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#11
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Club Glider Hangar?
As several others have commented my take would also be that the motivation level of club members to get in the air and enjoy soaring is not as high as it could be. I do believe that ready rigged gliders are helpful, but at our club I can tell you that everyone of the privately owned gliders has to be rigged each flying day and they are enthusiastically . Sometimes one or other of the club gliders ( all are assembled and in the hangar ) might not get taken out to the field for flying ! The trainers usually are well used but the single seaters are very poorly used, in fact we are selling one as we can't justify having two . Well done to the instructors who keep the enthusiasm level up with students but shame on the rest of us for not encouraging and pushing the post solo pilots into setting some goals like badge flying to help them discover the FUN of leaving the field and cross country flying. Over the years I have become convinced that one of the biggest dangers for a club is to not spend time on encouraging new pilots and members to seek improvements in their flying abilities. Some ideas that have worked, and are aimed at better morale include: * Encouraging Badge flying . * Club boards posted in the hangar each new year for pilots to write up good flights ( Best altitude , Best distance , Best duration ,etc ) * Regular club contests ( modest cross country tasks , spot landings ,etc ) * Taking new pilots on cross coutry flights in 2 seaters . It might be worth considering a club member or two taking responsibility for trying to promote some of these activities and remember it's the next generation of soaring pilots that need to be targetted . Good Luck. Ron Clarke. |
#12
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Club Glider Hangar?
On Jan 9, 10:17*pm, "Mike Schumann" mike-nos...@traditions-
nospam.com wrote: My personal feeling is that ease of access is a huge issue. *Our club has a K8 and K7 that is hung in a large hanger. *Because people consider these gliders to be a hassle to get down (about a 5 - 10 minute job), they are rarely flown. Mike Schumann And I cannot explain the Junior...it sits on the floor of a hangar collecting dust all season. I'd be surprised if it logged 10 hrs TTA. Only once last year did we have all five ships on the line, and that was a crappy day. The reason: the club president was acting flight operations officer that day and pushed hard to get everything in the air. /Adam |
#13
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Club Glider Hangar?
On Jan 10, 5:09*pm, Adam wrote:
On Jan 9, 10:17*pm, "Mike Schumann" mike-nos...@traditions- nospam.com wrote: My personal feeling is that ease of access is a huge issue. *Our club has a K8 and K7 that is hung in a large hanger. *Because people consider these gliders to be a hassle to get down (about a 5 - 10 minute job), they are rarely flown. Mike Schumann And I cannot explain the Junior...it sits on the floor of a hangar collecting dust all season. I'd be surprised if it logged 10 hrs TTA. Rigged? Amazing if it is. But do several other gliders have to be pulled out to get at it? And is it very different to fly to anything else that you have e.g. does it need a period of adjustment? Only once last year did we have all five ships on the line, and that was a crappy day. The reason: the club president was acting flight operations officer that day and pushed hard to get everything in the air. /Adam Our clib gliders live rigged in a hanger, getting another one in the air is easy and we do it all the time if there is a queue to fly - and that's a queue to fly Juniors! As to rigging one's own glider, I'm looking forward to being able to keep mine, rigged, in a hanger as I'm going to do my back in if I keep rigging to fly. Plus, I can fly when I only have time to DI & fly, rather than rig, DI, fly & derig. Finally it always feels to me like rigging & derigging are times when a glider can be damaged, and I'm keen to avoid that. |
#14
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Club Glider Hangar?
On Jan 10, 3:11*pm, BB wrote:
The problem may not be hardware. Our club has a beautiful ASW24 and Duo Discus, along with a Blanik and ASK21, all of them hangared and easy to take out. The 24 and duo get surprisingly little usage. Why? Few of our members are checked out to fly them! Why not? We have enough instructors, and they're all happy to do a checkout. But you have to ask, read the manual, and take the time to do it, and in some cases brush up your skills a bit. Where I fly, the policy is to get new solo pilots into the single- seater asap (of course their skills have to be suitable) as 1) we have more of those than K21s, 2) it's less problematic for the club in terms of lose of gliders if they have a accident, 3) people cannot be instructed in a K21 that's being flown solo. Most club members are happy to fly the blanik solo and don't on their own take steps to move up. *It sounds like your club has a similar situation, and based on our experience the glass gliders might not get a lot more usage even if they were hangared. In both situations, maybe what we need is some organized push to get people to improve their skills. I'd agree with that. It's very interesting that your club members will buy and assemble their own gliders, but not the club gliders. Do the club gliders have other restrictions, like "you can only fly it for an hour" or "you can't fly it cross country?" If so, the fact that members are willing to assemble their own gliders suggests that removing these restrictions is the key to getting more usage. I rig and fly my own glider as much as possible as it's part of the financial justification for buying it. My last good flight in a club single-seater was about $130! In my own it would have been about $40 - just the aerotow cost. Our club has a 1 hour rule, but you're allowed to take the glider all afternoon IF you're going to go cross country. That has helped (though there is still not enough demand to learn to fly cross country) Another idea. How about changing club policy so that the gliders get assembled every day? Along with "gas up towplane" the first thing clubmembers are expected to do before flying every day is "assemble Apis", whether or not you personally want to fly it? Now the excuse is gone. I suspect you'd find people turning up late & leaving early to avoid the heavy work... |
#15
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Club Glider Hangar?
