On Friday, September 1, 2017 at 10:31:47 PM UTC+3, Tom BravoMike wrote:
BTW, what an irony that the PW-5 is getting so many nice reviews NOW, after over 20 years. In the late 1990's the returning refrain on r.a.s. was: "Does the PW-5 still suck?" Some of us remember it...

Let the record show that I've been one of the few people saying nice things about the PW5 in this forum, right from when my club got two of them in the mid 90s.

The PW5 has always been an excellent glass replacement for the much loved (of old) K6. Easy to fly, and plenty good enough to do a 300+ km flight in on a nice day.

People have generally run down the PW5 on one of two grounds:

1) it's allegedly ugly. Definitely it looks a little different to most modern gliders. That's one advantage of the AC4 Russia -- it looks "normal".

2) why buy a 32:1 new glider for the same price you can buy a 30 year old 40+:1 glider? A fair enough question in a declining sport/market. If the sport was growing (as the World Class project hoped to achieve) then the supply of 30 year old gliders would be insufficient.

For a number of years I was one of the few in our club who was happy to fly both the PW5 and the Janus, depending on what the aim of the flight was. Vastly different performance, and vastly different ease of landing in a paddock. Also vastly different ease of flying, with the PW5 being one of the easiest, while many who tried it and embarrassed themselves described the Janus handling as evil (especially the PIOs after takeoff, but control harmony and slow in general).