Short Wings Gliders

At 21:14 31 January 2009, Andreas Maurer wrote:

Well... in the past we used the fiel essentially for free.
In 1999 we bought the airfield for about 300.000 Euro (which we shared
50:50 with the second club at Landau). The repayment of our 150.000
Euro share is going to be finished in 2011.

I'm starting to lose track of which club is which, but you seem to be
raising this amount of capital with around 80 or so members? This is the
kind of thing that we always seem unable to do, even though we have
something close to your membership numbers. Was this all paid for out of
yearly flying fees? I suppose the advantages of owning and controlling
your own field makes up for not upgrading your fleet for those years. On
the other hand, I suppose your club is paying taxes on the property now?

Jim Beckman

On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:45:03 +0000, Derek Copeland wrote:

At 12:30 31 January 2009, Jim Beckman wrote:
At 21:45 30 January 2009, Derek Copeland wrote:

Many European clubs have a ballot for the club gliders with a limit on
the
time you can local soar, although cross-countries are unlimited. If you
don't *win* a glider in the ballot, and you don't mind waiting around
for a few hours you can usually get to fly later on in the day.

But if you want to fly XC, then flying later in the day doesn't do you
any good, really.

If you "lose" the ballot on one day, does that give you some sort of
priority for the next opportunity?

No, but as I have already said, you can almost always take over a glider
once the first pilot has finished with it, and the ballot will balance
itself out over the year. I have done 200 km cross-country fights after
taking over a glider in mid afternoon.

My club will also allow you to book a certain number of the club gliders
for the day, or the week, in advance, if you want to do something bigger
or enter a competition.

The club system allows me to fly gliders that I couldn't possibly afford
to buy myself. Think of it as being a big syndicate.

Other clubs have variations. My club has five single seaters - two
Juniors, two Discus 1s and a Pegase.

The Juniors can be flown by anybody, but early solo pilots have first
dibs and are encouraged do all three Silver legs in them. If flown off
the winch you only pay for the launch and any flight time in excess of 15
minutes.

The Discii and the Peg are collectively known as the High Performance
Fleet and are operated as a syndicate, the HPF scheme, which is limited
to 12 members. HPF Scheme members buy blocks of time up front and get
priority booking for these gliders. They are expected to be flown xc, can
be taken to Interclub League events (two day meets) and have been flown
in Regionals as team entries (I did that one year. We had a ball).
Anybody else can fly these gliders when no Scheme member wants them.


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

On 31 Jan 2009 22:15:02 GMT, Jim Beckman
wrote:


Only 22 pilots? Now the numbers starts to make sense. What they actually
tell us is that your club gliders don't really fly all that much
cross-country. Which is fine, of course.

Well.. let me put it this way:

In 2008 club members made 53.000 kilometers in the OLC (similar to
your club), placing us in the top ten percent of Germany's flying
clubs, most of them situated in far better thermal conditions than our
airfield. 30.000 kilometers of those were flown in club gliders.
Nearly all pensioned members don't even try to fly XC on the weekends
because they fly during the week were the other pilots need work (but
they appear on the airfield to help and to have a good time). You'd
need to add these 10 to 15 people to the 22 pilots which are on the XC
reservation list.
BTW: At the moment the entire German 15m-class national team consists
of pilots of my club
I'm pretty content with the situation.


Which also makes sense - about a quarter of the fleet flown XC by about a
quarter of your pilots. I would guess that our own club in Blairstown
does about that well with XC in club gliders, although our fleet looks
shabby indeed next to yours.

We're having this dicussion since at least a decade: One
state-of-the-art glider (e.g. ASW-27) or two older ones which are
hardly inferior (e.g. ASW-20)? So far we have more than sufficient
gliders for XC pilots, but we just bought an old Mistral-C as a first
single seater after the 21 because we got so many new student pilots
last year (THIS is what is missing: a basic trainer, compatible to the
ASK-21, and affordable).

