Solution: (drumroll......) Get a smartphone (used on eBay). Tadaaaah!

This conversation is akin to saying I want to go bicycle riding...but don't want to buy a bike???? XCSoar software is (of course)free. A used android smartphone is $50-$250 bucks.

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item...alID=EB AY-US

"You can lead a horse to the water but can't make it drink..."

A fully functional, outstanding soaring flight computer for $125. Nice phone too if you can bear to bring yourself into the 21st century.

Complaining about flight computers, books and manuals with this kind of high performance and extremely low cost solution available is unnecessary. All you really get with a $6000 spend on the "fancy stuff" is a brighter in panel display, airspeed and temp integration (wind, higher accuracy) and stick controllers. You can always mount the smart phone on the panel with industrial Velcro or a accessory mount...