Best cross country ship class

2. Remember I'm NEW. I just got my ticket this summer. Should my first ship really be flapped? I've never flown a flapped ship. My world consists of SGS 2-33 and PW-6. Any pilots who bought a flapped ship before flying one, speak up!


I think here you are mixing up two issues -- what glider to buy, with a 5 + year horizon, and how to make the transition to that glider. A competent private glider can transition safely to either a modern flapped glider or standard class glider.

But EITHER is a substantial transition. Both are slippery in the pattern. The nose angles, sight pictures, sound pictures etc. are quite different from what you're used to. You're used to an effort to keep speed up in the pattern. Now you need to get used to keeping speed down in the pattern. These gliders love to go 80 knots. If you suffer from the standard illusion that putting the nose down makes you descend at a steeper angle -- an easy mistake to make in trainers -- you will find yourself getting to ground effect around 90 knots and sailing toward the far boundary of the airport. If you get in a hurry and put the wheel on the ground, as you can get away with in a 2-33, you will bounce down the runway in ever larger pios until the gear collapses. These issues are actually a little harder in a modern standard class glider such as D2 because no flaps and a low angle of incidence means the nose is pointing to the sky at low speeds, and you don't have the extra drag of landing flaps.

All told, since you're going to be spending about $80k on a glider, and then another $5k on instrument upgrades etc., invest $1k on transition training. If not available locally, fly to a really good operation that has a duo discus or similar glider, topnotch instructors, and a single seat high performance glider. Take some serious real world transition training in the duo, a checkout in the single, and get a few hours. Then you're ready to transition to whatever glider you end up buying. I don't know the northwest operations. Williams has a duo, asw24 and asw27, and great instructors. A few days spent at an operation like that would really pay off. These are not huge big deals. A good private pilot can do this in a few days. But they are important.

The differences between D2 and 27 are very small in this regard. The difference between either and a 2-33 is enormous. Buying one and then just jumping in to it with a verbal checkout and some condor time is not a great idea. A good instructor can show you what to look for and the common pitfalls

John Cochrane