On Saturday, 14 February 2015 02:29:03 UTC+2, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
I have been away from soaring for 12 years and have noticed the open class now has long wing and much shorter wing birds (JS-1C) competing. I am curious how do the 21 and 23 meter new ships keep up with the ASW-22BL's and Nimbus-4's. Are the new shorter wing gliders better overall (better L/D, better penetration ) or just better on strong days when wing loading counts more than the ability to stay in the air?

New shorter wing open class ship probably outperform these older ships easily, but according to few pilot friends that have flown latest open class comps think there still is no substitute for span. At Leszno one pilot flying new 23m ship thought that EBs ran better (plus Concordia, of course). I've seen calculations that shorter span ships can come pretty close when avg. speeds are very high, but not that much better even then, and 99% of comps have several days of pretty lousy weather that you really will have all the span you can buy.