On 6 Oct, 23:44, Eric Greenwell wrote:

Do people buy a dinghy just to go sailing most of the time, and race
only once or twice a year? Or are they bought primarily for racing? If
it's the later, we may not learn anything by comparing one design racers
in gliders and sailboats, because most people don't/won't buy a glider
for just racing.

My perception of the dinghy racing folk (I'm strictly a cruising
sailor) is that it's almost all racing - not least because there are
generally races every weekend throughout the season. It's probably
also important that most sailing clubs concentrate on a particular
class (or two). To get the equivalent in gliding would require a club
to have ten or twenty PW-5's on the club/PO fleet, with competitions
every Saturday and Sunday throughout the local soaring season.

I think the flaw in
the one-design concept is thinking a lot pilots like the concept enough
to actually make any sacrifice in cost or performance to get one.

The good thing about the World Class competition was in stimulating
interest in smaller, less complicated gliders once again. The bad
thing was thinking that top-notch competition pilots would want to
give up their Venti / Nimbi / ASWs /ASHs to fly them. I don't expect
there would be any difficulty in getting entrants for a World Class
competition if some nice sponsor provided a fleet of identical Discus
2's ...

Ian