Originally Posted by
iRaven
20 years my @rse!
The Australian Cadets have just taken delivery of roughly half a dozen per year in 2015/2016 -
Defence Ministers » Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence ? Air Force Cadets receive new self-launching gliders
Also, money talks. Place an order with AS for 56 gliders and I am sure they would not take 10 years to deliver! This has to be the greatest myth going surrounding the great Air Cadet gliding debacle. When someone actually asks AS, with proper financial backing to actually pay for 56 aircraft, and gets a real world answer with an actual quote, then I'll believe it. Just because a local club might have asked for a couple of K-21s and has been told it's going to 9-12 months doesn't mean that 40 gliders is going to take 20 years! Likewise, because AS will take 2 years to deliver 11 doesn't mean that 56 will take 10 years...
iRaven
Money talks sure, but the whole fiasco with the Vanguard was the fact that Schleicher refused to open a production line, I do not believe that has changed at all, they are still in the very same production facilities at Poppenhausen that they were 35 years ago..
I'm part of a club who have been taking deliveries of K21s over the past couple of years, our first couple have taken an entire year each after ordering, to come as a direct result of the Australian Air Cadets getting their order in before ours, and that was just half a dozen gliders for them!
And with glue failures cropping up more and more in the ASK13 fleet the demand is continuing to pick up for those clubs needing to move to Glass Gliders or face extinction, so there is still plenty of interest in the K21 despite being rolled out in 1978!
Their website claims they can produce 70-80 or so gliders in a year, unless they open new facilities or outsource the production elsewhere (huge starting costs to then having no demand) it will surely take a number of years to get an entire fleet done, depends if people/RAF are willing to wait, AS is not going to devote their entire factory when they are already busy enough with orderbooks full with the latest kit to compete against Schempp's New Ventus 3 as well as the civilian training market.
Oh and in typical RAF fashion even after building the aircraft would then need to be "modified" to suit the RAF demands seeing as the manufacturer cannot possibly know best in what is a very simple airframe, that'd take time for sure!
Plus a K21 last year cost about £80,000 all in, I'd hate to think what that'd now be with the pound dropping like a stone.
Planesandthings