On Tuesday, July 17, 2012 1:40:32 PM UTC-7, (unknown) wrote:
Thanks everyone!! Very insightful answers.
And thank you Al Gore for inventing the Internet!!!

Rick

I intentionally don’t comment much on these groups because of the time it can take away from other important matters, but in this case, as a US DG dealer I feel I am obligated to correct some of the misinformation I am reading. First, Eric is actually correct. The Service contract only applies to aircraft that the current DG Flugzeugbau Company did not originally build.. It only applies to gliders built before they were founded in 1996 and formerly built by Rolladen-Schneider and Glaser-Dirks, both of which went out of business. All gliders built by DG Flugzeugbau, according to Mr. Weber, will never have such a service agreement as long as DG stays in business, even for gliders no longer in production. EASA has made it much more expensive in recent years to support these older gliders and the service agreement helps pay these expenses. Granted there are many opinions about better ways this could have been handled so not to disgruntle existing owners, but the service agreement does not have anything to do with the quality or performance of the gliders built by DG Flugzeugbau. Regarding the comments about bankruptcy; Mr. Weber is a very wealthy man and has his hands in many other ventures as well. He has the means and says he will never let the company go into bankruptcy. In fact with the orders I placed with them to fulfill my USG contract to supply 19 gliders to the USAFA, I am sure they are well in the black. Second, please note aircraft with Experimental certificates that were not certificated in the armature built category still must be maintained safe and airworthy with FAA approved parts. Also, contrary to many beliefs, AD’s can and many times do apply to these aircraft when the same model would have later received a type certificate. In such cases the AD will state in the Applicability section “certified in any category”. Third, DG is the only German glider manufacturer that has done crash testing and developed the dual wall construction cockpit for better crash worthiness. They have since been in the forefront in safety features such as the making the Röger hook and Piggott-hook features standard on all their gliders. They also came out with many other safety features such as the NOAH system for quicker cockpit emergency exiting. There is perhaps a compromise to safety and maximum performance but that is not to say DG gliders have not done well in competition. Here are the Competition results so you can see for yourself: http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/wettbew...rgebnisse.html.
Chris