Short Wings Gliders

On Feb 2, 6:15*pm, Nyal Williams wrote:
This comes from EAA, IIRC. In the US, about 5% of the homebuilt aircraft
started up ever get finished. *Of those that do, many pass through three
owner/builders during the course of the completion, and the process
usually takes about eight years. * Of course, gliders are much simpler to
build.

Bill Piper was famous for saying, and I paraphrase, "It costs as much to
build a bad design as a good one. *Tell me the weight of an airplane and I
can tell you how much it costs to build it."

This formula would probably be true for any [X]RP structure in any
particular location and with any particular construction method.

At 01:31 03 February 2009, Bob Kuykendall wrote:



On Feb 2, 3:27=A0pm, (Michel Talon) wrote:

I agree with all you said, but i don't think this model is
sustainable.

Michel, I do agree with you in that as well; in the greater scheme of
things the way sailplane manufacturers have operated cannot continue
indefinitely. However, I don't think that how they are operating is
damaging to the sport of soaring or to the worldwide community of
soaring pilots, so I do think it is my place to tell them how to run
their businesses. I can, of course, think of ways that they could do
more to benfit the sport and its enthusiasts, but only at the cost of
damage to their profitability. But again, it is their business, not
mine.

Getting back to your point, there is one thing that the 19th century
robber barons got right when they used social darwinism to justify
their avarice and greed: natural selection in the business environment
will force businesses to adapt or to evolve, and those that do neither
can be counted upon to wither and die. So I think that if their
current business model is not sustainable, then the manufacturers will
develop one that is, or will leave the business altogether.

Gliding is still living because there has been tens of thousands
of people learning to fly in Germany, Brittany, France, etc. for
*small
cost*, thanks to the dedication of instructors doing that for free,
over
all those years...

If only we could get those tens of thousands of people to spend a few
days each building gliders. If, for example, 10000 people spent three
workdays (24 hours) building gliders, that'd be enough labor to
produce 120 training gliders or about 180 single-seaters.

Of course, you can't do that with a glider factory, the logistics of
transporting and accommodating that many temporary workers at a single
facility would be a nightmare. But if you look closely at the world of
homebuilt aircraft that is very nearly what you see, with thousands of
distributed "manufacturing centers" in tiny workshops all across the
world. Of course, instead of thousands of people spending a few hours
each what we have is hundreds of people spending a thousand hours
each, but I think it can work the other way as well.

Thanks again, Bob K.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

imagine then, being the one who designes the craft, builds the plugs,
tools, parts, systems and then assembles the whole
thing...............then spends about the same amount of time it took
to build the craft painting and polishing it.

Brad

Salut Michel,

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 10:14:48 +0000 (UTC),
(Michel Talon) wrote:


The glider factories seem to think that glider buyers are like Ferrari
buyers, who will accept to pay any price for their toys.

Facts prove that exactly THIS is what happens at the moment.
..
Just look at the sales numbers of new gliders: By far most of them are
18 meter class ships, half of them self-launchers. They hardly perform
better than a 15m glider (if better at all - some folks doubt this),
are nearly twice as expensive - and yet noone is buying 15m gliders
anymore.

You cannot afford to buy a new glider? Plenty of cheap, used gliders
on the market.
At least in Europe with its huge market of 2nd hand gliders, there's
simply no need to produce a cheap glider.


A closely previous post mentioned that Schleicher was paying heavy fees
to Delft University to get his computations done. Compare this to the
Pegase which was computed at ONERA for free. I have the impression that
the Pegase was the last glider whose aim was allowing a lot of people to
fly.

And incidentally, it shows that one can build a 15m glider of
reasonable simplicity, with performances not that different from the more
complex ASW 20, easier to fly, and much cheaper.


Hmmm.... Pegase... wasn't that the carbon copy of some German
design... fromm... err... aforesaid Schleicher...!?

Let's face it: Schleicher did 95 percent of the design work for the
Pegase (I already hear the French contributors to this group cry out
and start their protest postings).

But it's a completely different case if you are the competitor on a
market who needs to design technology that has to be leading-edge for
the next 15 to 20 years. Schleicher is still market leader... while
Centrair is gone. Clear case who made the right decisions on the long
run.

On Feb 2, 8:15*pm, Ian Cant wrote:
At 01:00 03 February 2009, Dan Silent wrote:

possible names for the new class:

"US class"
"NON EUROPE class"
"20PCT class"
"DWARF class"
"WC class"
"TINS4WS class"

OTHER SUGGESTIONS???

Volksclasse ?

SIFOW of course :-)

SIFOW = Span Is FOr Wimps.

That's what I told myself when I sold my share in an elderly Nimbus 2 and
bought a somewhat newer Standard Cirrus instead. But I still land out more
often in the 15m Cirrus than I did in the 21.9m (extended span) Nimbus.

