On 4/23/2010 5:39 PM, noel.wade wrote:
On Apr 23, 5:04 pm, wrote:

My 2-cents worth..............coming from a guy who flies a 13m
glider!

Yeah, but even your 13M ship has a flap handle... I want one of
those!! I feel so inadequate without one... ;-)

--Noel
P.S. I slacked off at work today and correlated data from Idaflieg and
various Johnson Reports. At 80 knots the DG-300 achieves a glide-
ratio of about 27:1. By comparison, the LS-3 can get 31:1.


That is a difference of only 30' of altitude each mile.



When
Moffat and Johnson and others wrote a lot of their reports back in the
1970's and 1980's, the idea of high wing-loadings for faster
competition flying was not yet in-vogue... so they didn't cover it
much. But in strong conditions (i.e. Ephrata or other competition
sites in the western USA), the benefits of a heavier flapped ship like
the LS-3 are pretty significant (on paper at least).