Why does PW-5 get no respect?

On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 09:31:29 -0500, nafod40
wrote:

Coming in from the outside, I thought they should have made a class
based on weight rather than wing span or a fixed choice. Weight is THE
primary factor correlating to costs of airplanes. Cap the weight and you
cap the cost.

Hmm... I fail to see this point. THe current standard and 15m giders
are all a lot lighter than their predecessors... yet a lot more
expensive.

Glider pilots are gear-heads, and restricting them to a single platform
was a non-starter. By fixing an upper bound weight and making it a
records criteria and a weight class, there might have been a cluster of
new gliders at that design point.

Believe me: If the chosen glider had been good (and halfways cheap),
the World Class had become a huge success.
In Europe many, many clubs are looking for a replacement for the old
Ka-8/Ka-6 gliders these days, and they'd be more than willing to pay
for a good replacement glider with up-to-date technical solutions.

The problem is that the PW-5 was never regarded as adequate for clubs
(why take two steps back into the sixties if you get an ASW-19 or
LS-1f for less money?). But they surely would have been wiling to pay
even more money for a, say, simplified LS-4 with fixed gear and no
water ballast that had been built in Poland.





Bye
Andreas