Club Glider Hangar?

On Jan 10, 3:11*pm, BB wrote:
The problem may not be hardware. Our club has a beautiful ASW24 and
Duo Discus, along with a Blanik and ASK21, all of them hangared and
easy to take out. The 24 and duo get surprisingly little usage. Why?
Few of our members are checked out to fly them! Why not? We have
enough instructors, and they're all happy to do a checkout. But you
have to ask, read the manual, and take the time to do it, and in some
cases brush up your skills a bit.

Where I fly, the policy is to get new solo pilots into the single-
seater asap (of course their skills have to be suitable) as 1) we have
more of those than K21s, 2) it's less problematic for the club in
terms of lose of gliders if they have a accident, 3) people cannot be
instructed in a K21 that's being flown solo.

Most club members are happy to fly
the blanik solo and don't on their own take steps to move up. *It
sounds like your club has a similar situation, and based on our
experience the glass gliders might not get a lot more usage even if
they were hangared. In both situations, maybe what we need is some
organized push to get people to improve their skills.

I'd agree with that.




It's very interesting that your club members will buy and assemble
their own gliders, but not the club gliders. Do the club gliders have
other restrictions, like "you can only fly it for an hour" or "you
can't fly it cross country?" If so, the fact that members are willing
to assemble their own gliders suggests that removing these
restrictions is the key to getting more usage.

I rig and fly my own glider as much as possible as it's part of the
financial justification for buying it. My last good flight in a club
single-seater was about $130! In my own it would have been about $40
- just the aerotow cost.

Our club has a 1 hour
rule, but you're allowed to take the glider all afternoon IF you're
going to go cross country. That has helped (though there is still not
enough demand to learn to fly cross country)

Another idea. How about changing club policy so that the gliders get
assembled every day? Along with "gas up towplane" the first thing
clubmembers are expected to do before flying every day is "assemble
Apis", whether or not you personally want to fly it? Now the excuse is
gone.

I suspect you'd find people turning up late & leaving early to avoid
the heavy work...