All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

To my point, if a retrieve Crew is far cheaper than being a glider equipped with a landing prevention option, then why do pI lots make the investment. Psychologically they are more comfortable flying with that extra option!

Proving that bad decisions are made by certain motor gliders is equally difficult to qualify as proving that they are not taking more risks. The fact of the matter is, the availability of the motor Psychologically changes the way a pilot interprets the risks associated with pushing further.

This argument is just sad in my opinion. If you want to go fly a powered aircraft, go for it, but don't claim that having an engine is equal in all ways to flying a pure glider. Two different classes all together.

On Friday, March 17, 2017 at 7:32:44 PM UTC-7, Sierra Whiskey wrote:
To my point, if a retrieve Crew is far cheaper than being a glider equipped with a
landing prevention option, then why do pI lots make the investment. Psychologically
they are more comfortable flying with that extra option!

That's at the end of the day...

A motorglider also provided me the ability to take a tow early and if it didn't work yet, I'd start the engine over the airport and make another try. Had I landed to take another tow, I'd be in line behind several others. Of course, I could also buy myself a towplane and always be first in line. Oh wait, there's a towplane a couple feet behind my head.

Once on course, I pretty much never gave the motor a thought.

After 15 years flying the ASH-26E, I now have an ASW-27b. The gliders have pretty much equal performance so it will be interesting to see if my flights are any different now that I don't have an engine.

5Z

So Tom, you're another one of those weak dicks that can't make a decent
flight without an engine to bolster your courage, eh?

Oh, wait! Didn't you fly a 1,000 km triangle in your ASW-20 quite some
time ago? 8-)

On 3/17/2017 9:04 PM, wrote:
On Friday, March 17, 2017 at 7:32:44 PM UTC-7, Sierra Whiskey wrote:
To my point, if a retrieve Crew is far cheaper than being a glider equipped with a
landing prevention option, then why do pI lots make the investment. Psychologically
they are more comfortable flying with that extra option!
That's at the end of the day...

A motorglider also provided me the ability to take a tow early and if it didn't work yet, I'd start the engine over the airport and make another try. Had I landed to take another tow, I'd be in line behind several others. Of course, I could also buy myself a towplane and always be first in line. Oh wait, there's a towplane a couple feet behind my head.

Once on course, I pretty much never gave the motor a thought.

After 15 years flying the ASH-26E, I now have an ASW-27b. The gliders have pretty much equal performance so it will be interesting to see if my flights are any different now that I don't have an engine.

5Z

--
Dan, 5J

On Friday, March 17, 2017 at 7:32:44 PM UTC-7, Sierra Whiskey wrote:
To my point, if a retrieve Crew is far cheaper than being a glider equipped with a landing prevention option, then why do pI lots make the investment. Psychologically they are more comfortable flying with that extra option!

Proving that bad decisions are made by certain motor gliders is equally difficult to qualify as proving that they are not taking more risks. The fact of the matter is, the availability of the motor Psychologically changes the way a pilot interprets the risks associated with pushing further.

This argument is just sad in my opinion. If you want to go fly a powered aircraft, go for it, but don't claim that having an engine is equal in all ways to flying a pure glider. Two different classes all together.

SW, have you flown a lot of miles cross country in an auxiliary motorglider?

If not, how do you know what changes in psychological thoughts and risk assessment the pilot is having? Without having flown one, how do you know they are "two different classes all together"?

I fly the same places on the same days as many friends without engines. A couple of them are willing to go much lower, much further into unlandable terrain than I will, engine or not. I have a lower (self) retrieve rate than most of them. The engine does not turn a pilot instantly into a risk taking madman.

Once again the arguments comparing the two and concluding that they are quite different, are coming almost exclusively from those who have experience in only one and are ignorant of the other. And that is sad.

No, I have flown many miles in a "real" pure glider. In fact, I have flown records and record attempts in a pure glider. And it is embarrassing to think that my records and attempts in a pure glider will be overtake by someone that carried a landout field in their back pocket.

Don't get me wrong, Motor gliders can set records, but they are Not Pure Gliders, and they should not be treated the same. The bigger issue comes when outrageous records are set by expensive motor gliders and the pure gliders no longer have a chance to compete against them. In a sport, and rating that has been suffering a negative trend in growth, this is a negative factor towards proliferation of the sport. This is bad! I want to see this sport survive to my retirement MANY years away, but with the slowing trends in race appeal, and now a narrowing field of competitive gliders for record attempts, the sport is going to cease recruiting new and young blood on the pure fact that motor gliders will increase in value and pure gliders will decrease in competitive factors and subsequently financial value.

