Economy Class

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:07:39 -0800, Brad wrote:

On Jan 24, 10:39Â*am, Bob Kuykendall wrote:
...Potentially, there are huge economies of scale if the production
run is large enough...

Yeah, potentially so. But the curve seems to be fairly flat in the
region of most glider production runs. You'd just about have to double
the size of the worldwide fleet in five years or so before you see a
really meaningful price reduction. Not that that isn't possible, just
that it isn't all that likely given the way we're doing things today.

Personally, I'd like to see a new 12m class that replaces the World
Class. A while back I did a preliminary design of a set of carbon fiber
wings for Monerai for a friend, and the costs and panel weights look
pretty attractive. It'd be fun to make a nice fuselage for those wings
to suit smallish pilots and toss a few into the air.

Thanks, Bob K.

I've been flying a sub-15m ship for almost 10 years now. First a Russia
AC-4C, and presently an Apis-13. While I really like the light weight of
the ship, I do jones for a bit more performance, I think if a sub-15m
ship could get an honest 40:1, it would be met with enthusiasm.

XC performance is a funny thing. As others have said, until you're really
good at this game the pilot is more important than the glider in
determining the xc on-task time.

There is another factor too that doesn't often get discussed - some
gliders suit a pilot better than others. As an example of that, I find
that after two seasons of poor weather in my Libelle I'm getting better
xc average speeds than I did in an ASW-20, and I flew that long enough
for the right flap setting to have become automatic. This really
surprised me.

I like both gliders, but the Libelle suits my flying style better than
the '20 did. Its as simple as that.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
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