On Wednesday, April 10, 2019 at 1:26:49 AM UTC-4, krasw wrote:
Interesting! Judging from the picture they are using the new 33 fuselage and I bet everything else is new, too. If it's std. class only (no 18m), they are competing against light selflaunchers like GP and MiniLAK. I was waiting for someone to introduce light racing class electric selflauncher like GP15. I guess AS thought that there is more room for improvement in std. class where all competing gliders are designed 20+ years ago.

I haven't seen anything of the engineering of the '33 so comments are speculation.
I doubt there will be much, if any difference between the '33 fuselage and the '29 fuselage. I expect it will be a new, smaller area wing with likely an airfoil evolution.
Geometry wise the '24,'27, 28,and '29 are almost exactly the same, except wing root and rudder.
If one starts with the '28E, which is engineered, tooled, and certified, you have a 15/18 airframe with an engine bay, ready to move forward. It also has enough wing area to keep the wing loading increase low enough to make self launch practical on about 25KW available from the system used in the 32EL.
I would expect the target market is pilots who want self launch capability as most important, and contest performance secondary.
Creating new ships is very expensive and risky. This could be a solution that moderates both.
Later, when proven, translating into an 18M ship like the '29 or '33 is a comparatively small task and risk. Going to 15M variants is more questionable due to low wing area and resulting high wing loadings. My '24E, converted to electric, is at 9 lb wing loading dry on 107 square feet.
FWIW- not much
UH