Patrick is once rummoured to have scribbled... > It seems to me that flying a glider is just the most wonderful product
It certainly is but the delivery of said product or the available means of being able to purchase it are where things are falling down. A willingness to address this is what's required. I oft heard it said (paraphrased) "this is how we've always done it and if you're not prepared to do it this way you're not prepared to go gliding". Bingo, 99.9999% of Australia is not prepared to go gliding. So can the delivery of the product be changed so that a greater percentage would be? The first step is a willingness to look at how it's currently done and question and dare to challange every aspect. Until this thread I've not seen a willingness within the "real glider" pilots to do this. [Re ultralighting] > It's aviation, it's fun, it's close to > home, it's reasonably priced and the company's good. It's a winning argument. But the sad part is that the only difference in requirements between gliding and ultralighting is a means to launch. Somehow this translates into a vastly different result. Why is gliding so over burdened with the need for voluteer labour? How do the ultralights seem to avoid all this when they have the same needs, airfield, airspace, hangarage??? Can the need for a tug aircraft really create all this extra work? My solution has been to buy an ultralight masquerading as a glider (or is that the other way around?) Anyway's it's progressing towards refurbishment and hopefully soon will be airborne again. It may not suit the purists but it delivers gliding to me in a way which allows me to have a family life as well which is a re-occuring theme over and over again with non-active members. On another point, it's been stated private ownership is too expensive for most people. The truth is that their expectations of glider performance don't fit their budget. I own a half share in a Ka6 (featured in the latest AG :-) The captial and running expenses are very low and yet it climbs and is as enjoyable to fly as any glider. Sure in the glide it *only* get's 30:1 but that's plenty to do 300 and probably 500k's. A lot of pilots deriddle the Ka6 and my attitude is to hell with them. They just need higher performance gliders to cover how poorly they fly! ;-) Seriously though it's cost versus return. If you are prepared to aim a little lower on the performance scale, for relatively little cost you can have a lot of gliding. Merry Xmas, happy new year etc Pete -- * You are subscribed to the aus-soaring mailing list. * To Unsubscribe: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] * with "unsubscribe aus-soaring" in the body of the message * or with "help" in the body of the message for more information.
