On Friday, August 30, 2019 at 2:15:04 AM UTC-4, Paul T wrote:
At 13:30 29 August 2019, wrote:

=20
and Ridge Soaring has been on the 'for sale' market for how
long?=20
Seems to me you need to think of a plan to buy some of
these=20
properties up and establish non profit clubs at them -maybe a
'culture=20
change' is required in the US.

Problem is real estate prices. In the old days you could buy a big
enough
=
piece of property for a small enough amount of money to run a
soaring
opera=
tion as a hobby business. Perhaps SSA should do more fundraising
specifica=
lly for purchasing airports? Or spend the money lobbying the
gov't to
bu=
y airports for our use(only half joking.) The Hanggliding/PG crowd
spends
=
a bunch of their resources securing real estate. They've also
unfortunatel=
y had to go into the insurance business themselves, which is a
terrible
out=
come, but I understand they didn't have much choice.

Real estate prices are also high in Europe yet clubs still manage to
purchase airfields.......

Don't you guys have zoning laws that say once an airport or cheese shop or whatever the land use was it has to stay that way forever? Thus keeping prices for old airfields reasonable? Not cheap, reasonable. Some American clubs do buy their own airports but there is a difference between a few hundred thousand for a rural airport and a few million for the examples we have here.