I have tiny shares in an 18m Bocian 2 seater and a 13.5m Slingsby Swallow
(both Vintage) and I do fly them cross country, but I tend to pick the
better days for these flights. In the Swallow, I once made the mistake of
leaving a thermal before I reached the 5000ft cloudbase, because I didn't
think it was good enough, and got down to 500 ft before I contacted the
next one!.....Phew! I did however go on to complete the planned 220km O/R
flight.

Derek Copeland


At 03:46 03 February 2009, toad wrote:
On Feb 2, 8:15=A0pm, Ian Cant wrote:
At 01:00 03 February 2009, Dan Silent wrote:

possible names for the new class:

"US class"
"NON EUROPE class"
"20PCT class"
"DWARF class"
"WC class"
"TINS4WS class"

OTHER SUGGESTIONS???

Volksclasse ?

SIFOW of course :-)

At 03:46 03 February 2009, toad wrote:
On Feb 2, 8:15=A0pm, Ian Cant wrote:
At 01:00 03 February 2009, Dan Silent wrote:

possible names for the new class:

"US class"
"NON EUROPE class"
"20PCT class"
"DWARF class"
"WC class"
"TINS4WS class"

OTHER SUGGESTIONS???

Volksclasse ?


MAYBE BETTER:

PeopleKlasse

At 20:00 02 February 2009, Derek Copeland wrote:

So how *do* we explain the continuing (I hope) popularity of the
Schweizer
1-26 in America?

Masochism perhaps?

Maybe I'm missing something - is cross country soaring supposed to be
easy? OK, there may be places where you can't even sustain local soaring
in something like a 1-26, but I would guess there are very few such places
in the US. And I always figure that if you can stay up locally for an
hour or so without too much sweat, then you can go somewhere. Even in a
1-26.

One thing we've got organized at Blairstown is a season-long competition
for 1-26s, called the Do-It-Yourself contest. The contest manager
specifies a course of local turnpoints for a course of around Silver
Distance. This can (and should) be done without being beyond glide range
of the home field. But it demonstrates that flying to a specified point
and returning is not the same as just doodling from one thermal to another
to stay aloft locally. Every month of two the task changes, and there are
some very nice awards given at the end of the season. It's a pretty good
idea.

Jim Beckman

At 23:27 02 February 2009, Michel Talon wrote:

By the way, how many glider factories went bust? Similarly how many
of these car builders who wanted to produce luxury sports cars are
alive? Bugatti does airplane parts nowadays, similarly Hispano-Suiza,
etc.

Well, your own counter-example is Ferrari. And then there's Lamborghini,
Maserati, Aston-Martin and Bently. Personally, I'm glad there are folks
who can afford to buy those cars and run them on the roads, so I get to
see them. Although I have no realistic hope to ever own one.

One difference I see in sailplanes is that the continual push to build and
sell the latest and greatest performance model feeds the market in used
gliders that the rest of us can eventually aspire to own.

Jim Beckman

On Feb 2, 6:15*pm, Nyal Williams wrote:

This comes from EAA, IIRC. In the US, about 5% of the homebuilt aircraft
started up ever get finished...

It depends on what you mean by "started up." If by that you mean
purchased a plans set and maybe a few of the essentials for one of the
1950s or 1960s designs like FlyBaby or Tailwind, then, yeah, I'd have
to concede the point.

But there is no chance, none at all, that that kind of rate applies to
modern kit aircraft such as Vans pre-punched or quick-build kits for
airplanes like the RV-8. Near as I can tell, just about every one of
those gets finished, and relatively few trade hands in progress.

Collectively, the RV builders constitute one of the worlds most
prolific small aircraft manufacturers, as of yesterday they have
completed and flown 6069 small aircraft; that's about a thousand more
aircraft than are in the current US glider fleet:

http://www.vansaircraft.com/public/flights.htm

I work on an RV-8 two nights a week, and I've been to Vans factory in
Aurora, Oregon, and it has been an incredible experience to see what
you can do with a rational and balanced approach to a kit airplane.
With the pre-punched and pre-drilled holes, relatively few jigs are
required and the whole thing sort of just falls together in the
correct alignment. It is easy to get started, and easy to keep making
progress.

The comparison to even the fairly complete Schreder kits of the 1960s
and 1970s is like night and day. There's no stress and anxiety around
transferring measurements and doing hole layouts and wondering if
you're about to ruin a part by drilling a hole in the wrong spot. All
the bulkheads and ribs are formed to shape, and almost all the skins
are trimmed to outline.

What's really amazing about the RVs, and is definitely an example to
look to, is the resale value. Any reasonably well-built and flyable RV
will command a price that is substantially greater than the cost of
the kit plus the cost of the engine and avionics and other items that
went into it.

Thanks again, Bob K.

On Feb 2, 6:38*pm, Andreas Maurer wrote:

Schleicher is still market leader... while Centrair is gone...

That has always sort of puzzled me. My basic business philosophy is
"The early bird gets the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the
cheese." I am endlessly fascinated by counterexamples, they always
contain valuable lessons.

Thanks, Bob K.

One Class to rule them all, one Class to find them...

/runes