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#51
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Short Wings Gliders
First off I still am relatively new to saoring, and probably won't be
competeing in any organized contests in 2009, but reading all the recent post regarding competitions has me interested. I think we really do need a place for people who do not have the latest and greatest carbon ship to compete. I think the idea for the sports class is good, BUT there is no decent way I can compete in my Ka-6 with someone in a Ventus 2. My fear is that creating a 13.5m class will leave a lot of older gliders (read affordable) out in the cold. Maybe splitting Sports (or at least scoring it as 2 groups) would allow us to have more people compete in older gliders. Pete |
#52
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Short Wings Gliders
On Jan 29, 1:34*pm, Brad wrote:
Why does everything revolve around flying for competition? Not everything, but this discussion is about a new 13.5 meter RACING class. On your last point. If you can figure out how to make ANY type of sailplane truly affordable (say $20,000 for new) then the sport might start growing like crazy. But there seems no way to build a glider that cheap. Todd Smith 3S |
#53
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Short Wings Gliders
At 18:06 29 January 2009, Greg Arnold wrote:
Brian Bange wrote: I would be surprised if they ever get enough gliders together to have a contest. If you are into racing, you will buy something with at least 15 meters of span. Yep. But that is the 1-26. We were talking about a new 13.5 meter class -- such a class would soon disappear without a trace due to the lack of interest. This snobby attitude really gets to me. Snobby? If you ask most non- owners what their dream sailplane is, they'll say a Discus2 or some other $100K German ship. Getting closer to reality, they'll say they would settle for an LS4 or an ASW20. Then at the level of disposable income, they most likely have the money for a K6 or a Russia. I was one of these. I finally analyzed where I was at with my flying and my finances and decided that instead of waiting for the bank account to have the necessary funds for old German glass, I would be farther ahead to get something now, fly it for awhile and keep saving, then move up when the time was right. 7 years after buying a Russia I am switching to an ASW20. Was the short wing bird the way to go. YES!!! I have had tons of fun learning to fly X/C with it and will miss it. Most pilots I fly with in short wing gliders are not interested in hot competition. They are interested in improving their skills and enjoy the comradery of like minded individuals. A fun contest like the 1-26ers have I think would be welcomed. I hope the World class morphs into what Bill Snead suggests - a class handicapped to +/-5% of the PW5. That would include a lot of ships that have no place to go right now. Realizing that one big reason that people fly short wing birds is the low cost of entry, smaller meets at more locations would be the way to go. Not too many people are going to pack up their PW5 or Russia and travel thousands of miles to compete. Many will however, drive within their state to attend. My 2 cents. Brian Bange Most of them are not flying in Sports Class now. Why do you think they would fly in a 13.5 Meter Class? And if they were flying in Sports Class, what is to be gained by establishing a new 13.5 Meter class? The comment here seems to be roughly the same as when we see people advocating kicking the modern gliders out of Sports Class -- if we just change the rules, lots of pilots will suddenly come out of the woodwork and start completing. Not gonna happen. Two of us at my club tried to compete in a small mock sports class that was being set up at a new location to prove to airport management that they should allow glider competitions there. One was a PW5 and the other was me in my Russia. The task was set conservatively, yet neither one of us could finish it. Both of us have accomplished diamond goal flights. There is just no way that 30:1 mixes well with 40:1. I read in a report from the Worlds at Reiti that the PW5's did not thermal well with the heavier ships. In a gaggle the PW5's would be slower and tighter, making things interesting for everyone. And, as I said, the pilots of the short wing ships are in many cases new to the whole competition scene. A friendly environment and tasks that are reasonable for pilots of this caliber I think would be attended. Especially if they were smaller and closer to home. Mixing 30:1 into the present Sports class with all the other large ships sharing the same airspace isn't going to attract short wing attendance. Plus think about the mental aspect. Who wants to be driving a Honda on the same track with Ferrari's? Brian |
#54
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Short Wings Gliders
On Jan 29, 10:11*am, Tech Support wrote:
Have you thought about some simple tooling a kit buyer could rent for putting togther critical assemblies (wing to fusrelage, tail *asembly, etc.). Absolutely, I think about that a lot. What I'm trying to do is develop "self-jigging" assemblies so that critical alignment elements are already fixed into position, and you can use those elements to fix the locations of related components. But having a library of a few "iron bird" tools would be good too, especially for things like aligning the horizontal stabilizer and installing the wing carrythroughs. Thanks, Bob K. |