On Jan 10, 4:35*pm, " wrote:
snip Some ideas that have worked, and are aimed at better morale include: * Encouraging Badge flying . Do all the club single-seaters have loggers and/or barographs? * Club boards posted in the hangar each new year for pilots to write up good flights ( Best altitude , Best distance , Best duration ,etc ) We have lots of cups given out every year at the annual dinner, in addition there are the club ladders based on the BGA ladder. snip |
#16
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Club Glider Hangar?
Adam wrote:
And I cannot explain the Junior...it sits on the floor of a hangar collecting dust all season. I'd be surprised if it logged 10 hrs TTA. How is it used? My club has two Juniors and which get well used. I'd put that down to the following: - all new solo pilots get booted out of the two seaters after 5 flights and a couple of check rides and are converted to the Juniors. That said, at first they'll be expected to take a check ride each day before flying a Junior and the instructors will decide if the weather is suitable. Once they're judged competent in them, the Junior pilots are expected to fly within their capabilities on much the same basis as any other solo pilot. - we are a strong XC club, so Junior pilots are expected to work on getting their Bronze and Silver badges. A lot of us did all three Silver legs in a Junior. I did height and duration while working on Bronze and got distance as soon as I had my Bronze XC endorsement. For non-UK readers, the Bronze endorsement includes field selection, field landing and navigation exercises. - the club culture assumes that solo pilots will become XC pilots and will work up the qualification ladder, first to their 100 km diploma and then on to Gold and Diamond badges, so there's a clear path to increasing skills and achievements for new pilots to follow. - we also have a Pegase 90 and two Discii. These are run like a syndicate with about 12 members. Single Seat Scheme members get a cost discount in return for buying pre-paid blocks of air time and can book the gliders for a day at a time with the expectation that they will go XC in them. Other pilots can use them if they haven't been claimed by Scheme members. Maybe some variation of our approach would improve the Junior utilization? I should add that I enjoy flying Juniors. They're nice handling gliders that thermal well and spin nicely. I normally fly them during the winter to maintain proficiency while my Libelle stays tucked up in its trailer. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org | |
#17
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Club Glider Hangar?
It's very interesting that your club members will buy and assemble their own gliders, but not the club gliders. Do the club gliders have other restrictions, like "you can only fly it for an hour" or "you can't fly it cross country?" If so, the fact that members are willing to assemble their own gliders suggests that removing these restrictions is the key to getting more usage. The Private gliders tend to either be very light and easy to rig or come with Cora trailers and rigging aids. They usually have automatic hook-ups as well. The problem is as much in the trailer and support gear as the glider. I'm in the same club as Noel, who started this thread, am working hard to help get things in high gear, and think a hanger is very important. But I won't need to keep my DG303 in it. Thanks for all the input. Really helpfull. Brian |
#18
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Club Glider Hangar?
Not only can you do damage to the glider when rigging and derigging, but
there have been numerous accidents resulting from rigging errors, quite a few of which were fatal. If you have the luxury of hangers, you end up with an inherently safer operation. Not to mention the obvious advantages of time and effort that become more important as we age. It would be really helpful if we could get one of the companies marketing steel hangers to come up with a standard glider hanger design so that interested clubs would be able to order economical hanger kits that they can either self build, or have erected by a local contractor. Mike Schumann "Cats" wrote in message ... On Jan 10, 5:09 pm, Adam wrote: On Jan 9, 10:17 pm, "Mike Schumann" mike-nos...@traditions- nospam.com wrote: My personal feeling is that ease of access is a huge issue. Our club has a K8 and K7 that is hung in a large hanger. Because people consider these gliders to be a hassle to get down (about a 5 - 10 minute job), they are rarely flown. Mike Schumann And I cannot explain the Junior...it sits on the floor of a hangar collecting dust all season. I'd be surprised if it logged 10 hrs TTA. Rigged? Amazing if it is. But do several other gliders have to be pulled out to get at it? And is it very different to fly to anything else that you have e.g. does it need a period of adjustment? Only once last year did we have all five ships on the line, and that was a crappy day. The reason: the club president was acting flight operations officer that day and pushed hard to get everything in the air. /Adam Our clib gliders live rigged in a hanger, getting another one in the air is easy and we do it all the time if there is a queue to fly - and that's a queue to fly Juniors! As to rigging one's own glider, I'm looking forward to being able to keep mine, rigged, in a hanger as I'm going to do my back in if I keep rigging to fly. Plus, I can fly when I only have time to DI & fly, rather than rig, DI, fly & derig. Finally it always feels to me like rigging & derigging are times when a glider can be damaged, and I'm keen to avoid that. -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com |
#19
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Club Glider Hangar?
