LS10 info

Here is a quote from the DG/LS web site...it is, in my humble opinion,
worrisome statement :

Economic aspects

Everyone knows that the approved certification of new models becomes
more and more expensive and the number of production planes will never
reach the quantities of the past.

The cost for developing the LS-10 will definitely be more than 500.000
Euros. This requires precise planning for a business like DG, to keep
the whole process at the lowest cost. This planning which we are doing
at this time will take much more time than we expected when we bought
LS.

End quote.

O'K.... the way I read this statement is, that gliders will be more and
more expensive and eventually this sport will be so expensive that only
very few and very rich people will be able to afford it. It is almost
identical to unlimited hydroplanes....during the 50's and 60's there
was a lots of boats, then we had a guy, who basically bought the sport
and in the 21st century this sport almost seized to exist. We are
flying nowadays old gliders. When I go to the glider port I see people
flying 20 and 30 + years old birds. Eventually those gliders will be
scraped. So, having said that, did anyone at this point in time thought
about what are we going to be flying 10 years from now? DG/LS is
selling gliders for $100 000 +....keep this in mind; a glider which
cost 57,000 Euros...that translates to about $70,000 US. Then you need
to buy a trailer, instruments, ship it across the Atlantic, pay your
taxes in your state. By the time you are done it is a $100,000 US + .
Do you think this kind of prices will attract new glider owners? Also,
at this time I think that SZD Bielsko gliders, LAK gliders, PW-5 and
PW-6, APIS, and some other manufacturers will not follow the
greedy/getting quickly rich/ rip you off business approach and they
will maintain the reasonable prices on the equipment they manufacture
presently. If they fall into the same category as the German
manufacturers then this, or I should say, our sport is in a danger of
extinction. With prices like that I think I'll buy me a Pitts again
and have quite a bit of fun as well. That is a price range that is
encroaching in "the good power range pricing".

wrote:
We are
flying nowadays old gliders. When I go to the glider port I see people
flying 20 and 30 + years old birds. Eventually those gliders will be
scraped. So, having said that, did anyone at this point in time thought
about what are we going to be flying 10 years from now?

In 10 years time I still hope to be flying my Open Cirrus. It will then
be 48 years old, but I can't see any reason why it should deteriorate
and be scrapped unless I break it. Admittedly I don't think it's capable
of flying a 750k in UK conditions (no water ballast), but then I'm
certainly not, even if the glider can. 500k is on, and I'll be trying
this year.

This seems to be true of nearly all the "old" glass gliders I see.

I've only been in the sport a decade, but I think from my reading that
the current "hot" ship has almost always cost substantially more than
the national average wage in a developed country, so the current prices
don't seem to have risen dramatically in real terms.

Top competition pilots and the very rich buy them, and in time they
trickle down to the rest of us.

All of Jacek's arguments have been made before in this forum. In a
free economy a company puts the products on the market it thinks will
sell and asks a price that has to be at cost plus margin. If other
companies feel they can do better, they'll go and try doing that.
Bashing DG for price and currency situations is doing nothing to change
the basics.
Thankfully for Jacek and others, there are those of us who want to fly
these new machines (see my raised hand?) and will trade up to them at a
much smaller differential cost than what the whole new machine would
be. Then our current gliders will refresh and rejuvenate the market
and make someone else real happy.
I encourage DG to press on with their good work and look forward to the
day when I can put my LS8-18 up for sale with a spankin' new ship on
the ocean.

Herb, J7

wrote:
Here is a quote from the DG/LS web site...it is, in my humble opinion,
worrisome statement :

Economic aspects

Everyone knows that the approved certification of new models becomes
more and more expensive and the number of production planes will never
reach the quantities of the past.

The cost for developing the LS-10 will definitely be more than 500.000
Euros. This requires precise planning for a business like DG, to keep
the whole process at the lowest cost. This planning which we are doing
at this time will take much more time than we expected when we bought
LS.

End quote.

O'K.... the way I read this statement is, that gliders will be more and
more expensive and eventually this sport will be so expensive that only
very few and very rich people will be able to afford it. It is almost
identical to unlimited hydroplanes....during the 50's and 60's there
was a lots of boats, then we had a guy, who basically bought the sport
and in the 21st century this sport almost seized to exist. We are
flying nowadays old gliders. When I go to the glider port I see people
flying 20 and 30 + years old birds. Eventually those gliders will be
scraped. So, having said that, did anyone at this point in time thought
about what are we going to be flying 10 years from now? DG/LS is
selling gliders for $100 000 +....keep this in mind; a glider which
cost 57,000 Euros...that translates to about $70,000 US. Then you need
to buy a trailer, instruments, ship it across the Atlantic, pay your
taxes in your state. By the time you are done it is a $100,000 US + .
Do you think this kind of prices will attract new glider owners? Also,
at this time I think that SZD Bielsko gliders, LAK gliders, PW-5 and
PW-6, APIS, and some other manufacturers will not follow the
greedy/getting quickly rich/ rip you off business approach and they
will maintain the reasonable prices on the equipment they manufacture
presently. If they fall into the same category as the German
manufacturers then this, or I should say, our sport is in a danger of
extinction. With prices like that I think I'll buy me a Pitts again
and have quite a bit of fun as well. That is a price range that is
encroaching in "the good power range pricing".

Gonna revert to something cheap like a Pitts, huh?

