On Tuesday, March 21, 2017 at 12:03:32 PM UTC-4, jfitch wrote:
On Tuesday, March 21, 2017 at 3:48:16 AM UTC-7, waremark wrote:
In my club, as people who used to be most sceptical about gliders with motors update their gliders, they generally buy ones with motors (if able to afford to buy new or nearly new).

It is interesting that the umbrage directed at auxiliary power is not similarly directed at GPS. The change of "mindset" or aggressiveness at cross country flying is affected far more by GPS (at least here in the west) than a motor. Prior to GPS, you guessed where you were, what the wind was, where the landing sites might be, whether you could make them or not. In the cockpit you juggled a huge chart with a bunch of marks on it, a ruler, a funny little circular slide rule - and worried a lot. Now you know exactly were you are, exactly where the landing sites are, the wind to a high degree of confidence, and your arrival height at any landing site with a high degree of confidence. All calculated continuously without the slightest effort or knowledge.

If you held a contest in the west with long tasks called, and gave the choice of either leaving the GPS behind or disabling the motor, every motorglider pilot I know would disable the motor and keep the GPS. If the contest were between motorgliders with no GPS and "pure" gliders with GPS, my money would be on the "pure" gliders, all in. GPS changed this type of flying much more than motors.

Yet the visceral reaction to motors is not applied to GPS. Yeah, there was some hand wringing about their use in racing for a short time, but now everyone flies with GPS. All records are set with GPS. It's even 'outside assistance' if a $20B satellite constellation counts. No one says a thing about it. Why the double standard?

GPS transformed racing. It's a 10+mph advantage, all day long.

It's not as big a deal on record missions. a) records are flown on good days(about which more in a moment), all that computer aided contingency planning is a much larger benefit on weak scratchy days, b) the record route is usually much better planned and studied (using Google Earth, another transformative change) than one has the chance to do for a contest task, making visual navigation much easier, c) turn point rules are simple, and the turnpoints few for a record task. My state record and various badge tasks have all been flown largely on eyeballs and memory. GPS saves me the trouble of getting into position to take a picture and the nervous process of trying to convince a photo processor not to cut the film.

It's certainly nice having all the info that GPS based systems can provide and that is a performance enhancer, no doubt. However, that battle was fought 25 years ago. I'm glad I "grew up" on map, compass, eyeball and flew the final glides on my first contests with circles on a chart (to zero height finish lines). It was hard. It was fun. It was a quarter century ago.

The objection to GPS in competition at the time was simple: it was extravagantly expensive. IIRC a full on GPS system -- simple as they were initially -- was half again what I had in my HP-18 + instruments + trailer. And as soon as GPS was permitted, you were doomed to be a permanent back marker. Really extensive local knowledge could mitigate this, but that wasn't a factor for a newcomer like me.

Today, we are all used to GPS. It's cheap (on the reception end). It's in your phone. There would be no earthly way to prevent its use in the cockpit.

The technology change that's had a far larger impact on my long distance flying than GPS is better weather forecasting. Better tools, accessible to all, make it a much less hit/miss affair to match up an ambitious task to a strong day. When new records are set, I think this is the biggest advantage modern pilots have over their predecessors.

The visceral reaction is because many of us view MGs as a fundamentally different different classification of aircraft. You can belittle that view all you like (and do seem to like!), it's a logical, discernible difference: these aircraft have engines, these others do not. Many of us think that allowing engines where no engines were previously allowed is a big logical change and at least merited a comment and discussion period. This thread is evidence for that.

best,
Evan Ludeman / T8