On Jan 10, 11:36*am, "Mike Schumann" mike-nos...@traditions-
nospam.com wrote: It would be really helpful if we could get one of the companies marketing steel hangers to come up with a standard glider hanger design so that interested clubs would be able to order economical hanger kits that they can either self build, or have erected by a local contractor. Mike - The "Ensign" hangar and the "Sidewiser" hangar are standard designs that are available as affordable kits. However, they're really only good for 1 - 2 gliders. An economical solution for 5 - 20 gliders (such as the design of the hangars at the Scottish Glider Centre) is what we could use (and I suspect what a few other clubs could use as well). John - Its funny you mention the time limit. That's really the ONLY reason I went out and bought my Russia. Our club's Apis is being used so seldom that I could have had a lot of fun in it - but I want to fly XC and around here that means 3 - 5 hours. Our club limits the use of club gliders to 1 hour (or 2 hours if you make radio contact after the first hour and no one is in line for it). Some members claim that there's an "exception clause" that allows the Apis to be flown all day if you're the first person to rig it - but I have not found that rule written into our club's bylaws and refuse to "cheat" the system that way. I have no "hard evidence" to back it up - but I personally feel that it is a big discouragement to limit the flying time like that. ESPECIALLY if people have to go through the trouble of rigging and de- rigging the glider just to fly it for 1 or 2 hours! ...As far as training goes: I like the idea of kicking people out of the 2-seaters at some point. I don't know if we can do it _right_ after solo - but certainly at some point afterwards. We are trying to slim down our fleet some and people have objected to reducing our Blanik count from 4 to 3, because they're used "so heavily". If we only allowed instructional flights and demo rides in the Blaniks, I think we could get away with only having 3 with no problem. We get a lot of interested students who come out and sign up (and the XC pilots in our club are really driving a lot of the interest and enthusiasm around here); but then the new members leave the club because they don't feel that they are getting timely instruction or guidance. Some of that is their fault (showing up mid-day and complaining about not getting more than 1 flight) - but some of it is a lack of organization and operational rigidity. Instructors aren't paired with students on a regular basis, you just come grab whatever CFIG is available that day and he hops in the cockpit with you and goes. Definitely less than ideal, IMHO. It also doesn't help that our current club uses a clunky 1-36 as its "transition trainer" to single-seaters. No one likes the aircraft, so there's not a lot of enthusiasm to get students into it. Also, the club that merged with us had a flight rule that _required_ students to land a 1-26 out in a field, disassemble it, and trailer it back to the airport. They had to do this before they could ever go cross-country in club equipment. These are all known issues that we're working to correct. Information from other clubs on similar issues and how you've conquered them are always appreciated! Take care, --Noel |
#20
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Club Glider Hangar?
At 19:42 10 January 2008, Mike Schumann wrote:
Not only can you do damage to the glider when rigging and derigging, but there have been numerous accidents resulting from rigging errors, quite a few of which were fatal. If you have the luxury of hangers, you end up with an inherently safer operation. Not to mention the obvious advantages of time and effort that become more important as we age. It would be really helpful if we could get one of the companies marketing steel hangers to come up with a standard glider hanger design so that interested clubs would be able to order economical hanger kits that they can either self build, or have erected by a local contractor. Mike Schumann I could put interested parties in touch with the designer of the Scottish Gliding Union hangar and you could adopt a proven design. It would be hard to come up with a more space and material efficient design. There is another one being constructed at an English club and a second one is being planned for Portmoak making 3 in total. The second Portmoak hangar will probably have minor changes to the roof height and pitch to cater for high dihedral wingletted gliders like the V 2cxT and D2cT. There will also be a gravel floor rather then the mix in the original hangar and also detail changes to the door runners. The design is based around bays suitable for 18m gliders although, because the two rows of gliders are necessarily offset, there is one smaller 15m bay and one larger bay (for Duos) etc at each end of the hangar. The second SGU hangar will be entirely financed by individual and syndicate private glider owners but owned by the club. (All the club gliders are already housed in the first hangar) The investors will get 16 years free hangarage and trailer parking before having to pay for their hangar bay. Within that period they will have the right sell the residual time in that bay at whatever price they can get for it. A similar financial model might interest other clubs. John Galloway |
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