On May 7, 7:55*am, ray conlon wrote:
On May 7, 7:52*am, Jim Beckman wrote:

Here's something the Hawk Valley club did in New Jersey a couple of years
ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21PAYdokVxY

This was at a grade school, where the principal was a glider student at
our field. *He and a few others did a *lot* of preparation work, and the
kids got about a half day of exposure to basic flight physics, history of
flight, building balsa model gliders, and finally getting an up close
encounter with our club 1-26. *I don't know if we made any lasting
impressions, but we gave it a good effort. *And it was fun for us, too.

Jim Beckman

Bottom line, soaring is an expensive hobby, attracting people is not
ever going to be easy, they don't have the disposable income to enter
the sport. 150,000 machines are not in most peoples budget.
*It is a "one person" activity, wives, girlfriends,kids are left out
of the picture. It is not a family friendly activity.
*Unless something can be done to get the cost of gliders,
equipment,tows,instruction etc.on the order of being able to play
golf,riding motorcycles,,jet skis etc. it will never grow. With the
reality of the US economic picture at present, it will continue to
soaring will continue to shrink.
Maybe a "national club" deal where people could go from one glider
port/club to another and rent a bird and get tows for say 125.00$ per
day as a package, might help.

To the extent soaring is an expensive hobby, it's because we've
collectively chosen to operate expensively. The US norm is privately
owned gliders whose owners pay $50 or more for a tow. Any problem
which arises is solved by writing a check - no one wants to get their
hands dirty. It need not be so.

Gliders will always be expensive because they are essentially hand
made on very slow production lines. The only upside is well cared
for gliders last a very long time so the high initial costs can be
amortized over many years.

An opportunity to very significantly reduce costs, perhaps the best
one, is to adopt winch launch. More than anything else, this is why
soaring is less expensive in Europe. As a result of winch economics,
clubs fly fleets of very modern club owned gliders launched by winch.
Private glider ownership is far less common.

European clubs also expect their members to work on club equipment.
This "sweat equity" greatly reduces costs.