Growth in soaring

2cernauta2 wrote:
Intruduction courses are much better at retaining new members.
Costs are not the main reason for not getting into gliding.
Fear is.
Gliding is dangerous, IMVHO, or at least perceived as dangerous.

I have spoken with quite a number of people who have quit gliding
after a few or many years. Cost is the first topic they provide, but
if you ask some questions, available time (work, family) is generally
the 2nd. The third is having achieved only small goals (or, high
expectations and lesser results; results/costs ratio); this is
definitely harder to admit for most.
Finally, two topics get into play, and I strongly believe they are
most important:
. the quality of sociality in the club, or the bad quality of human
relations (quarrelling between groups of members, disagreements, poor
management of the club, sometimes even intrusions in very private
aspects of family life...)
. safety of the sport. In the 15 years of my gliding career, my
phonebook spots a black line in almost every page.

Sociality can be very hard to manage, bust must be addressed by the
club's management. When fights and quarrelling are going on, and the
members feel they have to "choose which side they should stand", or
they struggle to keep themselves out of the fight, my experience is
that the club will loose about 10percent of its members. And most of
the rest are quite unhappy.
I expect that commercial operations might be less prone to this
problem. If the operator is customer-oriented, of course.

Safety, and the achievement of reasonable goals, can in part be
addressed by a group of volunteers devoted to personalized, advanced
cross-country techiniques. But, it takes some very special kind of
people, to stay in gliding for a long time at high level of
commitment, like most of us do. We can't expect everyone to be like
us.

I believe any promotion/retention strategy can't be complete if it
doesn't aim at these two topics also.

Aldo Cernezzi

Fantastic analysis, Aldo. Each of your points are so true. I have seen
each one occurring. In particular a lot of casualties, even for very
good pilots, even instructors. I would only add that, since only few
people will retain the necessary high level of commitment for a long
time, it is essential to gain new recruits among young people who are
the best fit to begin gliding (learn faster, progress faster, etc.).
And i maintain that number one factor why young people interested in
this activity don't join is money. For slightly older people it is time.
Of course, to attract young people, another essential factor is good
social management and the presence of other young people including
ladies. You will have hard time to attract young people in a crowd of
retirees. To say the truth, in the clubs i have seen, there has always
been a steady influx of young guys and girls. But after one of two
years, most of them have disappeared by lack of money-time-motivation,
whatever.






--

Michel TALON

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:49:41 +0000 (UTC),
(Michel Talon) wrote:

Price is
LS4-Janus-Pegase 17,40 euros/hour
LS 8, 15, 18 mètres 23,50 euros/hour
Duo-Discus 30,60 euros/hour

Pretty amazing prices (I think at Soissons it's significantly
cheaper). I definitely couldn't have afforded to start up gliding in
your club, nor would I have fun today if I calculated the cost for a
simple 500 km triangle...


So i clearly see something of the order of 2000 euros/year, and i am
quite sure you will have hard time to find less expensive while still
decent around Paris - and by the way i doubt very much it is less
expensive in the Alps.

I wonder what you are doing with all that money. Do you need to rent
your airfield?

In my club (with gliders at least as good as yours) the total cost per
year doesn't exceed 600 Euros per year.


Bye
Andreas

On Mar 21, 7:01 am, 2cernauta2 wrote:
On 16 Mar 2007 11:28:12 -0700, "fred"
wrote:

A question often asked is "Why has the glider activity declined?"
A well known ride operator told me that 1800gliderrides expected to
sell FOUR MILLION in rides in 2007.

I live in Italy, and I base my observations on club-managed soaring
activity. Almost no commercial operations are available in my country,
and are quite rare in Europe.

I believe that promotion of our sport can't benefit from glider rides.
Glider riders are expensive, not much fun, and a typical "been there,
done that" situation.
Intruduction courses are much better at retaining new members.
Costs are not the main reason for not getting into gliding.
Fear is.
Gliding is dangerous, IMVHO, or at least perceived as dangerous.