But it's interesting: Most XC pilots of my club are pretty content if
they fly two to three hours and return with 200 to 250 kilometers. The
number of hardcore XC pilots who try to fly as far as possible
whenever the weather allows it is very limited - less than five (I'm
one of them - fortunately I have exclusive access to a pretty good
private glider).
Looks like most members of my club regard gliding as a pretty
recreational sport - few of them are ambitious.

Maybe one cause for that is that we have a very good social life (and
an own club house) - on weekends there's always an afternoon tea,
dinner and lunch, lots of wifes and children around. Many good causes
to land and have a coffee and some self-made cake...
I guess this is what makes many German clubs different from US clubs:
The social life often plays a part that is nearly as impoortant as the
flying.

On 31 Jan 2009 22:15:05 GMT, Jim Beckman
wrote:


Hi again Jim,

I'm starting to lose track of which club is which, but you seem to be
raising this amount of capital with around 80 or so members?


Basically you are correct - we pay all our expenses from the fees of
the members.
In total we have about 170 members (In Germany we have so-called
"passive" members who are members of the club without having any
benefits - they pay 5 Euro per month which can be regarded as a
donation).


This is the
kind of thing that we always seem unable to do, even though we have
something close to your membership numbers. Was this all paid for out of
yearly flying fees?

Yes.

I suppose the advantages of owning and controlling
your own field makes up for not upgrading your fleet for those years. On
the other hand, I suppose your club is paying taxes on the property now?

In Germany clubs have a huge advantage: They do not need to pay taxes
for property - so we don't have tro pay any taxes for the airfield,
either. A huge help.

But things sound brighter than they a At the moment we are trying
to find the best way to pay for a new hangar (our current one is 45
years old and needs replacement in the next five years). Got 200.000
Euros to spare?


I'd be most interested to see the calculation (income vs expenses) of
a typical US club - to be honest, I cannot really imagine where all
the -huge to me- fees of the members go to.

Andreas and all:

May I try to give an American's view of DJK Segelfluggemeinschaft?

Back in the previous century, from 1983 to 1986, the club that Andreas
belongs to now (he was not a member back then) allowed me to enter
their soaring sanctuary and become a member of their club. At that
time, the club had:
Ka-7
Ka-8b (they still have this glider)
Standard Astir
Grob 103 Acro
ASW-15
ASW-20BL (Is there anything prettier than an ASW-20 going up on the
winch?)
Scheibe SF-25 motor glider
Robin DR-300 towplane (with Lycoming 0-360) (They still have this
towplane, I think)
TOST winch mounted on an old, ancient Mercedes truck. Also, a couple
of cars used to pull the winch cables back to the launch point. One
was an Opel (I forgot the model) and the other was a Ford Taunus (not
Taurus, but Taunus, as in the "Taunus" mountain range in Germany.)

The Theisinger brothers, Martin and Georg, had their own LS4.

The field is located in Rhineland Pflaz, just outside the small town
of Landau in der Pfalz. Wine country. Wonderful Riesling wines. Oh,
and a beer or two might be found there...

Using Google Earth, find Landau and then just on the south edge of
town, you'll see the airfield. At one zoom level, it looks as if the
road running west northwest - east southeast is #38 and zoom in more,
it looks to be L-543. The runway is parallel to this road. You can
see the hangars and some gliders. And you can see one winch on the
western end. Notice the six sided building near the hangars. Sort of
like a big, fat wind tetrahedron. That is the DJK clubhouse. I
understand the strange shape is due to the size of the windows that
were given to the club. They built the building to fit the windows.
It's a two-floor building with a couple of bunk rooms, bathrooms, and
an office on the ground floor and kitchen / dining room and deck on
the upper floor. The large windows in the dining room look out to the
runway, of course!