#55
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Short Wings Gliders
On Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:34:56 -0800 (PST), Brad
wrote: Maybe the younger generation and their quest for adrenalin laced activites would find competitive soaring compelling, but how many can afford their own sailplane? Hi Brad, I admit that - from a European point of view- I'm having difficulties to understand why most US based glider pilots think that it's necessary to own a glider. Here in Europe by far most gliders are owned by clubs, making it possible for the club members to fligh latest technology for a yearly price that hardly exceeds $800. For most clubs in Germany it's common nowadays that student pilots fly LS-4 or DG-300. Basic training is usually done in ASK-21 these days. Nearly any club clubs offer flapped ships (ASW-20, ASW-27) and state-of-the-art doubleseaters (Duo Dicus, DG-505) to its members. There is absolutely no interest in flying something inferior. Why isn't it possible to do that in the US? A couple of US clubs whose homepages I've seen seem to be able to do that. Bye Andreas |
#56
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Short Wings Gliders
At 17:56 30 January 2009, Andreas Maurer wrote:
Here in Europe by far most gliders are owned by clubs, making it possible for the club members to fligh latest technology for a yearly price that hardly exceeds $800. Andreas How many flights and how many hours do they typically fly for a price that hardly exceeds $800. Tows, winch? Any other expense? In this regard Italy is not certainly part of Europe!!!! |
#57
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Short Wings Gliders
On Jan 30, 12:56*pm, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:34:56 -0800 (PST), Brad wrote: Maybe the younger generation and their quest for adrenalin laced activites would find competitive soaring compelling, but how many can afford their own sailplane? Hi Brad, I admit that - from a European point of view- I'm having difficulties to understand why most US based glider pilots think that it's necessary to own a glider. Here in Europe by far most gliders are owned by clubs, making it possible for the club members to fligh latest technology for a yearly price that hardly exceeds $800. For most clubs in Germany *it's common nowadays that student pilots fly LS-4 or DG-300. Basic *training is usually done in ASK-21 these days. Nearly any club clubs offer flapped ships (ASW-20, ASW-27) and state-of-the-art doubleseaters (Duo Dicus, DG-505) to its members. There is absolutely no interest in flying something inferior. Why isn't it possible to do that in the US? A couple of US clubs whose homepages I've seen seem to be able to do that. Bye Andreas Probably because in most US clubs, that $800 a year can only support the airport, towplanes, a couple of two seat trainers, a couple of low performance single seaters and maybe a ASK-21 or G-103. To allow everybody to fly a LS-4 on the weekends would require maybe 1 LS-4 to 4 or 5 club members, if half of them showed up on the same day and all got to fly for 2-3 hours. So buying a $40,000 glider for 5 people would require a loan payment of $6000/year plus insurance/maint of $1000/year. Ignoring other expenses that still adds up to $1400/year/person. I assumed 10% interest for 10 years. So how does the math work out at your club ? Todd Smith 3S |
#58
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Short Wings Gliders
At 17:56 30 January 2009, Andreas Maurer wrote:
Here in Europe by far most gliders are owned by clubs, making it possible for the club members to fligh latest technology for a yearly price that hardly exceeds $800. Andreas How many flights and how many hours do they typically fly for a price that hardly exceeds $800. Tows, winch? Any other expense? In this regard Italy is not certainly part of Europe!!!! |
#59
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Short Wings Gliders
On 30 Jan 2009 18:30:03 GMT, Dan Silent wrote:
At 17:56 30 January 2009, Andreas Maurer wrote: Here in Europe by far most gliders are owned by clubs, making it possible for the club members to fligh latest technology for a yearly price that hardly exceeds $800. Andreas How many flights and how many hours do they typically fly for a price that hardly exceeds $800. In my club: Unlimited number of flights and hours, typically the fleet of 7 gliders does around 2.100 flights per year with about 1.700 hrs in average. In average 85-90 active pilots. A keen student pilot easily manages 80 - 100 flights per year. Tows, winch? Usually winch (of course). Any other expense? No other expense. These fees include a 255 Euro "flat rate" for an unlimited number of winch launches and an unlimited number of flying hours. Member fee per year is 64 Euro for student pilots and 128 Euro for members with an income. At the current exchange rates this is about $500. Most German clubs are slightly more expensive, this is why I mentioned the number of $800. The only additional fees are aerotows with a typical cost of 24 Euro/aerotow. Bye Andreas |
#60
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Short Wings Gliders
