bagmaker wrote:
I must disagree, respectably, with your opinion Mark.

You wont find a 2-33 in a German club, you will find new shiny ships
and LOTS of new pilots. Do you get that in the US? Now, are memberships
rising or falling in the US? And in Germany? Ahhhhh, see a link?

Are memberships really rising in Germany? Do you have numbers? If they
are, that would be different from the trend worldwide.

Do you suppose the use of low-cost winch launches might explain a lot of
the difference, along with the much higher cost of powered flight, and
*very* easy access to glider operations because the country is so compact?

So, at the moment, I don't see the link, because these other differences
seem important. In our club, it wasn't the lack of "bling" (we had an
old Blanik) that kept our membership down, it was the lack of
instructors and towpilots. If we had enough of those, we could have
easily doubled our membership and been able to afford the fiberglass two
seater.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly
* "Transponders in Sailplanes" http://tinyurl.com/y739x4
* "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org