On Saturday, March 18, 2017 at 6:18:06 AM UTC-7, BobW wrote:
On 3/17/2017 9:47 AM, jfitch wrote:

snipThe ability to be able to selectively end your soaring performance at
will, in the air, is a significant benefit to the pilot./snip

What - exactly - is preventing you from doing this in your engineless
glider? (Nothing at all?)

Have you even taken a motorglider cross country? (No?)

The soaring day ends when you are over a landing site and too low to
continue. Engine or no. Once again, the endless whinging seems to be from
people with no experience in motorgliders, who perceive the grass must be
greener over there. Buy one and fly it for awhile, then report back. You
will find that the "benefit to the pilot" is convenience, not performance.
Penalizing convenience in the record rules is a steep and slippery slope
with almost no bottom.

Clearly there are differing, strongly held, opinions regarding the question of
whether or not there are fundamental differences between engined/engineless
sailplanes...and more to the point of this thread, of whether or not IGC ought
to recognize the reality (or not) of those differences.

If it isn't already obvious, put me in the camp of "We hold these truths
(differences) to be self-evident..."

I readily admit ignorance of any nuances that do (or do not) result from how
IGC allegedly proposes to bureaucratically "unrecognize" the reality of those
differences, but since I *think* I was the one who originally mentioned the
capital acquisition cost increment as one difference (I haven't bothered to go
back and check), and 'jfitch' (used merely an identifier; no disrespect
intended) is evidently in the camp believing 'the cost argument is specious,'
I submit that it is not, to the extent that it us useful as a means of shining
light on one of those differences. To argue that in sum there IS no actual
cost increment misses several points (acquisition cost, maintenance costs,
etc., ad nauseum).

Further, to reason that this difference (and others) does not exist (as IGC
apparently has chosen to do) says more about IGC thought process than it does
about the very real differences...even if today the *performance* differences
are far smaller than they were (say) in the time before the PIK-20E (which
most people would accept as the first engined sailplane without 'an obvious
engine-related-performance hit').

Now Joe Average Citizen's response to this particular argument likely is
something along the line of: So what? BFD. Surpassing indifference. Etc.
Clearly not so to Sailplane drivers...who as a group can be presumed to
recognize some of the finer nuances contained within this uplifting, if
arcane, sporting activity. As a member of that group, I would hope and expect
IGC as a sub-group with a (self-selected?) charter to (among other items)
create/support/help-recognize sailplane-related sporting endeavor, would
understand that some of those nuances unimportant to Joe Average Citizen are
quite important to various members of the sailplane fraternity. If - within -
their own rules and ship-related-categories - perceived inequities have crept
into existence at the world record level, by all means address those
inequities in some manner. But to ostensibly pretend that there *are* no
fundamental differences between engined/engineless sailplanes is, to me, a sad
- fatuous, even - method, with perhaps unintended negative consequences for
the sport, when to *recognize* the reality of the differences is arguably more
beneficial for the sport.

Now if IGC wants to go down the slippery slope decried by 'jfitch' it has
every right to do so...and should rightly (in my view) expect to be excoriated
for so doing, because to do so would arguably be to be 'disrespecting' the
sport through trivialization.

Not all ideas are of equal merit, and the idea of forcing bureaucratic
equality between engined/engineless sailplanes by in-future 'de-accrediting'
record attempts of engineless ones lacks any merit obvious to me. I write that
as 'a soaring nut' with no aspirations of ever making a record flight, at any
level of the sport.

Respectfully,
Bob W.

No one has yet been able to articulate the distinction between owning a trailer and a motor. Both are an expensive convenience for a retrieve, with some ancillary benefits. If you can prevail upon the IGC to separate motor and non motor gliders, perhaps they can also separate records set with access to a trailer from those who don't.

If the $35K for an engine is put into a 6% annuity, it will pay over $500 each month on a 6 month soaring season, for 20 years. That is not counting maintenance, add another $100/month. How many retrieves do you do? The 'pure' glider is at a distinct cost advantage by paying only for those retrieves needed. Pay for them in advance, if it changes your mindset.

There are a few people here (who have no experience in motorgliders and are therefore speaking from ignorance) claiming that it is "self evident" that motor and motorless gliders are entirely different, and are stealing national records by depending on the engine. This is presented on faith, without even the weakest of evidence. Show me, in any existing national motorglider record, the point where they were low and in danger of needing the engine to survive. You cannot, because it does not happen. All of these records are set in the Great Basin on booming days when the ground clearance is typically 10,000 ft or more. You are making an extraordinary claim. You need to provide extraordinary proof - or any evidence at all. Look at the flight logs. What you say is happening, isn't, as an observable fact.

In perusing the national records, another thing becomes evident: no one (or very few) 'pure' gliders are making record attempts, even with separate records kept. An example illustrative of this is the single place open class triangle speed records vs. single place motorglider: the average age of the current record in non motorglider is 22 years, the average for motorgliders is 2 years. This difference is typical of all record categories and it is an astonishing difference. Many of the 'pure' glider records date from the 1980's. No wonder the SSA wants to collapse this inactive category. You'all are complaining a lot more that you are flying, apparently. If anything, this is evidence that 'pure' gliders are causing soaring to die, not motorgliders.