Pete Reinhart wrote:

"So what" is big problem. A hard to derig and retrieve glider really
discourages a student from even contemplating cross-country unless he
can be sure of landing at airports for an aero retrieve, and the low
performance means it is impractical to stay within reach of airports.
Practically speaking, it means most students won't take a 2-33 away from
the home airport.


Partially true,but it's part of the game and rigging/de-reigging is part of
the game.

It's not partially true, it's entirely true. If the "game" is a huge
pain in the butt, people won't play it.

You can say the same thing about most of the 2seaters currently
used for training, that is, they dicourage landing anywhere they can't be
towed out of because they are such a pain to take apart and put together.

I have said the same thing about other 2 seaters, including the Blanik
our club had, BUT if the glider has enough performance to easily stay
within range of airports as it goes cross-country, then pilots are more
willing to fly it cross-country. This is far harder to do in most places
if you are flying a 2-33; even a Blanik makes it noticeably easier.

This "concept" applies well beyond students in low/medium performance
gliders: many (probably most nowadays) pilots fly their high performance
ships so they can land at an airport if they can't stay up, so they can
get an aero retrieve instead of a ground retrieve. Pilots of big Open
class gliders especially hate to land in a field, because they are such
beasts to pack out. What you fly very much affects how you fly.

I don't have anything to sell and I don't have the opinion that only a
European glider is worthy of my effort to fly it, but I still echo
Robert's comments. Please stick with responding to what a person says
instead of disparaging motives you can only speculate about.

--I was entirely responding to what he said and I disagree with the tone

of his comments; it is also my privilege to speculate on whatever I care to.

Privilege or not, it still detracts from the discussion to make
unfounded, gratuitous comments about other pilots. In this particular
case, it seemed especially egregious, given Robert's substantial
contributions to bringing the Genesis to the market. Perhaps you recall
the Genesis was not a European design?


--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA