Cheap German gliding

I wonder if anyone from the US who was in the sport a while back (say
1950s thorugh 1970s) can explain what was different in the US.

I think the main reason is that in Germany (actually, in most European
countries), Gliding is a club activity. Only a minority of pilots own
their own glider. It's accepted that if you want to fly, you have to
show up at 09:00 in the morning and only go home when the last glider is
de-rigged and in its trailer. I'm not sure this would be compatible with
the US culture. Of course, no payed staff. And there are usually
something like 30 or 40 hours of compulsory club work, mostly spent to
work on the gliders or on other material during the winter.

Aditionally, this low price is only achieved by clubs which do mainly
winch launches. Not all clubs are lucky enough to reach their thermals
from the winch. If you have to aero tow, then add another 1000€.

On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:09:46 -0700, brtlmj wrote:

So, given that - after the fees - flying is essentially free, how do
you balance supply and demand? Time limits? Long queues on good days?

Yes - usually there's a time limit per flight, depending on the demand
on the glider in question (usually between on eand three hours). It's
seldom that not all of our gliders are in use.


Bye
Andreas

On 8 Okt., 20:05, Udo wrote:
Of all the many points I made, one point was incorrect, it was 10
years ago and done from memory.

As to your contra points.
In 1998 the restaurant was real I had my launch there,
and my black forest cake and coffee in the afternoon and I paid for
it. For a visitor it looked very nice. Normally my standards are a
bit higher for a normal dining experience.

That must have been somwhere else or a very rare occasion;-) You can
usually get coffee, a bread bun, maybe a piece of cake or a chocklate
bar but not anything like a real meal. Only exceptions I know of are
the occasional barbecues. I guess the point you are trying to make is
that running a restaurant is a good source of additional income and I
totally agree. In Leverkusen, an airfield 15km fürther to the south
there is a small restaurant in the gliding club with a nice terrace
overlooking the field which is open to the public.

As to the second tow plane. I state it is rented when needed
It certainly was needed when I saw 30 glider lined up
at 9:00 am, half the fleet were guest and many from other countries
and it was not a contest.


Hay was being made, the rolls of bails were moved over to the side
near the fence.

I might have to agree. I took a look at a picture I made in 2004 and
there is high grass to the right of the runway http://www.kesselsweier.de/cam/langenfeld.jpg
.. I never really noticed it before.

As to the air event my mistake it only takes place once a year.
The annual Club booklet, that was laying about, stated the club earned
50000.00 Marks net from that event.

As for the fees, as seen on the current website
one time club entry fee E 520.00
every spring E130.00
monthly E 14.50
1 hour of flying all inclusive E 7.00
3 hours E 21.00

That would come to about E 1000.00 if you fly 100 hrs a year
Take your pick with the gliders.
I think that is a very good deal in spite of the fact you would have
to spent 75 hours a year helping maintaining the club.
I am impressed.
On the other hand, I personally would not like the highly structured
environment. I remember some one telling me at the time that
club members can buy off some of that time.

Udo

I hope my contra points didn't sound all to offensive. I just wanted
to say that in my opinion the soaring world in germany is not as
perfect as it may seem after reading your post;-) Alltogether it is
nice to hear that you had such a good impression.

On Oct 8, 2:49 pm, José Jiménez nospam@please wrote:
I wonder if anyone from the US who was in the sport a while back (say
1950s thorugh 1970s) can explain what was different in the US.

I think the main reason is that in Germany (actually, in most European
countries), Gliding is a club activity. Only a minority of pilots own
their own glider. It's accepted that if you want to fly, you have to
show up at 09:00 in the morning and only go home when the last glider is
de-rigged and in its trailer. I'm not sure this would be compatible with
the US culture. Of course, no payed staff. And there are usually
something like 30 or 40 hours of compulsory club work, mostly spent to
work on the gliders or on other material during the winter.

