mann

--
Dan, 5J

On Tuesday, March 13, 2018 at 12:17:02 PM UTC-4, Dan Marotta wrote:
You could buy a farm with sufficient space to grade and seed your own
runway.Â* The farm house would make a terrific club house and the barn
would be turned into a shop.Â* That would be a lot cheaper that $5-9
million and wouldn't have to be too far away from population centers.


That's another good reason to move to New Mexico :-)

Finding a piece of land in the Northeast within say 80 miles of New York that meets reasonable size criteria (say 300 x 2000) and level and not bordered by Mcmansions is a Quixotic quest. We actually came close to buying a property many years ago (30+), but even at that time it was close to $750K IIRC (that's about $1.7M in today's dollars).

Mike's club (Nutmeg Soaring) moved out to a rural location a while back, but it's my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) that membership levels have been hard/impossible to grow due to the distance from where people live....

P3

At 16:51 13 March 2018, Papa3 wrote:

Mike's club (Nutmeg Soaring) moved out to a rural location a while
back,
bu=
t it's my understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) that membership
levels
ha=
ve been hard/impossible to grow due to the distance from where
people
live.=
...

P3


Yes Erik, it has been a challenge. When we were tenants in CT close
to NYC, we had 85-90 members, but we kept having to move from
one airport to another for various reasons. After 47 years of being
gypsy nomads, a core group decided that it was time to get a place
of our own. Property values in CT were out of reach, so our search
landed us about a 2 hour drive away in the northern foothills of the
Catskills. The price was right, so we set up a deal so that we could
afford to buy it. The club fractured in half over this decision. The
half that didn't go to Freehold either stopped flying, or went to other
operations in the NYC metro area. Members bought RV's, and we
put in campsites with hook-ups along the creek so that the CT folks
could spend the weekends without driving back and forth. Now, ~15
years later, a lot of the old CT members are aging out, and Greene
County is the poorest county in all of NY State, so although we do
have some local members, getting more is a challenge. We do seem
to be attracting some folks from the NYC area who have vacation
homes in the vicinity. The field is paid for, and so is our fleet of 3
Twin Astirs, one G-102, a 1-26 and a Pawnee tug. Things could be a
lot worse. It is a beautiful location. The neighbors are friendly, (no
noise complaints) and nobody can kick us out. It's all ours. That's
the main part.

www.NutmegSoaring.org

Don't think that real estate values in Europe are cheap either. They
are very expensive, though a number of clubs have had government
help in acquiring the airports they operate out of. Where there is a
will, there is a way. Sometimes it takes a lot of time and teamwork
to get to the goal though.

RO