Cirrus vs ASW

At 09:30 12 March 2006, Michel Talon wrote:

The best cheap glider is the Pegasus, by far. But as
others have said,
there are at present problems, since the producer Centrair
has
abandoned production, and there is a stupid 3000 hours
limit. While
these problems are not cleared, it is perhaps not reasonable
to buy one.
It is certain that these problems will be cleared since
the Pegasus
is the basic club glider in France, there are a large
number in use,
and these clubs will do everything necessary to get
out of this trap.

I personally think the things ought to be scrapped
after 100 hours! A Standard Cirrus is much preferable,
giving very similar performance, but with decent German
manufacturing standards and a long service life. It
has nice, light, responsive handling, climbs well in
small thermals and has a big and comfortable cockpit.


The only issue is the all-flying tailplane versions.
The elevator loads do not change with speed, and the
glider lacks stick free stability in pitch. However
I have many hundreds of hours in Standard Cirri and
I have never found these issues to be a problem in
practice. If you could be put into the glider at 2000
feet and told to get on with flying it, you probably
wouldn't even notice the difference.

It is probably not a suitable glider for the really
ham fisted, or aerobatic freaks, and you should avoid
letting go of the stick for more than a second or so.
Other than that, it is a brilliant and relatively cheap
soaring club class glider and I don't think there is
anything to beat it for the money.

Derek Copeland (satisfied Standard Cirrus owner)