I have spoken with quite a number of people who have quit gliding
after a few or many years. Cost is the first topic they provide, but
if you ask some questions, available time (work, family) is generally
the 2nd. The third is having achieved only small goals (or, high
expectations and lesser results; results/costs ratio); this is
definitely harder to admit for most.
Finally, two topics get into play, and I strongly believe they are
most important:
. the quality of sociality in the club, or the bad quality of human
relations (quarrelling between groups of members, disagreements, poor
management of the club, sometimes even intrusions in very private
aspects of family life...)
. safety of the sport. In the 15 years of my gliding career, my
phonebook spots a black line in almost every page.

Sociality can be very hard to manage, bust must be addressed by the
club's management. When fights and quarrelling are going on, and the
members feel they have to "choose which side they should stand", or
they struggle to keep themselves out of the fight, my experience is
that the club will loose about 10percent of its members. And most of
the rest are quite unhappy.
I expect that commercial operations might be less prone to this
problem. If the operator is customer-oriented, of course.

Safety, and the achievement of reasonable goals, can in part be
addressed by a group of volunteers devoted to personalized, advanced
cross-country techiniques. But, it takes some very special kind of
people, to stay in gliding for a long time at high level of
commitment, like most of us do. We can't expect everyone to be like
us.

I believe any promotion/retention strategy can't be complete if it
doesn't aim at these two topics also.

Aldo Cernezzi


Aldo,

I agree with your assesment. The social aspect of soaring is the
downfall of our sport and the society behind it.

Jacek
Washington State

Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:49:41 +0000 (UTC),
(Michel Talon) wrote:

Price is
LS4-Janus-Pegase 17,40 euros/hour
LS 8, 15, 18 mètres 23,50 euros/hour
Duo-Discus 30,60 euros/hour

Pretty amazing prices (I think at Soissons it's significantly

Well it is certainly cheaper where it is impossible to fly. If i look at
Vinon's tarifs
http://www.vinon-soaring.fr
they are exactly of the same order, except the complete "forfait" is
more expensive:
"FORFAIT HEURES ILLIMITEES Toutes machines : 2200 euros".

cheaper). I definitely couldn't have afforded to start up gliding in
your club, nor would I have fun today if I calculated the cost for a
simple 500 km triangle...

Happy to share this deduction with you. This is precisely the point a
lot of people are contesting.



So i clearly see something of the order of 2000 euros/year, and i am
quite sure you will have hard time to find less expensive while still
decent around Paris - and by the way i doubt very much it is less
expensive in the Alps.

I wonder what you are doing with all that money. Do you need to rent
your airfield?

I have been member of this club, but mainly of Buno-Bonnevaux, which is
more expensive but has paid people to do instruction and work on gliders
in winter. In my experience, pure volunteer organizations are very
unfriendly, and one is happier in more professional ones, even paying
more. Anyways, both these clubs have to rent the airfield, of course,
pay for cutting grass, for water and electricity, for the installations,
for the periodic vists of the gliders, and planes, for reparations, and
whatever. Thsese clubs provide detailed expenses to members and i have
never seen anything suspicious.


In my club (with gliders at least as good as yours) the total cost per
year doesn't exceed 600 Euros per year.


Yes it is not the first time i hear that prices are infinitely less in
Germany. I have never understood how it is possible, since, as i said,
the above French prices can be justified very easily, and are
homogeneous among similar big clubs with modern fleet. Perhaps you have
enormous aids from german state that you are not aware of. From what i
have been told, things are worse in Italy, etc.



Bye
Andreas

--

Michel TALON

2cernauta2 wrote:
....
Sociality can be very hard to manage, bust must be addressed by the
club's management. When fights and quarrelling are going on, and the
members feel they have to "choose which side they should stand", or
they struggle to keep themselves out of the fight, my experience is
that the club will loose about 10percent of its members. And most of
the rest are quite unhappy.
I expect that commercial operations might be less prone to this
problem. If the operator is customer-oriented, of course.

Regardless of orientation, commercial operators can fire problems - even
if the operator is wrong. At least the level of conflict is reduced and
that is more important than being right.

Clubs OTOH, have no real means of imposing discipline and conflict is
very hard to control. My wife, who lectures and researches in this area
tells me that it is actually a wonder that any voluntary association
survives for more than 5 years.

One feature of gliding clubs that helps them survive is the fixed assets
- buildings, site, aircraft, etc - which survive power struggles,
splits and personality conflicts. What changes are the people in
control. In our area, one club's splits have been the foundation of at
least three others which all prosper so there is a positive side!

