At 03:54 08 November 2006, Eric Greenwell wrote:
Roger wrote:
I sure am impressed with DG as a company! Many safety
products, GREAT
web site, newsletters...etc. No, I do not own a DG
glider, nor do I
have one on order. However, as soon as they make
a competive glider
that I fit into (i.e., LS 10 with new cockpit I will
buy it!). I just
wish the other manufacturers would make NOAH's, something
to keep
spoilers from opening, and stall warning like DG does.

Schleicher does some nice things, too:

Starting with the ASW 27, the caps on unlocked spoilers
tip up in back,
preventing the airflow from sucking open the spoilers.

They lead the way to safer cockpit construction, and
still have a more
crash resistant cockpit than the DG models. For me,
that is more
important than the better visibility the lower sidewalls
of the DG
provide, and the availability of the NOAH system. My
belief is I will be
more likely to crash into the ground than have a mid-air
collision where
G loads pin me inside the glider, or to avoid the collision
because of
the better visibility.

Ever since the ASW 20, their flapped gliders have had
a landing flap
position that puts the flaps at 40 degrees positive,
while raisig the
ailerons to a slight negative angle. This gives a high
drag, high lift
configuration with no tendency to stall the tips, allowing
a steeper,
slower approach and landing than gliders where the
landing flap is more
like 20 degrees.

I do like the idea of DG's stall warning, and hope
owners with it will
report on it's usefulness. Their web site is very good,
and I visit it
more often than Schleicher's.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
Change 'netto' to 'net' to email me directly

'Transponders in Sailplanes' on the Soaring Safety
Foundation website
www.soaringsafety.org/prevention/articles.html

'A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation' at
www.motorglider.org


In your many trips to our DG web site you may have
missed this section that deals with their extensive
work on a better safety cockpit.
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/index-e.html
While other manufactures have been content with building
what looks strong enough DG has actually participated
in crash testing. As a result of this testing they
offer the consummate safety cockpit as an option on
the 800 series and as standard on the 1000.

If you counting on higher frame rails for protection
you may also want to read this.
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/index-e.html