On 6 Oct, 11:50, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:27:34 -0700, Ian
wrote:

Er-hem. An awful lot of us are still very happy, and having a lot of
sun, flying things with the performance of a Ka-6E. We just don't see
the need to spend £15,000 getting that performance ...

Well.... let me say it that way: No student pilot in my club would
volunteer to fly a glider with less performance than out DG-300s...

It used to be like that at Sutton Bank. People would queue all day for
an hour in a DG-300 ... leaving the Ka-8 free for me to fly whenever I
wanted, for as long as I wanted. I wonder how much of that sort of
attitude is desire or need for performance, and how much is sheer
snobbery?

I wonder how things would have turned out if the Discus had been made
the World Class glider?

It would have been a success. Definitely.

There was a condition, wasn't there, that the plans had to be
available to multiple manufacturers? I suppose that would have put S-H
off a bit. But then, how many manufacturers ever made PW-5's?

Ian