Jeff Runciman wrote:
This question was posted earlier but I was hoping for
a few more responses.

Do I put a mechanical vario or do I save space on the
panel.

Apparently I feel a need to start a religious war...

Electron movement can cease (open circuit, low battery, component
failure), become too energetic (short), pneumatics can fail (blockage,
leak). Everything has a life.

Which failure modes have you encountered most often? Which have you
heard people complain about most frequently? Have you ever heard of a
mechanical vario *suddenly* dying from an internal (i.e. non-pneumatic)
cause? Do you feel comfortable with all your panel eggs in an
electronic basket? How much thought to true redundancy have you given?

Your answers to questions as these may clarify your views.

Any approach is a double-edged sword, and there will be some who
(rightly) point out that frequency of failure is somewhat related to
frequency of use...and these days (both discrete-component based and
IC-basd) electrics are ubiquitous in sailplanes, and thus a
frequency-of-failure based assessment is to some extent invalid. That
noted, when I got into soaring, electric varios were still a newfangled
item, yet despite the relatively low frequency of them in panels, there
seemed to me to be an inordinate frequency of complaints about electric
(radio, cario) failures. IMHO, that's still true today, probably
because electric systems a a) ubiquitous, b) seemingly simple and
relatively foolproof for any basically-educated-hack to implement, but
c) are in fact complex (chemically, physically, electronically,
conceptually).

Each of my personally-owned sailplanes when purchased had real
electrical systems in them, including the one I've flown since 1981.
Eventually its radio died, then its (uncompensated, used only for audio)
Ball electric vario. Today I use a handheld radio, and one day I hope
to remember to borrow my wife's Malletec for its audio. Only one person
ever has criticized my thermal etiquette (his experienced passenger
later privately told me he disagreed with the criticism), and my fun
meter has never felt seriously handicapped by the absence of electronic
input. My Sage continues to work perfectly, accompanied by the usual
A/S, (sticky) altimeter, and (little-used) whiskey compass. There are
at least three naked instrument holes in the panel.

Sometimes I feel like a dinosaur.

Regards,
Bob - a K.I.S.S. fan - Whelan