At the field are two clubs; the DJK club and another club. Both clubs
use winches for their primary means of launching gliders and the
airfield is wide enough to allow the two winches to be used; one winch
on the left side, one on the right and the middle used for aerotowing
and landing. Prevailing winds are from the west. If the winds shift
to the east, they have to aerotow. Go back to Google Earth and you
can see the limits of the runway depicted by the white "dots" (Tires
painted white and partially buried, I think) Note the western end of
the runway and the winch location. There's some unlandable land in
between there. Not a problem for winch launching to the west, but it
doesn't work when you need to launch to the east. Ah yes, in the
Google Earth photo, you can see a car on the "left" track. That's
probably the "lepo" going to retrieve the winch cables or towing the
cables back to the launch point.

Some have asked how they can afford all of this. I wondered then and
I still wonder now how they could do it. Well, I don't know. But I
do know there are many members who give a lot of "sweat equity" to the
club. I don't know, but I suppose either the entire club house or a
large portion of it was built by club members.

Aircraft maintenance is done by club members. During my time in the
club, the major winter project was stripping the towplane of all its
fabric, repairing any of the wood structure or anything else,
recovering it, painting it, and hanging the new (rebuilt?) engine on
it. All by club members. Even I had a hand in some of the work.

And when the Standard Astir had the AD to replace the aileron (or was
it spoiler?) bellcrank, it was done by club members.

We had some really talented club members that directed the others as
to what to do and how to do it. So, major in-house maintenance saves
a large amount of money.

They first put me into the Ka-7 for learning winch launching and see
if I could handle aero towing, then the Ka-8b and finally the Standard
Astir. Oh, and I flew the Acro once in a while, but I preferred the
Standard Astir.

The Ka-7 was kept busy with students making five and ten minute
flights off the winch. My log book has a lot of five minute flights
in the Ka-7. And I loved it! All the students (up to 10, I guess, on
a busy day) kept the Ka-7 very busy.

When I was moved into the Ka-8b and then the Standard Astir, I usually
didn't have to share it with others. (Andreas, if others were waiting
and cussing at me for not coming back, I never knew about it.) Seems
like during my time, the pilots were either Ka-7 pilots or the "high
performance" pilots flying the ASW-15 and ASW-20. And even for the
ASW-15, there were just a couple of pilots flying it. And not many
were flying the ASW-20.

Since my command of the German language was limited to something like
"Ein Bier, bitte", I really didn't know what all was going on.

I don't know how the grass cutting of the field was paid for. Did the
two clubs split the cost? Yea, in the evenings, a local shepherd
would tend to his flock of sheep while they nibbled on the grass, but
I think the grass still had to be cut from time to time.

I don't know how the cost for insurance was handled. Did our
membership fees pay for it? How much was the insurance?

I do know when I was there, the dollar to Mark ratio was VERY
favorable for me and flying was CHEAP. We paid a yearly fee that
covered "dues" and unlimited winch launching. Any aerotows were paid
extra. There was no rent on the gliders. Back in those years, I
don't think I paid more than about US$500 per year. I really don't
remember. But I knew it was cheap flying.

The Theisinger brothers were either instructing or flying their LS4,
and amazing me with the flights they would make. They are the ones
that introduced me to XC flying. They didn't take me XC, but just
showed me on a sectional chart where they were planning on flying. I
couldn't believe flights were possible, as they were making, in
gliders! Damn, they were good! And I'm still jealous! :-)

The club was, and probably still is, as much a social club as it is a
soaring club. Families would spend the weekend there in their camping
trailers. We had a big supper prepared by club members on Saturday
and a big lunch on Sunday. At 4:00 pm on both days, flying would just
about stop and everybody would come to the clubhouse for cake and
coffee. Saturday nights, after supper, we would sit around the
clubhouse and drink a beer or two. So, I'm sure a lot of members
didn't even fly, but came for the social interaction. So, you would
have their dues coming into the club, but they weren't flying and
limiting the flying time for other members.

