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Patrick,
Thankyou for your observations from the Participating in gliding the way we do it
is personal ability, and most of all time. I
believe it is spare time, or the lack of it that makes gliding hard to promote. First of all people must have the time to
travel to gliding fields the closest of which are about an hour away of centres of population, many are a lot further.
We expect new participants to turn up early to assist getting the operation
going, and stay late and put it all to bed at
night – this of course is how we teach them about inspections, ground
handling and other small cultural things that make a
sound independent operator in the future. In the past we have relied on the lure of
flight to attract people, and it still does, but we need more. Potential new
members will be looking for nice facilities (club
rooms) good clean accommodation, and somewhere they are proud to bring their friends
and colleagues. Nice new aircraft
are a nice to have – however well maintained and presented aircraft will
do the job just as well. How people friendly are you launch points? Does
you pie cart say to new people this tidy operation – these are all first impressions. This costs money, but it is an investment. Some
quarters of the GFA talk about spending money promoting the sport, making videos
etc and I am not saying we should not
undertake these activities, however I believe firstly we need to examine why we
are loosing the members do capture, otherwise promoting new
membership it is like trying to fill a leaky tank before you have fixed the leak.
SDF From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Barfield I’m just catching up on a few older
topics. I’ll attempt to answer a question: SNIP
-It’s all very well to want a commercial operation to fit in with the
time pressures you have Mark, but how much would you be willing to pay for that
convenience? - SNIP I have flown at two commercial gliding
operations in the You obviously pay more for aerotows and
hourly charges than a club situation but that is offset by not having to pay an
annual membership fee. The extra convenience is important to me since I have a
90 mile drive to Caddo Mills which would make for an extremely long day if I
had to help get things ready in the morning and stay until the equipment was
safely packed away at the end of the day. You book a time slot, turn up, the
glider is ready to go, go flying and leave the glider for somebody to put away.
You only pay for the launch and flying time so even if the weather is
unsuitable for flying, you don’t have to pay anything. To be perfectly
honest, I don’t see how Southwest Soaring makes a profit because their
utilisation seems fairly low for the prices they charge and the money they have
invested in their fleet. As a convenient alternative, I think that
microturbine powered trainers may revolutionise gliding training. If you had
something like this Blanik (http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/dg1000t-e.html#Jet-Propulsion),
you could book a training time despite lack of lift and not require many crew
to look after the operation. I don’t know how much the modification and
fuel costs would be, but I am interested in doing this when I return to For the airsickness topic, since some
people mentioned specific medications, I know some people that have taken a
drug STUGERON for flying and boating and swear by them as they supposedly
don’t make you drowsy. I believe that they aren’t available in Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to everybody
on the list, Patrick Barfield --
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