Binder EB29R

On Tuesday, 10 January 2017 17:03:57 UTC+2, wrote:

Day one was about not doing anything stupid. Scores are essentially a wash for the top few.
Not surprising that 29R with many time world champion is at or near the top, given the conditions.

Watching todays competition flights with seeyou shows that 29R's advantage is absolutely brutal in low speed range. We are talking systematical 10-20% better glide ratio and 0,1-0,2 m/s better climb rate in almost every glide and thermal where other gliders (well, JS1c) are available for comparison.

Strange then that so many JS-1s are so close to the EB's speed then on Day 2, with one faster.

On Wednesday, January 11, 2017 at 9:55:19 AM UTC-6, Tony wrote:
Strange then that so many JS-1s are so close to the EB's speed then on Day 2, with one faster.

Or maybe not so strange. Blue day, I hear. Most impressed by the 15 meter crowd. All but three started in a 4 minute window! 18 meter was almost as good. Open looks to have been two packs.

As Hank said about Day One, "Day Two was about not doing anything stupid." Why lead out and not have markers? From the data on the scoresheet, Riccardo did it right. Started just far enough behind the first group that he was able to catch them. Micheal and Tassilo were first out in the second pack and stayed there. Caught some of the first pack.

Just my observation.

Steve Leonard

It might not be that much of a contradiction - especially if we interpret a gliding competition in essence as an opportunity-risk balancing game. If we assume for a moment that krsaw's observation regarding an advantage of the EB29R is directionally correct, it could well be that comrades Sommer & Bode are using a potential performace edge in their gliders to achieve consistent good scoring results while keeping their risk limited (that is also the implication of the most recent youtube interview with Michael Sommer where he argues that a key benefit of team flying for him is to avoid mistakes), instead of trying to use a potential glider performace advantage to always outpace anybody else. If one follows that perspective, it should be no surprise that other top pilots in the numerous and still excellent JS1cs on any given day are achieving similiar or even better speeds than the two EB29R - but potentially at a slightly higher individual risk and a higher volatility in individual results.

Just a hypothesis and maybe not worth the used bits/bytes

Marc, S2