On Jan 30, 9:56*am, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:34:56 -0800 (PST), Brad wrote: Maybe the younger generation and their quest for adrenalin laced activites would find competitive soaring compelling, but how many can afford their own sailplane? Hi Brad, I admit that - from a European point of view- I'm having difficulties to understand why most US based glider pilots think that it's necessary to own a glider. Here in Europe by far most gliders are owned by clubs, making it possible for the club members to fligh latest technology for a yearly price that hardly exceeds $800. For most clubs in Germany *it's common nowadays that student pilots fly LS-4 or DG-300. Basic *training is usually done in ASK-21 these days. Nearly any club clubs offer flapped ships (ASW-20, ASW-27) and state-of-the-art doubleseaters (Duo Dicus, DG-505) to its members. There is absolutely no interest in flying something inferior. Why isn't it possible to do that in the US? A couple of US clubs whose homepages I've seen seem to be able to do that. Bye Andreas Lets see, why? Mmmm.... Population density differences. Differences in geographic scale - i.e. borrowing glider to haul long distances to a competition would often have more impact on a club in the USA. A long history of established clubs in Europe that just is not here in the USA. USA clubs and commercial operations with many klunky basic trainers and natural inertia to get off this/sometimes a rigid belief that is a much better approach than glass ships. Lower cost and more interesting sports like hang gliding and paragliding that have been particularly strong in the USA. A higher cost basis (e.g. less winch operations in the USA) which suppresses ability to spend money on a more modern fleet. A pilot licensing system that has nothing to do with encouraging the sport or XC flying. A mishandling of XC training/ transition at many clubs and commercial operations that sees a huge drop off in licensed pilots who never go XC let alone ever compete in a contest (numbers comparing Europe to the USA would be interesting). An economic inability to purchase newer fleets (remember the USA buying power for European glass has been hurting). And on an on.. Instead of worrying about the gloom there are clubs in the USA that get people into standard class and higher performance double seaters ASAP and promote XC flying and loaning out gliders for camps and safari's etc. I also strongly believe clubs need a Duo Discus or DG-1000S class two seater ships for cross country mentoring and just to have gliders in their fleet to interest/get new members to aspire to. Bay Area Soaring Associates is an example or a club with a DG-1000S and DG-505 (and a several standard class single seaters etc.) The other difference in the USA is there are relatively more commercial operators than in Europe. And what is a club in one place and a commercial operation can be all blurred. In California if I want to fly something besides my ASH-26E I can rent an ASW-24 or similar, Duo Discus and even an ASH-25 at very reasonable rates (and without any hassles of club membership, maintenance etc). However as with clubs what you find with commercial operators vary widely (clubs and operators with gliders not set up for proper XC drive me nuts, crappy varios, insufficient batteries, radios that don't work, no pee tube, etc. and they wonder why they can't attract members...). Most commercial operators are not going to want gliders leaving on safaris or contests etc. (but it can happen at times). Getting back to the original thread, adding another glider contest class would do nothing to encourage an increase in gliding and is likely to just make more work for everybody. If there is a informal class of gliders that is organically successful and being held back due to lack of formally organized contests or lack of class rules/ standardization between designs then by all means draw up another FAI class. I suspect there is naturally something just anti-low cost associated in establishing a conventional (not-one design) racing class. Innovation within the class and the willingness of pilots to pay for race winning designs drive up costs. And at the other extreme where chasing a one-design type class where the performance is too low to be an easy to fly XC machine - I think the oft used ~40:1 wisdom is an interesting break point (there are two places I fly frequently where a PW5, Russian or Sparrowhawk type glider is a non-starter since I could not make typical final glide back from where the lift is). If you want to lower costs you need reasonable volume and given the thing is going to cost a reasonable amount of money you need to make sure it is appealing enough to a wide audience even if that involves stretching wingspan, and costs, to get into a performance sweetspot (we can argue about what that sweetspot). Especially when compared to the bang for the buck achieved when purchasing a used standard (or 15m) glider. Then just to top it off the World Class effort really screwed up by having a design that just looks like a pregnant guppy. A bit of a handicap in encourage the buzz and excitement a new class would need. (Sorry PW5 owners, and I know many of you do some great impressive flights in the PW5 and have blast in it.). Darryl |
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