>-----Original Message----- >From:Coleman, Ben (RTCA) > >At my club I believe a culture of private ownership impacts >the operation. We have two single seaters, a Junior and a >Jantar, both purchased new some 20 years ago. When a member >progresses to XC, the message is "time to buy your own >glider!".
There is nothing inherently wrong with this idea nor inherently wrong with the idea of a club providing access to the latest and greatest. It just depends on what the club is for/what the members want! I believe Lasham in the UK operates this way (large fleet of trainers) and not much for solo. >We have around 16 privately owned gliders at the club. If the >low-utilisation owners rented club machines, we could have a >fleet of modern planes (Discus CS, 304CZ etc) of which 5 or 6 >would probably satisfy flying requirements. True, BUT why do people do things? Some private owners buy aircraft so they can guarantee their access to one, some buy because they can get something better than the club has and others buy maybe even for non flying reasons! (Have you ever spent time at an Ultralight field, they seem to be forever tinkering and messing about, same with yachts too) And if the private owners didn't want their gliders, who would? >>From what I have seen, Kingaroy rents a Discus CS to members >for about what I rent the old Jantar (yet I am told the Jantar >doesn't pay for itself). What are they doing differently from my club? Maybe flying it more? (unit cost per hour then gets cheaper). However, I would also add, most (all?) gliding clubs in Australia really _undercharge_ when full life cycle costing is considered. >I also hear the argument that there is no real performance >difference between a new glider and the Jantar (and besides, I >can just fly a shorter distance for the same challenge). They >miss the point, in my opinion, that the gliders for hire need >to be accessible (Jantar has a bad reputation for ergonomics >and spin behaviour with some) and most improtantly desirable. >Performance is secondary. The performance difference between some of the latest stuff and some 20+ year old gliders, is indeed small (but real). However, the glider manufacturers have spent the last 2 decades improving things like handling and ergonomics. In measurable terms like $/LD there are some real interesting buys around, but they often have other non obvious drawbacks. This highlights the sometimes non intuitive problems like lower performance (older) gliders are not necessarily easier to fly than higher performance (newer) ones (ref eg Boomerang or Cirrus and Discus) and approximately equivalent performance aircraft are not valued equally (eg Diamant/Discus). Specifically, the Jantar is a good honest aircraft which is only bettered performance wise (in standard class) by Discii (another 20 year old design anyway) and the very, very latest at mucho $. As you noted, the achilles heel of the Jantar is its abysmal ergonomics but this can be overcome by some thought in setting up the aircraft for the pilot, which means it is good for single private owners and very small syndicates but not for clubs (handling is quite nice though). As I think Robert H pointed out, a person must spend a long time in any particular glider till they can say that their flying isn't going to get better and club members flying club aircraft don't spend this amount of time (as a rule). However, an easy way to improve performance without increasing pilot ability is to get a better performing glider! Do glider pilots generally, _need_ extra performance? If they float around locally or do 200km tasks on 750km days, no (and that is the vast majority of glider pilots). For them that want to race or fly long distances, well maybe. But handicapped comps like club class and the online comp allow for middling to high performance gliders to compete on a, sort of, equal footing. Which leaves a very small number of pilots who realistically have well honed flying abilities and are competing in non handicapped comps against similarly good pilots, where any edge is worthwhile. They certainly need performance, but it costs! Do glider pilots generally, _want_ extra performance? I dunno. (I suspect that they would, depending on the price) Regards SWK _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
