In article bildan writes:
On May 7, 7:55=A0am, ray conlon wrote:

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.
=A0It is a "one person" activity, wives, girlfriends,kids are left out
of the picture. It is not a family friendly activity.
=A0Unless 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.


Some of this results from the lack of time for the participants.
Work responsibilities, home/family responsibilities, and the like,
don't leave huge amounts of time for personal hobbies like aviation.
One thing that time management classes suggest is using money to
"buy" time -- rather than spend more time working on things that
can be dealt with by spending money. (Probably why many pay the
gardener to mow the lawn.)




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.


You neglected one of the meaningful costs of winch launching ---
real estate. You need a long enough runway to lay out enough cable for
a useful height of launch, and that runway needs to not be at a busy
general aviation airport, unless you like Cessna's running into the
cable, and the resulting pictures in the evening news.

That said, winch launching does sound like fun. What are various
views on how long it takes to learn it and qualify for the signoff to
be able to do it in the U.S.? (Just in case a winch launch operation
ever does set up within practical single-engine power plane range of
here.)

Yes, that refers to the basic issue that in some places, the good
gliding locations are at distances that are impractical for a day trip
by car. Once the trip exceeds a day trip, it becomes impractical to
do frequently if there are any family responsibilities. (For safety,
one probably wants to fly more than a couple times per year...)
The golf course, and the power airport, are both a lot closer for
most of us.



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


Without an A&P mechanic supervising and signing off the work, the
options for the U.S. club members is more limited.


Alan