Have a look at http://www.aviataircraft.com/aircraft/s1t.htm
A new S1-S starts at $250,000.00 USD. A new Husky A1-B is over $200K. Sure,
some of these are readily available for less on the used market, but still
the new aircraft remain expensive. I'm not defending these prices, though
there are a myriad number of reasons why they ain't cheap.

bumper
Minden, NV

wrote in message
oups.com...
Here is a quote from the DG/LS web site...it is, in my humble opinion,
worrisome statement :

Economic aspects

Everyone knows that the approved certification of new models becomes
more and more expensive and the number of production planes will never
reach the quantities of the past.

The cost for developing the LS-10 will definitely be more than 500.000
Euros. This requires precise planning for a business like DG, to keep
the whole process at the lowest cost. This planning which we are doing
at this time will take much more time than we expected when we bought
LS.

End quote.

O'K.... the way I read this statement is, that gliders will be more and
more expensive and eventually this sport will be so expensive that only
very few and very rich people will be able to afford it. It is almost
identical to unlimited hydroplanes....during the 50's and 60's there
was a lots of boats, then we had a guy, who basically bought the sport
and in the 21st century this sport almost seized to exist. We are
flying nowadays old gliders. When I go to the glider port I see people
flying 20 and 30 + years old birds. Eventually those gliders will be
scraped. So, having said that, did anyone at this point in time thought
about what are we going to be flying 10 years from now? DG/LS is
selling gliders for $100 000 +....keep this in mind; a glider which
cost 57,000 Euros...that translates to about $70,000 US. Then you need
to buy a trailer, instruments, ship it across the Atlantic, pay your
taxes in your state. By the time you are done it is a $100,000 US + .
Do you think this kind of prices will attract new glider owners? Also,
at this time I think that SZD Bielsko gliders, LAK gliders, PW-5 and
PW-6, APIS, and some other manufacturers will not follow the
greedy/getting quickly rich/ rip you off business approach and they
will maintain the reasonable prices on the equipment they manufacture
presently. If they fall into the same category as the German
manufacturers then this, or I should say, our sport is in a danger of
extinction. With prices like that I think I'll buy me a Pitts again
and have quite a bit of fun as well. That is a price range that is
encroaching in "the good power range pricing".

I don`t think you`re right.

In fact, if you take a look at the inflation, gliders have become
cheaper, or equally priced compared to 1980.

So the whole problem isn`t about more expensive gliders but less glider
pilots which mean less sold, which means a larger penalty per glider
for development. Thát`s the problem.

http://www.lak-deutschland.de/lak/PD...iste1-2004.PDF

Seems considerable less that a DG, AS or SH ;-)

J. N. wrote:
I don`t think you`re right.

In fact, if you take a look at the inflation, gliders have become
cheaper, or equally priced compared to 1980.


You must be kidding, i think. I remember a time when a glider was
worth one third or one fourth the price of a house, now it is close
to the price of a house, hence a very unreasonable buy. You are saying
there are less buyers, there is a very good explanation to that.

--

Michel TALON

"W.J. \(Bill\) Dean \(U.K.\)." wrote:
Gosh, where can I buy a house for the price of a new glider. Or did you
just mean ETA?


Not in United Kingdom, for sure. In more reasonable places and sufficiently
far from cities, yes.


--

Michel TALON

In rural France, maybe... but then, who wants a house there :-)

For an estimation of the "real price" of a glider, real estate is not of
much help. If you compare it to the mean of yearly gross income, you will
find that gliders haven't become that much more expensive.

And anyhow, looking at 2-years+ delivery times, these prices don't seem to
be a big problem to a significant number of pilots.

And the others - like me - just buy second hand.

"Michel Talon" wrote in message
...
"W.J. \(Bill\) Dean \(U.K.\)." wrote:
Gosh, where can I buy a house for the price of a new glider. Or did you
just mean ETA?


Not in United Kingdom, for sure. In more reasonable places and
sufficiently
far from cities, yes.


--

Michel TALON

On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:03:24 +0100, "Bert Willing"
wrote:

In rural France, maybe... but then, who wants a house there :-)

if you define "rural" as St. Auban, Sisteron or Barcelonette...

scnr




Bye
Andreas

Earlier, wrote:

Here is a quote from the DG/LS web site...it is, in my humble opinion,
worrisome statement :

...

The cost for developing the LS-10 will definitely be more than 500.000
Euros. This requires precise planning...

Well, that's for a large company heavily ballasted with business
overhead and strong European-style employment protection. A
low-overhead operation like mine, developing towards certification
under the US amateur-built experimental rules, can undercut that
substantially and still offer performance, quality, and amenities
similar to the European racers.

And we probably will. At the ADF III last week we laid up and closed
the first real fuselage. We're still on track to meet our $17500 Y2K
base kit price, balanced for oil and inflation.

Unfortunately, with oil more than doubling those year 2000 dollars are
now worth about $25000. And with Boeing and Airbus buying all the
carbon fiber the world can make, it'll be some time before the carbon
market returns to something like normal. And worse, our schedule is
slipping towards 2007.

But we'll keep plugging at it. We'll make another fuselage in the next
few weeks, and then we'll get all gooey with the wing plugs to make the
wing molds.

Thanks, and best regards to all

Bob K.
http://www.hpaircraft.com/hp-24