Looking back, some of the things that made these two clubs work a
1. Located right on the edge of a town and not out in the middle of
nowhere. And, in a very picturesque place.
2. Things to do in the area if you didn't fly. Go shopping, go
hiking (volksmarching), visit vineyards, walk around town window
shopping, visit a castle, etc
3. Big social aspect of the club with the lunches, coffees, and
suppers.
4. Camping at the field with the entire family.
5. Doing a lot of the aircraft maintenance by knowledgeable club
members.
6. Getting "sweat equity" out of club members.

It all added up to a winning formula. Back in that time, the field
was, I think, government property. But as Andreas says, the two clubs
have purchased the field.

The club probably is still going strong and I hope for them all the
best.

Ray Lovinggood
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA

At 01:39 01 February 2009, Andreas Maurer wrote:

I'd be most interested to see the calculation (income vs expenses) of
a typical US club - to be honest, I cannot really imagine where all
the -huge to me- fees of the members go to.

It seems that in America, there are two types of gliding clubs.

1) Commercial 'Gliderport' operations, usually operating some ancient
and enormous Schweitzer gliders, offering joy rides to the tourists. These
are aerotow only, with everyone down to the line boy who runs with the wing
being paid. You can fly your own glider there if you want, but it will cost
you!

2) Private owner clubs, with not much in the way of club facilities beyond
a privately owned tug aircraft doing launches for profit. One or two of
these clubs are starting to think about winch launching.

Either way gliding works out to be very expensive, and most people who
want to fly do so in spamcans, as Avgas is far less highly taxed in the US
than it is in Europe, so it actually works out cheaper as an hourly rate!
The percentage of the total US population who are glider pilots is tiny
compared with the UK and particularly Germany. It's a shame really, as
many States have particularly good soaring conditions.

Derek C

The winch runs on Google Earth look to be about 3500ft long. How high did
you get on still days? About 1300/1400 ft I would guess?

How did you manage to learn when you couldn't speak the local language,
German. Or did the instructors talk to you in perfect English, which is
(annoyingly, if you are trying to improve your German) often the case? At
least you should be OK with metric instuments, where you start the circuit
at about 250 metres, just before the altimeter needle completely drops to
zero.

Derek Copeland


At 04:21 01 February 2009, rlovinggood wrote:
Andreas and all:

May I try to give an American's view of DJK Segelfluggemeinschaft?

Back in the previous century, from 1983 to 1986, the club that Andreas
belongs to now (he was not a member back then) allowed me to enter
their soaring sanctuary and become a member of their club. At that
time, the club had:
Ka-7
Ka-8b (they still have this glider)
Standard Astir
Grob 103 Acro
ASW-15
ASW-20BL (Is there anything prettier than an ASW-20 going up on the
winch?)
Scheibe SF-25 motor glider
Robin DR-300 towplane (with Lycoming 0-360) (They still have this
towplane, I think)
TOST winch mounted on an old, ancient Mercedes truck. Also, a couple
of cars used to pull the winch cables back to the launch point. One
was an Opel (I forgot the model) and the other was a Ford Taunus (not
Taurus, but Taunus, as in the "Taunus" mountain range in Germany.)

The Theisinger brothers, Martin and Georg, had their own LS4.

The field is located in Rhineland Pflaz, just outside the small town
of Landau in der Pfalz. Wine country. Wonderful Riesling wines. Oh,
and a beer or two might be found there...

Using Google Earth, find Landau and then just on the south edge of
town, you'll see the airfield. At one zoom level, it looks as if the
road running west northwest - east southeast is #38 and zoom in more,
it looks to be L-543. The runway is parallel to this road. You can
see the hangars and some gliders. And you can see one winch on the
western end. Notice the six sided building near the hangars. Sort of
like a big, fat wind tetrahedron. That is the DJK clubhouse. I
understand the strange shape is due to the size of the windows that
were given to the club. They built the building to fit the windows.
It's a two-floor building with a couple of bunk rooms, bathrooms, and
an office on the ground floor and kitchen / dining room and deck on
the upper floor. The large windows in the dining room look out to the
runway, of course!

