Short Wings Gliders

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.

Derek Copeland

On Jan 31, 2:15*am, Derek Copeland wrote:

What is not fun (i.e. dull) is sitting in a farmers field for hours while
you wait for someone to come and collect you after a land out...

Call me strange, but some of my most entertaining adventures have been
outlandings and retrieves. All of my most memorable flights have been
where I almost landed out, and scraped away from a field or dry lake
to make final glide. As in rock climbing, it's the contrast between
risk and reward that puts the true spark in it.

Thanks, Bob K.

On Jan 28, 6:01*pm, DRN wrote:

Tooling and engineering for a new glider costs millions...

Oops, I forgot to respond to that earlier: Sure, you can spend a
million bucks on a program like that if you do nothing but throw money
at all of the problems and issues. It's like when your only tool is a
hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But, no, it doesn't have to
cost "millions" or even the better part of a single million.

Thanks, Bob K.

On Jan 31, 1:22*pm, Bob Kuykendall wrote:
On Jan 31, 2:15*am, Derek Copeland wrote:

What is not fun (i.e. dull) is sitting in a farmers field for hours while
you wait for someone to come and collect you after a land out...

Call me strange, but some of my most entertaining adventures have been
outlandings and retrieves. All of my most memorable flights have been
where I almost landed out, and scraped away from a field or dry lake
to make final glide. As in rock climbing, it's the contrast between
risk and reward that puts the true spark in it.

Thanks, Bob K.

Yeah, but there is a limit to the number of landouts that qualify as
fun. Every once in a while is fun. On every other flight is not
fun.

Todd

At 18:40 31 January 2009, Bob Kuykendall wrote:
On Jan 28, 6:01=A0pm, DRN wrote:

Tooling and engineering for a new glider costs millions...

Oops, I forgot to respond to that earlier: Sure, you can spend a
million bucks on a program like that if you do nothing but throw money
at all of the problems and issues. It's like when your only tool is a
hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But, no, it doesn't have to
cost "millions" or even the better part of a single million.

Thanks, Bob K.


Bob,
Schleicher may have spent a million on there innovative designs, the ASW24
&27.
If you were to condense your 10 year plus program into a 2 years, that
would mean 100% of the work has to be funded in a commercial setting to
pay for design, labour, shop floor and more. If you have personally
invested (a guess) 3000 hr and if you would have charged out at a rate of
$ 75.00 per/hr, all costs inclusive, we are now talking real bucks.
Adding a new airfoil design could cost tenth of thousand of $ if done
commercially. Delft University charges big bucks for there services. Your
New HP has proven design elements, including the airfoil, which keeps the
cost down. Yours is a big project and I admire your determination.
Udo

On 31 Jan 2009 12:45:03 GMT, Jim Beckman
wrote:

At 22:52 30 January 2009, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:32:48 -0800 (PST), toad
wrote:

So how many pilots can show up and expect on a good day to get a 3-5
hour XC flight in ? 7 gliders doesn't seem like enough for 80 pilots.

Usually 2 gliders are reserved for XC, each pilot has got about 5 to 6
weekend days per season where the glider belongs to him.

Let's see if I can manage these numbers at all. 80 pilots,
five days, that's 400 days. Divide by 2 XC gliders, that's
200 days. Divide again by 2 days per weekend, that comes
to around 100 weekends per season. Where did you say all
this happens? And I don't suppose it ever rains?

Not everyone is flying XC in my club every day.
First of all, you have to deduct 25 student pilots, resulting in about
60 licensed piltos who are alowed to go XC.

Of those, in 2008 22 pilots took part in XC-flying with club gliders,
some reserving a glider for their vacatiuon or for a competition. We
reserved two gliders per day (two single seaters or one single seater
and one double seater) for XC. Depending on the weather, some XC with
a reserved glider pilots don't even show up, freing up the glider for
someone else. Most of the XC flying on club gliders is done during the
week.

All of the "really serious" XC pilots own a glider.
Works pretty well - actually, often we don't even use all the glider
we have.

On 31 Jan 2009 12:45:03 GMT, Jim Beckman
wrote:


Restriction of flying time, depending on the number of pilots per
glider.

Which pretty much means no XC flying for those guys, right?


Indeed.
But it's amazing: Often at less-than-perfect weather we only use one
of our DG-300s because the pilots are too lazy to invest the ten
minutes to assemble the second 300. Instead they limit themselves to
one hour or 90 minutes because they have to share the remaining 300
with three to four other pilots.
Hard to understand - especially if you consider the fact that in my
club with our flatrate a flight with a winch launch is completely
free, even if it takes the whole day...
Lazy folks.

On 31 Jan 2009 12:45:04 GMT, Jim Beckman
wrote:


What does it cost you to use the field, or do you own it (in which case,
how much do you pay in taxes for the field)? Oh, and while we're at it,
just where is the field? I'd really like to understand how the Europeans
keep the costs so low - it would be nice if we could do the same here in
the Colonies.

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.
Unfortunately we were not able to invest in new gliders since 1999, so
the average age of our fleet has suffered badly.

Here's our website:
www.djk-landau.de

In message , Andreas Maurer
writes
snip

These fees include a 255 Euro "flat rate" for an unlimited number of
winch launches and an unlimited number of flying hours.
Member fee per
year is 64 Euro for student pilots and 128 Euro for members with an
income. At the current exchange rates this is about $500. Most German
clubs are slightly more expensive, this is why I mentioned the number
of $800.

That is very cheap flying. My UK club charges £7 per winch launch and
38p/minute, though that clock stops ticking after 2 1/2 hours. Another
UK club charges 50p/minute, and remember that the UK Pound and the Euro
are pretty much equivalent these days.

There are other reasons for flying my own glider as well.

1) I can fly when I want for as long as I want - no-one will be calling
me back so someone else can have a go in it. I heard the Discus being
called back on a lovely wave day not long after I got it, and smiled as
it wasn't going to happen to me.
2) Trying to go XC is logistically simpler. I know I have a road-worth
trailer etc., plus see point 1 above - no problem when I land in a field
other than getting a retrieve crew to come out for me.
3) I fly a glider that is comfortable for me. My club has Juniors and a
Discus, and I do not fit the Discus.
4) I know who has been flying it (me!) and what they have done to it.
5) My canopy is in fantastic condition compared to all the club gliders.
6) I can take it to other clubs in the UK without having to grovel to
the Committee to get permission to take a club glider away from the
site.


--
Surfer!
Email to: ramwater at uk2 dot net

At 21:03 31 January 2009, Andreas Maurer wrote:

Not everyone is flying XC in my club every day.
First of all, you have to deduct 25 student pilots, resulting in about
60 licensed piltos who are alowed to go XC.

Of those, in 2008 22 pilots took part in XC-flying with club gliders,

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.

some reserving a glider for their vacatiuon or for a competition. We
reserved two gliders per day (two single seaters or one single seater
and one double seater) for XC.

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.

Jim Beckman