I have written an application that will analyze an IGC file (or many IGC files at once) to calculate time to climb and climb rate. I dumped 20 years worth of my IGC files into it. The climb rate at sea level with the E engine was a bit over 600 if memory serves, and a bit over 800 with the Mi (I do not fly often at sea level). About the same percentage increase at high altitude. If you want to send me some IGC files, I can throw them into the same app.

There have been a couple of instances of fan belt failures on the rotary, a few of us have installed warning indicators for this possibility.

On Saturday, October 3, 2020 at 12:30:55 AM UTC-7, wrote:
I flew an ASH26e for 2 seasons and now have a V3M which matches its advertised climb rate of 630fpm with its 62hp fuel injected Solo engine taking off from 360ft msl. The 26e with the carb engine got around 500pm so I surprised me to hear the the 26Mi, with a lower power engine than my V3M, will manage 800fpm from sea level. 800fpm seems an extraordinary increase.

The 26e is a lovely glider and the engine is, of course, much quieter smoother than 2 cylinder 2-strokes but the rotary engine is too vulnerable to catastrophic internal damage if anything goes wrong with the marginal at the best of times rotor air cooling and the internal oil misting. The saying about self launching glider IC engines is - "with the Solo you will probably get lots of relatively small problems, with the rotary you'll get fewer problems but when you do it could be a very big one". There are certainly a few replaced rotaries in gliders that I know of and that is a big bill. I had the fan belt fall off and the engine rotor air rapidly overheat but got away with it.