At the field are two clubs; the DJK club and another club. Both clubs
use winches for their primary means of launching gliders and the
airfield is wide enough to allow the two winches to be used; one winch
on the left side, one on the right and the middle used for aerotowing
and landing. Prevailing winds are from the west. If the winds shift
to the east, they have to aerotow. Go back to Google Earth and you
can see the limits of the runway depicted by the white "dots" (Tires
painted white and partially buried, I think) Note the western end of
the runway and the winch location. There's some unlandable land in
between there. Not a problem for winch launching to the west, but it
doesn't work when you need to launch to the east. Ah yes, in the
Google Earth photo, you can see a car on the "left" track. That's
probably the "lepo" going to retrieve the winch cables or towing the
cables back to the launch point.

Some have asked how they can afford all of this. I wondered then and
I still wonder now how they could do it. Well, I don't know. But I
do know there are many members who give a lot of "sweat equity" to the
club. I don't know, but I suppose either the entire club house or a
large portion of it was built by club members.

Aircraft maintenance is done by club members. During my time in the
club, the major winter project was stripping the towplane of all its
fabric, repairing any of the wood structure or anything else,
recovering it, painting it, and hanging the new (rebuilt?) engine on
it. All by club members. Even I had a hand in some of the work.

And when the Standard Astir had the AD to replace the aileron (or was
it spoiler?) bellcrank, it was done by club members.

We had some really talented club members that directed the others as
to what to do and how to do it. So, major in-house maintenance saves
a large amount of money.

They first put me into the Ka-7 for learning winch launching and see
if I could handle aero towing, then the Ka-8b and finally the Standard
Astir. Oh, and I flew the Acro once in a while, but I preferred the
Standard Astir.

The Ka-7 was kept busy with students making five and ten minute
flights off the winch. My log book has a lot of five minute flights
in the Ka-7. And I loved it! All the students (up to 10, I guess, on
a busy day) kept the Ka-7 very busy.

When I was moved into the Ka-8b and then the Standard Astir, I usually
didn't have to share it with others. (Andreas, if others were waiting
and cussing at me for not coming back, I never knew about it.) Seems
like during my time, the pilots were either Ka-7 pilots or the "high
performance" pilots flying the ASW-15 and ASW-20. And even for the
ASW-15, there were just a couple of pilots flying it. And not many
were flying the ASW-20.

Since my command of the German language was limited to something like
"Ein Bier, bitte", I really didn't know what all was going on.

I don't know how the grass cutting of the field was paid for. Did the
two clubs split the cost? Yea, in the evenings, a local shepherd
would tend to his flock of sheep while they nibbled on the grass, but
I think the grass still had to be cut from time to time.

I don't know how the cost for insurance was handled. Did our
membership fees pay for it? How much was the insurance?

I do know when I was there, the dollar to Mark ratio was VERY
favorable for me and flying was CHEAP. We paid a yearly fee that
covered "dues" and unlimited winch launching. Any aerotows were paid
extra. There was no rent on the gliders. Back in those years, I
don't think I paid more than about US$500 per year. I really don't
remember. But I knew it was cheap flying.

The Theisinger brothers were either instructing or flying their LS4,
and amazing me with the flights they would make. They are the ones
that introduced me to XC flying. They didn't take me XC, but just
showed me on a sectional chart where they were planning on flying. I
couldn't believe flights were possible, as they were making, in
gliders! Damn, they were good! And I'm still jealous! :-)

The club was, and probably still is, as much a social club as it is a
soaring club. Families would spend the weekend there in their camping
trailers. We had a big supper prepared by club members on Saturday
and a big lunch on Sunday. At 4:00 pm on both days, flying would just
about stop and everybody would come to the clubhouse for cake and
coffee. Saturday nights, after supper, we would sit around the
clubhouse and drink a beer or two. So, I'm sure a lot of members
didn't even fly, but came for the social interaction. So, you would
have their dues coming into the club, but they weren't flying and
limiting the flying time for other members.

