On Monday, April 1, 2019 at 1:58:01 PM UTC-6, JS wrote:
Please take all our suggestions as constructive. Doing this in two steps as others suggest may prevent a big surprise.
Mooneys aren't generally flown in steep turns at close to stall.
You will be flying a Ventus A/B or an ASW20 in those conditions, and in rough air!
If you let a Ventus A/B or ASW20 without winglets stall in a thermal it will get your attention in a hurry. It really would be best to do that after getting more experience.
When looking at performance figures only, you'll wonder why people pay so much for newer generation gliders. Much of their performance is due to user-friendliness.
Winglets, it seems especially the higher aspect ratio ones, make low speed flying more stable. A friend dinged one of his Maughmer winglets and flew the 20 without them while it was being fixed. With many hours in that glider he didn't like it.
Jim

I definitely value the opinions being shared here.
Everyone here is likely a better, more experienced glider guider than I am. I really do appreciate the wisdom and suggestions.
So I am going to take a step back and add to my considerations, standard class gliders.
I do have the concern of buying something and then re-selling to upgrade later. I'm going into retirement shortly, and will have a nice income, but still a limited income for larger purchases. I'll never be in the position of being able to afford anything over $50k, and even that unlikely.

I was going to try and get the Pegasus or Pik 20 (I forget which) the the soaring museum had listed at a very good price around 13k but I missed that opportunity.

So maybe I should look at an ASW19 or similar. Seem like an LS4 is out of my price range.