Someone already pointed this out, but I will echo, are we running out of enough server space to keep these records separate? If that is the case we might as well collapse the rest of the records and only have an Open Class because wingspan can be beneficial but it also causes more drag and limits the landouts options. The argument that a pure glider and a motor glider are the same is wrong in the same way a SZD-59 and a Yak-54 are the same in an aerobatic contest. The psychology, the strategy, and the execution are two different games no matter how much attempt at rationalization is put forward.

On Saturday, March 18, 2017 at 1:40:34 AM UTC-4, Sierra Whiskey wrote:
And it is embarrassing to think that my records and attempts in a pure glider will be overtake by someone that carried a landout field in their back pocket.

Again, "a land out field in their back pocket" is exactly NOT what a motorglider has. I am (very) new to the game, but it is more and more apparent that when it comes to pushing harder into a dicey situation the motor glider has no advantage. I was flying my "real" glider this spring, wave sink conspired with the silly season and put me in a squeaker of a final glide. As I dropped the gear over the threshold to land, it was abundantly clear that had I been in my turbo duo, there would have been no opportunity to deploy and start. In a marginal final glide, the last thing you are going to do is extend a huge dive brake on the hopes that it will start. Even if all goes well, there is a significant loss of height for a start. So this perception that the motor is a land out field in your back pocket is a bad and very dangerous notion.

Having no intention of low starts, I realized there is another issue that is not immediately clear even for "high" starts. If you think the day has died, you are in gliding range of an airport (say a fat glide of 25 to one in a high-performance motor glider) but it is farther from home. You would be tempted to try to start, cut the corner so to speak, and head home. After all you are in "easy glide" of an airport. But you need to plan for getting the engine out, having the motor not start, and now can't put it away. Your fat glide is now gone. So to be safe, you need to have a fat "engine up, and not turning" glide to safety. This is where the FES will shine, or perhaps to a lesser degree, a jet sustainer.

No one is saying there is no advantage to a motor glider, but again, the advantage is BEFORE or AFTER the flight performance. If the argument is the improved state of mine from the ease of stress, that can be mitigated by a chase crew for much less money, and I assume no one would argue for a record category with our without chase crew.

If you hold to the the idea that you have a landout field in your back pocket, it may well get you killed...

RR

If you assume the landout spot in your back pocket is there and the motor doesn't start, then you may get killed.

If you assume the landout spot in your back pocket is there and the motor starts, then you make it home.

Worst case scenario, if you assume the land out spot in your back pocket is there, and push to that thermal in the middle of "break your glider country", hook the thermal and secure the record, you are a record holder.

The third option is one that will become more popular as the reliability and efficiency of FES systems increase. The "dive break" penalty of deploying an engine is being reduced to a negligible argument, and again we have a scenario where a pilot could assume a calculated risk in search of a record completion.

A pure glider does not have those same options and thus the game is different for some pilots who may chose to make the risky decision to push on. From a safety standpoint I think this kind of rule will encourage hazardous behaviors. It only takes one person to be successful to motivate others to follow suit.

One rule that has always bothered me was the airfield bonus in contests and the way it is calculated for motor gliders. If a motor glider wants an air filed bonus, then put your tire on the pavement at that airfield just like a pure glider has to. It is another way that motor gliders are treated differently, and with additional options that pure gliders do not share.

So once all of the records are eaten up by motor gliders that have been set by risk takers and the pure glider concept is a thing of the past in performance and decision making, what will we use to motivate new members into the sport. We can argue safety, and we can disagree on the psychology difference, but no one seems to be addressing the fact that this new rule is raising the "competitive" benchmark with respect to the cost.

In the US we are killing "Club Class" by putting an LS-8 in the same category as a Standard Cirrus, and worse in the US we allow Motor Gliders to compete in Club Class. You won't find motor gliders on the FAI Club Class list (yet) but still in the US we seem to have this need to allow motor gliders into that class. What is "club class" about that?

Preserve the sport of pure soaring before we harm our already weakening community size.