Looking back, some of the things that made these two clubs work a
1. Located right on the edge of a town and not out in the middle of
nowhere. And, in a very picturesque place.
2. Things to do in the area if you didn't fly. Go shopping, go
hiking (volksmarching), visit vineyards, walk around town window
shopping, visit a castle, etc
3. Big social aspect of the club with the lunches, coffees, and
suppers.
4. Camping at the field with the entire family.
5. Doing a lot of the aircraft maintenance by knowledgeable club
members.
6. Getting "sweat equity" out of club members.

It all added up to a winning formula. Back in that time, the field
was, I think, government property. But as Andreas says, the two clubs
have purchased the field.

The club probably is still going strong and I hope for them all the
best.

Ray Lovinggood
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA

At 03:09 28 January 2009, RRK wrote:
How many gliders with a wing span of 13.5 or less do you know?


1 Apis-13 13.3
2 BG135
3 Carbon Dragon 13.4
4 Cessna CG-2 11.0
5 Cherokee II 12.2
6 Duster 13.1 m 13.1
7 H101 Salto
8 L0 100
9 Monarch 12.8
10 Monerai S 11.0
11 MU xyz
12 Pioneer II 13.0
13 PW-5 13.4
14 Russia
15 Schweizer 1-26 12.2
16 Silent 2 13.0
17 Silent 2 Targa 13.3
18 Silent Club 12.0
19 Slingaby Swallow
20 Sparrowhawk 11.0
21 SW-1 Swift
22 SZD-59 Acro 13.2
23 WindRose 12.7
24 Woodstock
25 Ka6 14.1

One thing that may not have been covered is cost. I see in "Gliding
International" concern about the increasing cost of material and
labour ("exploding"). If a shorter wing were used, there would be
less of both. The trend to larger span concerns me for three reasons
- first, the cost (I think this is obvious); second, the weight (with
the glider population aging, back backs seem to be the norm); and
third, the decreased number of places to land (particularly
outland).

Also, if we want to get the younger generation involved, the
increasing costs of the state of the art has to be controlled. I
think a 13.5 or 14 m class would be a good idea. It would let the
designers have a new challenge. Perhaps limit it to old-fashioned
fibreglass, not CRP, to control cost, perhaps. Some will prefer older
15 m glass; let them fly it. I think the world class was a great
idea, but the PW's 32:1 reach just wasn't enough. It's 15 years
later, let's see what the designers can do!

For what it's worth, when the Russia series was still in production, I
was waiting for the AC-4D to come out to buy one (that's the one with
flaps). Sadly, it never did.

On Feb 1, 4:45*am, Derek Copeland wrote:
At 01:39 01 February 2009, Andreas Maurer wrote:

I'd be most interested to see the calculation (income vs expenses) of
a typical US club - to be honest, I cannot really imagine where all
the -huge to me- fees of the members go to.

It seems that in America, there are two types of gliding clubs.

1) Commercial 'Gliderport' operations, usually operating some ancient
and enormous Schweitzer gliders, offering joy rides to the tourists. These
are aerotow only, with everyone down to the line boy who runs with the wing
being paid. You can fly your own glider there if you want, but it will cost
you!

2) Private owner clubs, with not much in the way of club facilities beyond
a privately owned tug aircraft doing launches for profit. One or two of
these clubs are starting to think about winch launching.

Either way gliding works out to be very expensive, and most people who
want to fly do so in spamcans, as Avgas is far less highly taxed in the US
than it is in Europe, so it actually works out cheaper as an hourly rate!
The percentage of the total US population who are glider pilots is tiny
compared with the UK and particularly Germany. It's a shame really, as
many States have particularly good soaring conditions.

Derek C

Actually there is a third type which is the most common in my
experience. They own a tug or 2 and several gliders. A few trainers
and a few low to middle performance single seaters. Maybe a good
single or two seat glider also. They might also own the airport. The
members do a lot of the work, but aircraft maintenance requires a FAA
licensed mechanic, so that is sometimes limited. People come for the
weekend and stay all weekend.

Todd Smith