GC

On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:21:02 +0000 (UTC),
(Michel Talon) wrote:

Yes it is not the first time i hear that prices are infinitely less in
Germany. I have never understood how it is possible, since, as i said,
the above French prices can be justified very easily, and are
homogeneous among similar big clubs with modern fleet. Perhaps you have
enormous aids from german state that you are not aware of. From what i
have been told, things are worse in Italy, etc.

This is what puzzles me, too - German clubs have absolutely no aids
from German authorities. On the other hand, we don't employ anyone at
all - all work is done by the members of the club.

From Soissons (which is basically a pure volunteer-driven club) they
had to pay one full-time employee who took care of the "tower",
airfield and club house. This one guy alone costs more than my club's
entire fleet - maybe this is the difference?


Bye
Andreas

There is almost no aid from the German government. However, everey single
work is done by volunteers (including building the very infrastructe) and
mostly, launching is done by a winch.
Moreover, clubs often started out to build their first (wooden) gliders
themselves, and than reselling/renewing on regular intervalls so that after
50 years of that process, their capital base is pretty good (owning the
equipments, no loans, often owning the airfield).
One of the main sources for that is that Germany has lost both wars, and
powered flight was forbidden for years. The result is that anybody wanted to
fly turned to gliding... and even today, the density of glider pilots as 3
times higher than in France (make that: 3 times more volunteer work force
available to set up things).

"Michel Talon" wrote in message
...
Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:49:41 +0000 (UTC),
(Michel Talon) wrote:

Price is
LS4-Janus-Pegase 17,40 euros/hour
LS 8, 15, 18 mètres 23,50 euros/hour
Duo-Discus 30,60 euros/hour

Pretty amazing prices (I think at Soissons it's significantly

Well it is certainly cheaper where it is impossible to fly. If i look at
Vinon's tarifs
http://www.vinon-soaring.fr
they are exactly of the same order, except the complete "forfait" is
more expensive:
"FORFAIT HEURES ILLIMITEES Toutes machines : 2200 euros".

cheaper). I definitely couldn't have afforded to start up gliding in
your club, nor would I have fun today if I calculated the cost for a
simple 500 km triangle...

Happy to share this deduction with you. This is precisely the point a
lot of people are contesting.



So i clearly see something of the order of 2000 euros/year, and i am
quite sure you will have hard time to find less expensive while still
decent around Paris - and by the way i doubt very much it is less
expensive in the Alps.

I wonder what you are doing with all that money. Do you need to rent
your airfield?

I have been member of this club, but mainly of Buno-Bonnevaux, which is
more expensive but has paid people to do instruction and work on gliders
in winter. In my experience, pure volunteer organizations are very
unfriendly, and one is happier in more professional ones, even paying
more. Anyways, both these clubs have to rent the airfield, of course,
pay for cutting grass, for water and electricity, for the installations,
for the periodic vists of the gliders, and planes, for reparations, and
whatever. Thsese clubs provide detailed expenses to members and i have
never seen anything suspicious.


In my club (with gliders at least as good as yours) the total cost per
year doesn't exceed 600 Euros per year.


Yes it is not the first time i hear that prices are infinitely less in
Germany. I have never understood how it is possible, since, as i said,
the above French prices can be justified very easily, and are
homogeneous among similar big clubs with modern fleet. Perhaps you have
enormous aids from german state that you are not aware of. From what i
have been told, things are worse in Italy, etc.



Bye
Andreas

--

Michel TALON

Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:21:02 +0000 (UTC),
(Michel Talon) wrote:

Yes it is not the first time i hear that prices are infinitely less in
Germany. I have never understood how it is possible, since, as i said,
the above French prices can be justified very easily, and are
homogeneous among similar big clubs with modern fleet. Perhaps you have
enormous aids from german state that you are not aware of. From what i
have been told, things are worse in Italy, etc.

This is what puzzles me, too - German clubs have absolutely no aids
from German authorities. On the other hand, we don't employ anyone at
all - all work is done by the members of the club.

From Soissons (which is basically a pure volunteer-driven club) they
had to pay one full-time employee who took care of the "tower",
airfield and club house. This one guy alone costs more than my club's
entire fleet - maybe this is the difference?

