At 08:38 04 February 2011, Marc wrote:
On Feb 4, 12:29=A0am, Marc wrote:
On Feb 3, 8:57=A0am, Bob Kuykendall wrote:

The situation begs the wider questions, where do we get new glider
pilots if trainers become so scarce and expensive? If we let the
cost
of soaring instruction rise with the burdened price of training
gliders, who will want to even start? Do we let the commercial,
consumerist, invisible hand of the marketplace sweep our sport from
the sky? Or is there some legitimate way to subvert the laws of
supply
and demand?

www.retroplane.net/forum/download.php?id=3D496

What if they had based the design on the K13, rather than the K18?
I've spent the last 5 years designing a low cost winch (yes, I'm
slow,
but I'm almost ready to cut metal, really), and am acutely aware of
the fact that there aren't a lot of decent low cost training gliders
left to go along with our winch...

Marc

Hmm,

I hate posting via Google, I can't make links work anymore. That was
a link to an article on the Edgeley EA9 Optimist glider, a K18 clone
with 80% of the components laser cut from pre-cured Fibrelam honeycomb
sheets. Try again:

http://tinyurl.com/45kd3ah

Marc

Edgeley did have a two seater on the drawing board - Edgeley EA10 - was
going to be produced for the Faulkes Flying Foundation.
However don't think marketing was his strong point -hence no sales on
the EA9, and no development of the EA10.