At 15:36 11 November 2004, Andreas Maurer wrote:

Frankly spoken, I doubt that this is possible without
major compromises concerning cockpit size and crash
protection. I need a certain cockpit cross-section
to be able to sit comfortably, so the cross-section
of the fuselage (which defines most of its drag) is
fixed, independent of the wing span. Fuselage surface
area is also fixed.... One solution could be to build
the whole glider extremely light (like the Apis or
Sparrowhawk) to get normal wing loadings of about 33
kg/m^2 at a high aspect ratio, but this is going to
result in the inability to carry water, low Vne (hence
the comparably bad penetration of the Apis compared
to club class gliders with similar L/D and wing loading)
and questionable crash protection. The Sparrowhawk
and Apis look really good and are definitely state
of the art - but to be honest, I would not like to
rely on their cockpit shell strength when I impact
at 50 kts or above.


As to the question of fuselage integrety in smaller,
lighter gliders the Apis manufactures seem to have
given this some thought. See: http://www.albastar.si/
and look under construction on the menu bar

Mike