Sincerely i don't know. At" Moret sur Loing" (CVVFR) there is absolutely
nobody employed, so this cannot be the explanation of the numbers i have
shown. As far as i know, an important part of the budget goes into
building provisions to buy new gliders. If you want to maintain your
fleet in reasonably current state, you have to regularly sell old
gliders and buy new ones, which are of course more expensive than the old
ones you sold. So you have to introduce an input stream of cash, or you
have to borrow money, which means paying twice the amount you would have
paid if you had made economies. As far as i know the people running the
CVVFR were very conscious of this necessity, and have always made
provisions. Of course one accident, broken glider, etc. ruins part of
these provisions. I think an important factor is also the question of
towing. If you have planes, first towing fees introduce an important
burden for users, but also for the club, periodic visits are very
expensive, etc. But the clubs i know are not in a position to use
winches because the airfields are too small.



Bye
Andreas

--

Michel TALON

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:11:16 +0000 (UTC),
(Michel Talon) wrote:

Sincerely i don't know. At" Moret sur Loing" (CVVFR) there is absolutely
nobody employed, so this cannot be the explanation of the numbers i have
shown.

Hmmm...

As far as i know, an important part of the budget goes into
building provisions to buy new gliders.

.... the same here...

If you want to maintain your
fleet in reasonably current state, you have to regularly sell old
gliders and buy new ones, which are of course more expensive than the old
ones you sold.

Yes. But that's manageable, too.


So you have to introduce an input stream of cash, or you
have to borrow money, which means paying twice the amount you would have
paid if you had made economies.

In my club the members (instead of a bank) award low-interest loans
to the club - this works extremely well.


As far as i know the people running the
CVVFR were very conscious of this necessity, and have always made
provisions. Of course one accident, broken glider, etc. ruins part of
these provisions.

Hmmm... no insurances?
The major part of my club's income goes directly to the physical
damage insurance - each of our gliders is insured.

I think an important factor is also the question of
towing. If you have planes, first towing fees introduce an important
burden for users, but also for the club, periodic visits are very
expensive, etc. But the clubs i know are not in a position to use
winches because the airfields are too small.

Indeed - aerotows are a major factor that makes gliding expensive (not
only in France...), but I've seen many hige French airfields that
could have have easily coped with winch operations.
Soissons even had a winch, but never used (and eventually sold) it.


Bye
Andreas

Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:11:16 +0000 (UTC),
(Michel Talon) wrote:

Sincerely i don't know. At" Moret sur Loing" (CVVFR) there is absolutely
nobody employed, so this cannot be the explanation of the numbers i have
shown.

Hmmm...

As far as i know, an important part of the budget goes into
building provisions to buy new gliders.

... the same here...

If you want to maintain your
fleet in reasonably current state, you have to regularly sell old
gliders and buy new ones, which are of course more expensive than the old
ones you sold.

Yes. But that's manageable, too.


So you have to introduce an input stream of cash, or you
have to borrow money, which means paying twice the amount you would have
paid if you had made economies.

In my club the members (instead of a bank) award low-interest loans
to the club - this works extremely well.


As far as i know the people running the
CVVFR were very conscious of this necessity, and have always made
provisions. Of course one accident, broken glider, etc. ruins part of
these provisions.

Hmmm... no insurances?
The major part of my club's income goes directly to the physical
damage insurance - each of our gliders is insured.

I think an important factor is also the question of
towing. If you have planes, first towing fees introduce an important
burden for users, but also for the club, periodic visits are very
expensive, etc. But the clubs i know are not in a position to use
winches because the airfields are too small.

Indeed - aerotows are a major factor that makes gliding expensive (not
only in France...), but I've seen many hige French airfields that
could have have easily coped with winch operations.
Soissons even had a winch, but never used (and eventually sold) it.

How does airfield ownership/rental affect the situation in Germany and
France?

In the UK club two-seat insurance has rocketed over the last couple of
years to the point that my club can no longer afford to operate our T.21
- its the third party cover, not the hull insurance, that's hit clubs
here. The T.21 is of course worth nothing but, as its only flown on nice
summer days its 3rd party insurance rate per hour is huge.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |