On Thursday, January 18, 2018 at 11:55:02 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Hi Krasw,

apologies for my ignorance in this case, but could you briefly guide me to a link to that Kawa interview/comment?

My (superficial) impression from the last two long final glides was that both ships are performing more or less equally in capable hands even under slightly different conditions
- Tuesday was a 87 Km final glide (with practically identical flight paths from TP 4 with 55 Km to go) at assumed airspeeds above the "optimized" flight envelope (i.e. above 220-230 km/h IAS) - the winning V3 and JS1 crossed the finish line within 9 seconds
- Yesterday the 5 leaders were within 5 seconds after their 100+ Km spectacular ridge line dash at probably more representative speeds around 170-200 Km/h (in this case probably with some small differences in micromanaging their individual flight paths and their willingness to hug the rocks). Even the ASG 29 which is probably a bit handicapped due to the 52 Kg/m2 wingload limit instead of the usual MTOW limitation came in within 25 secs...

With these few data points I was under an initial low confidence impression of some kind of "equality" of V3 and JS 1 at least in the high speed ranges (I have no useful observations regarding handling/climbing differences or performance in the low to mid speed range...) - but obviously a comment from Kawa that the V3 outperforms his JS 1 in final glide would supersede that initial impression.

Thanks and best
Marc

The fact that the JS-1 was flown by Kawa might have contributed to it being closer than it might have been! Note that the Ventus2cT also was in the mix, but flown by someone with thousands of hours locally (buy that man a beer!)... It looks to me like the V3 in those conditions is the one to have. It would have been nice to see a JS-3 or two as well.