Discus/DG-300 performance difference

On 5/8/2015 7:20 PM, wrote:
Hi All I'm currently in the market for my first glider and am looking at
standard class machines of the Discus/DG-300 era. Having read the Johnson
tests and many posts on this forum, I'm a bit confused as to where the
touted performance difference comes from though. Dick Johnson found the
polars to be near enough to identical and demonstrated so with a figure
overlaying them in the DG-300 article. Despite that though, there seems to
be a feeling in this forum that the Discus is a superior machine and
competition results seem to support that. Given the extremely similar glide
performance, is there some other factor which makes the Discus a better
performer or are it's superior competition results simply because
better/more competitive pilots bought it?



David


Have fun looking! It can be almost as much fun in its own way as soaring.

Never having flown either ship, but preceding you by a couple of decades on
the "general experience/observational" fronts, my working suspicion is you've
pretty much hit upon a key element in your post-ending question.

For where I imagine you to be on soaring's endless(ly fun!) soaring curve,
you'll find pilot differences *easily* overwhelm any polar differences between
"nominally similar" ships. In short, if you're getting whupped by a ship of
equal span, it's by the pilot, not your ship. (WARNING: The immediately
preceding statement can and will be debated loudly, urgently and endlessly by
soaring pilots everywhere, because it's fun to do so, nuances proliferate, and
opinions are as free as the advice given on RAS. But if you're honest with
yourself, the statement is fundamentally accurate!)

Bob W.