2. You can buy a used glider with heavier wings that has
instant maintenance needs for less money. You have all those
hours to work on the glider, but you can't do another
two turns in each thermal? :P
The biggest advantages of the Russia and PW-5 is that they are
small and light and new. This is very convenient.

I dunno about this.......I've seen and owned a number of really nice older
gliders..sure there are plenty of "lumps" for sale out there, but still for
not too may $ you can still find some pretty mint older gliders out
there....maintenance on sailplanes really isn't all that complicated either
and you pretty much can't "ware one out"...you can of course damage one or
mistreat one, you can update one if you like but these are pretty much all
user issues and even new glider buyers do all this too....
but you are right about one thing, some of these new light and ultra-light
gliders are easy to assemble and disassemble and that may be more important
to some of their owners since they probably will need to retrieve them more
often when they don't make the final glide home! :-)
tim