Season Passes available from Soaring NV in Minden

On Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 11:57:41 PM UTC-8, Craig Reinholt wrote:
Please remember this thread was about costs associated with flying at Minden, Nevada. Minden is a world class destination soaring site. Pilots from around the world travel to Minden for spectacular flying. Think Bitterwasser, Omarama (or other fantastic facilities throughout the world). Without proper service and equipment, Minden can’t compete with those other destination sites. They are not catering to novice pilots like your local club does. Check out what it costs to fly at either of the above mentioned locations. You could easily budget nearly $1000 / day for flying. Put in context, Minden’s fees are reasonable. If it keeps the business there afloat, we should all be grateful for the opportunity it give us to fly there someday.

And if they aren't, a competitor will see an opportunity and come in with better prices and services. Hooray for Capitalism!

Tom

Just to add a bit to what Eric said:Â* I've had two successful
partnerships in gliders which allowed me to fly way more glider than I
could afford.Â* Choose your partner wisely and put everything in
writing.Â* I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

On 12/14/2019 1:51 PM, Eric Greenwell wrote:
wrote on 12/14/2019 10:27 AM:
Yes Nick its a sad state of affairs and with the preponderance of
self launch
sailplanes, its gonna get worse. As for. club
participation/formation, its
completely dependant upon the mentality/atmosphere engendered . Some
clubs are
flourishing, many of which are not located in premier soaring
locations. But
they have a friendly, all inclusive atmosphere which helps them not only
maintain but grow.

I think self-launching sailplanes are a symptom of the problem, not
the cause.
Lots of motorglider pilots remain active in the SSA and in clubs as
officials,
workers, tow pilots, and instructors. They get a motorglider for
various reasons,
but a big one is they can't get tows when they want them. It sucks to
tow everyone
up, then be sitting on the ground because there isn't another towpilot
to launch
you, or sitting on the ground during the week when you could fly
because you
aren't busy doing tows or instruction, but - no tow pilots.

As you pointed out, there used to be 3X as many glider pilots at
Minden. What
happened to them? Obviously, 2X of them didn't get motorgliders, or
there would
still be 3X as many glider pilots at Minden. They drifted away, the
replacements
dwindled, and here we are.

I think motorgliders could help increase, or at least stop the loss of
pilots, if
more of them were owned by partnerships. Gliders like the Silent
Electro and
miniLAK FES offer good performance, easy operation, and relatively low
cost if you
had 2 or 3 person partnerships. The motor gives the owners the ability
to fly when
and where it's convenient for them, and more days are available
because the motor
makes poor or unpredictable days usable.

Even you might enjoy being a partner in an FES! And when a tow and
suitable
weather are available, hop into the 1-26 and dash off into the distance.


--
Dan, 5J

There is so much I would like to say but.... keeping it simple, or trying.

You stated that they need to teach their tow pilots how to tow and how to return with maximum efficiency, or something to that effect.

There are maybe 6 tow pilots that tow at Minden (and with the exception of the FNG, whose tow numbers, I have no idea about), the low time person has over 3000 tows with the highest said to be in excess of 12,000. Now, I realize everyone can learn something from everyone, but even you have to admit you have some pretty experienced folks on the other end of that rope. If you know a better way, please let us know. I know we are all happy to learn something new and want to provide the best service we can.

“And that’s all I have to say about that�. Respectfully (and thanks, Forrest Gump)

Forest Gump, I like that line. You might need to reread my post. I am in no way denegrading the quality of any operations tow pilots. My point was, since the price schema is the time from launch to tow plane landing means that if a guy happens to get a tow pilot who loligages his way back down you end up paying alot more for a tow than if you have an efficient tow pilot who has worked contests etc.

A better pricing, if you were gonna charge per minute would be time from launch to release. That would be a fairer way..... says the guy with over 8,000 hours taildragger and over 4,000 tows.... lol

it sounds simple, to ask the towpilot to punch a stopwatch, but there are often more urgent demands on the attention of the towpilot. I regret that sometimes I've realised that I forgot to press the button, with a consequent loss of accurate timing. I fix this by guesswork.

At 07:24 20 December 2019, wrote:
it sounds simple, to ask the towpilot to punch a stopwatch, but there
are
o=
ften more urgent demands on the attention of the towpilot. I regret
that
so=
metimes I've realised that I forgot to press the button, with a
consequent
=
loss of accurate timing. I fix this by guesswork.



Not sure if this works over your side of pond but I use this for recording

my log - you do need to have flarm fitted and working

https://ktrax.kisstech.ch/logbook/?
id=FESHIEBRIDGE&tz=0&day=2019-12-
01&units=metric&shorthand=true&showtype=true&fstat us=all&ftype=a
ll&disp=cs&showcrew=true

Not sure if this works over your side of pond but I use this for recording

my log - you do need to have flarm fitted and working

https://ktrax.kisstech.ch/logbook/?
id=FESHIEBRIDGE&tz=0&day=2019-12-
01&units=metric&shorthand=true&showtype=true&fstat us=all&ftype=a
ll&disp=cs&showcrew=true

@Stephen Struthers - you would also need OGN receiver coverage to use KTrax.

As a backup to pen & paper tow altitudes or time spent, you can stick a small flight recorder in the cockpit. At the end of the day, the IGC files can be viewed to fill in any gaps or verify recorded info.

Yes, long gone are the days when people like AL McD, Coop, High Pockets Al, Tom, Geoff, Mountain Mike etc. etc. "ruled" the runways in Minden and the comradery was epic. High Country Soaring was the place to be and HCS started the Ely camps. Magical times, fond memories.

I am grateful that enterprising individuals have taken up the mantle of providing soaring services at Minden. It's a treasure of a soaring location. Certainly it's not the only good place to fly in the area, the western US, or the world, but one I'm glad to have continued access to Minden as it presents its own unique benefits.

I remain somewhat perplexed at the tendency of glider pilots to whine about relatively small differences in tow costs - particularly at commercial operations that don't run on free labor. I'd be shocked if these operations are making more than very low tens of dollars per hour per person once you account for fuel, maintenance, cost of the tied up capital, etc. Certainly nobody has joined the 1% towing gliders into the sky.

If $10-20 per tow is more important to you than the freedom to avoid pulling duty and pay club dues, by all means join or form a club and put in the hours and work to save yourself a couple hundred bucks per season, but surely it serves no useful purpose to criticize folks who serve the community while trying to scratch out a living.

The flat-rate offer is an interesting innovation. Hopefully it encourages a few folks with the time and motivation to do a lot of flying out of Minden and build up the baseload demand for tows.

Thanks Soaring NV!

Andy Blackburn
9B