On Monday, January 4, 2021 at 12:11:35 PM UTC-8, kenward1000 wrote:
On Monday, January 4, 2021 at 3:02:52 AM UTC-8, gregv wrote:
Le lundi 4 janvier 2021 Ã* 11:30:06 UTC+1, krasw a écrit :
These old open class gliders were designed for max LD at quite low speed, nothing else. Their handling in the air is not good and on the ground it is just awful. You will fly less because of this. I usually fly modern glider from std. class to 18/20m class. I flew one summer mostly Std. Cirrus and did enjoy xc flying exactly same as with any other type. You fly exactly same tactic as with modern glider, only with lower airspeed duirng glider and taking few more climbs. With a glider like Std. Libelle, thermalling is actually fun. Saying that thermalling is fun with N2 buys you a ticket to hospital with padded walls. There is a very good reason N2 is cheap to buy.
I own a N2C since years, and I also fly other gliders (mainly discus 2, duodiscus, ls-4), I fly in Alpine area. I disagree when you say thermalling is not fun with The N2C, actually it is the most fun thing to do! You can litteraly outclimb every other ship, handling is superb, light and precise controls, yes you have to manage your feets and you loose 2 seconds when doing -45/+45 but is it an issue? When flying cross country I am faster than a duodiscus in every aspect. With 200L water, I feel unstoppable.
Consider the LAK-12. The Russian Sport Gliding Federation used to put newly licensed pilots into them, for XC training. The rationale was that they wanted to hook pilots on XC. They found that putting pilots into 30:1 gliders resulted in many landouts and discouraged pilots from flying away from the field. The 48:1 12 allowed pilots to successfully complete longer and longer XC tasks, especially with 200 liters of water. The clubs had well organized retrieve teams and plenty of large fields to choose from. They are a piece of cake to fly, can be left rigged all season and they're cheap (15k us$). Good decision making can mean that outlandings only occur at aero retrievable airports.

I reread the original post and noticed that the glider Piotr is talking about is an N2, not an N2C that I saw in a latter post. Knowing this, I definitely recommend that Piotr pass on this glider; he simply doesn't have the experience to handle a glider of this type.

Tom