*The Air Force Academy
uses gliders to provide flight experience to ALL it's cadets. *A lot
less expensive than using military trainers (when I went through, it
was in T-33 jets!). *And, as others have said, the RFP is for
replacing the training fleet of Blaniks, not the special XC and
contest gliders. *...

.... As an aside, I find it interesting (and a sad commentary on the US
glider industry) that the US has to use training gliders designed back
in the cold war period to train Soviet pilots. *Nothing against
Blaniks (our club has an L-13AC and it's a hoot with the short wings)
but something like a fleet of K-21s or PW-6s would be a nice upgrade.

Cheers

Kirk
66
USAFA 74

The actual RFP can be downloaded ( zip file ) from
https://www.fbo.gov/?tab=documents&t...029b06ad141878

Note it is 151 pages - the real meat is pages 55 - ~~80 but the rest
of it is stuff that most bidders will find daunting and costly!
If the Association of Grads was buying them - it would likely be a lot
less paper and probably less cost.

I know the Academy tried to maintain the Blaniks to the book standard
( no control cables permitted to snag a white cotton glove run the
length of the cable etc.) for the first several years and found it to
be nearly impossible to do. Parts were a problem - and of course any
plane flown by students day-in and day-out is going to see its share
of hard landings (a provision called out quite clearly in the RFP)

My guess is a qualified bidder would be a current US DoD approved
"house" that acquires the planes from a German source and provides all
the rest of the Contract Deliverables to time schedule - for which
they will earn a fee. Guess the fee to be 30 - 40% of cost of gliders
and trailers.

Finally - Agree with the ASK-21, but would like to look at the gear in
the PW-6 to see if it is robust (PW-5 was not)

Dave 72 USAFA