PW-6 family fun ------

Well, I'll bite, too. In retrospect, I guess my intial reaction was due
to a coincidence of two irritating moments:
(1) A shameless plug from a dealer for a certain plane, with absolutely
no valuable information at all. It could have been an ETA, a Duo
Discus, an ASH-25 or whatever, and I would still have criticised the
original post as the covert advertisement it is.
(2) The shameless plug actually promoted a PW-5/6, which in my very
humble opinion (though shared by many others) is a couple of
offensively ugly gliders. This probably made my initial statement a bit
more "spicy" than necessary. ;-)

Answering your question, I would recommend a combination of ASK-21 and
LS-4, both quite versatile gliders, usable for teaching but also in
competitions.

And no, these are not the only gliders I have flown in my life. And
yes, these are the gliders I have been trained on, and I still think it
was an excellent choice of our gliding club to transition from BF
III/IV + K8.

For XC-teaching we have come to use Duo Discus, which for the student
is the 2nd two seater glider he/she will learn to fly. The Duo is of
course far superior for XC than the ASK-21 and at the same time offers
the student the possibility to hone his/her gliding skills: Starting
and landning is less easy than ASK-21, but the reward is far better
performance.

(2) The shameless plug actually promoted a PW-5/6, which in my very
humble opinion (though shared by many others) is a couple of
offensively ugly gliders. This probably made my initial statement a bit
more "spicy" than necessary. ;-)

Answering your question, I would recommend a combination of ASK-21 and
LS-4, both quite versatile gliders, usable for teaching but also in
competitions.

Agreed on pewee 5, but how exactly is Ask-21 better than Pewee 6?
Other than brand new price tag being doubled or so. Same 1:31 gliding
ratio according to SM testing, so you hypothesis is based on the same
idea people go and buy MB cars thinking they've just got a better
build, reliable flashy vehicle soon thereafter they realize it's a
flashy Ford quality money pit. My club picks would be Pewee 6 - for
a price of 20 year old Ask-21 used in a club you can get a new one and
Ls-4.

Hmmm, I don't know the price tag in the US (assuming you have a north
american perspective on things)... but over here in Europa the ASK-21
is not that expensive and it's a very sustainable strategy for a bigger
gliding club to actually by a new ASK-21 when the old one has reached a
certain flight time limit, and to sell off the old one for a good price
on the second hand market.
However, I do share your opinion on the MB...