Aditionally, this low price is only achieved by clubs which do mainly
winch launches. Not all clubs are lucky enough to reach their thermals
from the winch. If you have to aero tow, then add another 1000€.

That's not all that different from many/most US Clubs. There are
actually a significant number of them, and they all require some form
of "sweat equity" including things like:

- Maintenance
- Instructing
- Giving intro rides
- Field operations officer
- etc.

So far, the two biggest things I'm hearing that are different a

a) Winch launching
b) Property ownership

Since "a" tends to require "b", is it really all about winch
launching?

P3

Papa3 wrote:

So far, the two biggest things I'm hearing that are different a

a) Winch launching
b) Property ownership

Since "a" tends to require "b",

It does not at all.

is it really all about winch launching?

It is a big factor. A winch launch is about 5$ while an aerotow tends to
be between 40$ and 50$, depending on the circumstances.

And then there's the fleet. A club with, say, 100 members and maybe 2
ASK 13, 3 Ka8, and 2 LS4 tends to have a different price structure than
a club with 50 Members and 1 DG 1000, 1 Duo Discus, 1 ASK 21, 3 LS4 and
3 LS8. Don't take these numbers literally, but there are huge
differences in the fleets.

And there are huge differences in the member fees, too. Personally, I
don't fly for 600€/year. I guess it's rather around 2500€/year, but I've
never dared to really do the math. For this price I do between 70 and
100 hours on advanced club plastic.

On Mon, 8 Oct 2007 18:33:36 +0200, alex8735 wrote
(in article . com):

On 7 Okt., 17:55, Udo wrote:
[lots of stuff deleted]

Flying is not really cheaper in germany. We just pay less money and
more time. A normal club member will spent about 10 half days each
year on the winch (or doing some other job on the field), is expected
to stay and keep the operation running the whole day if he wants to
participate (1hour of flying means spending the whole day at the
field) and has to work 60 - 80 hours in the winter doining maintenance
or other chores. Most clubs depent on a small number of people who are
willing to invest even more time into the club.

I think this really is the key. In our club a winch launch is ¤3.50, a minute
flying between ¤0.20 - ¤0.50 capped at 3hrs, towing w/ our Piper Super Cup is
about ¤3,-/minute and there is a monthly fee of around ¤30. This is the cash
component.

Now if we work less than 50hrs per year, then there is an extra ¤500 to be
paid to the club. In addition between 50+ and 100hrs per year the charge for
flying is multiplied between 1,5 (@50 hrs) and 1 (@100hrs). Up to 150 hrs you
can further reduce your flying charges to a factor of 0,5.

This keeps the cash involvement down for those who do not have that much to
spend - mostly our students and pupils - and for those who have cash but no
time, it offers an opportunity to fly without the chores of beeing tied to
the winch for half a weekend 10x per year. The downside, of course, is that
most of the upkeep of the actual flight operations is carried by the younger
ones - often those w/ the least experience.

Now if you compare that pricing against a commercial gliding operation (e.g.
at the Wasserkuppe), the extra charges they charge more or less match the
"work component" involved in flying in a club.

So bottomline seems to be this: flying in Germany seems to have the same cost
(more or less) wherever you go. As long as you fly within a club environment,
you can replace cash with sweat and time. That's what makes it LOOK cheap.

my ¤0.02

Torsten

Andreas belongs to a WONDERFUL club in a beautiful part of Germany
(what part isn't beautiful?). It's in the Rhine valley, although it's
a few kilometers from the river, probably dozens. But it's almost
surrounded by vineyards. Riesling, mostly, I guess.

Of course, I haven't been there in WAY TOO LONG, but my memories are
nothing but the fondest.

Duties for this club member were to help other students launch and
retrieve gliders. We did it all by manual labor, no golf carts or
tractors or cars to go retrieve the Ka7 that landed long down the
runway. Just a bunch of kids getting their daily workout of pushing
the glider back. There was kitchen duty for some members too. I
don't know where this club got all their members, but the ones in the
kitchen knew how to make GREAT meals. They took one look at me and
"allowed" me in the kitchen only once.

