View Single Post
  #10  
Old November 29th 03, 02:41 PM
Chris OCallaghan
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Stewart,

I came to the conclusion many years ago that sailplane racing is
expensive, no two ways around it. You can reduce the cost by racing
older gliders in the sports class at local venues, but if you want to
improve, you'll have to bite the bullet. A national contest costs
about $4K to attend and takes two weeks of precious vacation. To get
good, really good, you'll need to fly at least one national contest
and two to three regional contests (typically about $2K) attended by a
significant number of Category One pilots. There's four to five weeks
of vacation. Then you'll want to spend every available weekend racing
with your Category Two and One friends. To do this effectively, you'll
need a glider within 5 percent of theirs.

That's the level of commitment you are competing against. Many of the
pilots you'll compete against at a National contenst have more than 50
nationals under their belts. So when you get right down to it, owning
a glider under 40:1 won't allow an inexperienced pilot to grow fast
enough to keep his interest. There are some notable exceptions, but
they are, after all, exceptions. I've noted in our club that it's only
when pilots get into better gliders (LS-6, ASW-20, Ventus, and up)
that their cross-country skills really take off since they can now
stay in contact longer with more skillfull pilots -- that is, they are
afforded the opportunity to learn.

The PeeWee just isn't suited to learning racing skills.

BTW, others point to sailing as an example of the viability of a one
type class. The World Class was built on this concept; however, there
are so few glider pilots that we cannot hope to replicate the support
infrastructure that leads young sailors into these classes, and
defines a path to grow out of them into other classes. I've seen over
a hundred little sailboats at a time tearing around a variety of
harbors, piloted by kids from 10 to 50, with almost as many support
and spectator boats. We just don't live in that world.



Stewart Kissel wrote in message ...
With winter upon us in the northern hemisphere, the annual PW5 thread had=
reappeared. I started thinking about this ship and one design racing an=
d thought I might post this. I started thinking about this topic in the =
summer when I saw two full size bus conversion RV's pulling two brand-new=
looking glider trailers on what appeared to be a trip to a national cont=
est. From my location in Colorado and then license plates on the caravan=
, it was at least a 3 day drive. Pilots have every right to spend their=
hard earned money in whatever way they see fit, but watching $200K+ roll=
ing down the road reminded me of the yacht racing aspect of our sport.

With such a small percentage of pilots who compete, and the amount of tim=
e it consumes, and the amount of money it costs regardless of the ship be=
ing used-is their really any sort of demand for low cost "one design"? P=
articularly in light of sports class here in the USA. One design still r=
equires $4K+ of instruments/loggers/software/PDA to be competitive. It s=
till requires long travels and much(all) vacation time used up. 1-26ers =
love their ships, but I am not so sure they would take that enthusiasm to=
another bird. And 1-26 racing involves different models of the ship whi=
ch makes the idea of an identical performing ship somewhat suspect. =20

And I just don't see how any bird being built currently can price itself =
below a nice used LS3 or 4. So rather then beat up the little PW5, maybe=
we need to look harder at the concept of one design racing. I like the =
idea but am not sure that in this day and age that is where so much effor=
t needs to go IMVHO. While digesting turkey thought I would write this o=
ut. =20