On Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 10:56:24 AM UTC-7, wrote:
Hi, I'm interested by your suggestion of the ASW 24,which I hadn't really considered. I have heard that they are trickier to thermal well, which may be a disadvantage when scratching being a relatively novice cross country pilot. Did you find any trouble in that regard?

My first glider was a used ASW-24. It had 6 hours on it! I was a new glider pilot and wanted a safe easy to fly machine for spreading my wings to fly far and fast. I was very comfortable in this ship. The only problem I had was the experienced pilots telling me that I needed to thermal slower, turns out I was right, the 24 does need to be thermaled a bit faster. After the first year I got the new winglets and that made it even a better glider! The human ergonomics, are well thought through, you can touch the instrument panel, the visibility is great, control harmony is the nicest of anything I have flown, safety cockpit, with Murray dump value the entire water ballast evacuates in two minutes. I did also find with water, it was best not to load it past 10.5 lb, even though you can load it higher.

I am bigger than most other pilots, 210 pounds very fit, but with broad shoulders 6 feet tall. I fit very well and in fact I fit very well in all the AS gliders, the same cannot be said for the LS or S-H with the "a" fuselage.

I have had a number of gliders and the ASW-24 is still one of my two favorite gliders. The other favorite glider was my Nimbus 4, but I did a lot of work on her to make it such a great glider, (still wish I had kept her) but I had gotten out of the sport for many years. "I am back", now.