Time restrictions on a glider? I don't remember being told, but I do
know when I was flying the K8 or the Standard Astir, there was usually
nobody else waiting, and I could fly as long as I wanted. If anyone
complained, I never knew about it.

I know the knowledgeable members did maintenance on everything, from
the winch to the towplane to the gliders and to the clubhouse. I
always thought the club was pretty self-sufficient. Once, I wondered
why the clubhouse had an "electic" shape. Not square or rectangular,
but many-sided with a lot of glass. I was told the large picture
windows were donated and they built the club house to make use of the
big glass. Oh, it was great!

The club probably made some money on the meals they served, with the
largest meal served Saturday nights and a large meal offered on
Sunday's at noon. Also, they served cake and coffee around 1600 hrs
on Saturday and Sunday. The club did not operate during the week.

As previously mentioned, we payed yearly dues which covered the costs
of winching and flying. Only aero tows were extra. Since I launched
mainly with the winch, I didn't have to pay much extra. This was
during the mid 1980's, when the dollar to Mark hit a high of 3.47:1, I
think. You don't want to know how much an LS4 with a Cobra would have
cost in dollars.

Yea, I'm sure a winch would help our club reduce it's costs. Wish we
had a good one! With a good Lepo!

Ray Lovinggood
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA
Former Member, DJK Segelfluggemeinschaft, Landau

On Oct 8, 5:41 pm, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:09:46 -0700, brtlmj wrote:
So, given that - after the fees - flying is essentially free, how do
you balance supply and demand? Time limits? Long queues on good days?

Yes - usually there's a time limit per flight, depending on the demand
on the glider in question (usually between on eand three hours). It's
seldom that not all of our gliders are in use.

Bye
Andreas

On Oct 8, 12:33 pm, alex8735 wrote:
....snip...
As far as I know German clubs are often far cheaper than US clubs
because they are struktured differently. Members are expected to do
all the work themselves. Everybody has a job to to from mowing the
gras, fleet maintenance or instructing. Maintenance only costs the
materials used. Fuel is not a problem because a winch launch barely
uses 1 lite r of diesel. Airfields are often in posession of the clubs
or cheaply leased from the city. The biggest costs in our club are
insurance costs. If you insure your fleet yourself then you can save
even more.

Flying is not really cheaper in germany. We just pay less money and
more time. A normal club member will spent about 10 half days each
year on the winch (or doing some other job on the field), is expected
to stay and keep the operation running the whole day if he wants to
participate (1hour of flying means spending the whole day at the
field) and has to work 60 - 80 hours in the winter doining maintenance
or other chores. Most clubs depent on a small number of people who are
willing to invest even more time into the club.

This is how my US club is structured, but we still pay high dues
($800-1300/year).

We have no paid staff. Club members mow grass, fix buildings, fly
towplanes, launch gliders, whatever.

We pay for towplane and glider maintenance, insurance, fuel.
We also have to pay for the airport we bought 5 years ago, at market
rates, not cheaply and have to keep the hangers and whatnot up.

None of the US clubs that I know pay anybody to do anything, we do it
ourselves and it's still expensive.

I think it's for 2 reasons.
- Paying for towplanes
- Paying for land

Todd Smith
3S

This is how my US club is structured, but we still pay high dues
($800-1300/year).

Most European clubs are not cheaper.

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 06:31:47 -0700, rlovinggood
wrote:



Ray Lovinggood
Carrboro, North Carolina, USA
Former Member, DJK Segelfluggemeinschaft, Landau


Hi Ray,

things haven't changed at all (apart from the fact that nowadays we
host several private gliders and have plenty of flying during the
week).
The club house has grown considerably (we needed more room - and
finally could afford to buy new windows!), the quality of the meals
still depends on the cook (are they are made by 16-year-olds or a
professional cook... err... wive...).

When did you say you come to Europe again?

Bye
Andreas