Cheap sailplanes

Peter Seddon wrote:



You've totally missed the point, in the UK this year the weather has been
so bad for flying that it's not only general flying that has been hit, the
two seater comp at the Wolds Gliding club was almost a wash out. My
caravan had a lake outside for almost every day and out of eight days we
only flew for three. When I look at my log book for the past four years
the number of flights have decereased each year and I have my own
aircraft. Our club is restricted to flying at weekends only and you can't
fly with a 1000ft ceiling of total cloud cover. Where I live I havn't seen
snow for a great number of years so naturally it drops as rain. Out of the
52 flying weekends last year, 4 were lost to holidays 6 were lost to
familly committments and about 30 were lost to bad weather. That 's the
reason gliding is declining for new members, people loose interest through
lack of flying weather. The UK has had three wery wet summers and mild wet
winters, days like last Sunday when I had 3hrs 3 mins to 12000ft are very
few and far between.

Peter.

Yes, but the point is that support for gliding is getting _worse_. The
weather isn't, in fact (and I speak from about 40 years experience in the
game), if anything it's getting better (remember global warming).

And although I take your point about this year, 2003 was one of the good
ones. (Certainly I managed 80 hours flying at a weekends only from North
Yorkshire, despite 6 weeks lost to health problems).