On Feb 4, 5:57*am, 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?

I don't think that's a big problem. Most people seem to get solo by
about 40 flights and 10 hours of air time. At our current club rates,
that's about NZ$2500 (US$2000) for tows and NZ$600 (US$450) for hire
of a DG1000 at casual rates [1]. A glider that we could hire out for
half the hourly rate would save less than 10% of the total (and I
didn't even include club membership fees, logbook and other training
material, landing fees).

The equation changes if you're using a winch for training but 1) US
clubs don't use winches, and 2) the Blanik was never the trainer of
choice for a winch operation.

[1] in fact you'd pay less via one or other bulk-buy scheme: either
the "prepay to solo" scheme, or the NZ$900/year "all you can eat
scheme".