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All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records



 
 
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  #61  
Old March 18th 17, 04:04 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
[email protected]
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Posts: 172
Default All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

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
  #62  
Old March 18th 17, 06:05 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
jfitch
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Default All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

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.
  #63  
Old March 18th 17, 06:40 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Sierra Whiskey
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Default All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

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.
  #64  
Old March 18th 17, 02:18 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
BobW
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Default All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

On 3/17/2017 9:47 AM, jfitch wrote:

snipThe ability to be able to selectively end your soaring performance at
will, in the air, is a significant benefit to the pilot./snip

What - exactly - is preventing you from doing this in your engineless
glider? (Nothing at all?)

Have you even taken a motorglider cross country? (No?)

The soaring day ends when you are over a landing site and too low to
continue. Engine or no. Once again, the endless whinging seems to be from
people with no experience in motorgliders, who perceive the grass must be
greener over there. Buy one and fly it for awhile, then report back. You
will find that the "benefit to the pilot" is convenience, not performance.
Penalizing convenience in the record rules is a steep and slippery slope
with almost no bottom.

Clearly there are differing, strongly held, opinions regarding the question of
whether or not there are fundamental differences between engined/engineless
sailplanes...and more to the point of this thread, of whether or not IGC ought
to recognize the reality (or not) of those differences.

If it isn't already obvious, put me in the camp of "We hold these truths
(differences) to be self-evident..."

I readily admit ignorance of any nuances that do (or do not) result from how
IGC allegedly proposes to bureaucratically "unrecognize" the reality of those
differences, but since I *think* I was the one who originally mentioned the
capital acquisition cost increment as one difference (I haven't bothered to go
back and check), and 'jfitch' (used merely an identifier; no disrespect
intended) is evidently in the camp believing 'the cost argument is specious,'
I submit that it is not, to the extent that it us useful as a means of shining
light on one of those differences. To argue that in sum there IS no actual
cost increment misses several points (acquisition cost, maintenance costs,
etc., ad nauseum).

Further, to reason that this difference (and others) does not exist (as IGC
apparently has chosen to do) says more about IGC thought process than it does
about the very real differences...even if today the *performance* differences
are far smaller than they were (say) in the time before the PIK-20E (which
most people would accept as the first engined sailplane without 'an obvious
engine-related-performance hit').

Now Joe Average Citizen's response to this particular argument likely is
something along the line of: So what? BFD. Surpassing indifference. Etc.
Clearly not so to Sailplane drivers...who as a group can be presumed to
recognize some of the finer nuances contained within this uplifting, if
arcane, sporting activity. As a member of that group, I would hope and expect
IGC as a sub-group with a (self-selected?) charter to (among other items)
create/support/help-recognize sailplane-related sporting endeavor, would
understand that some of those nuances unimportant to Joe Average Citizen are
quite important to various members of the sailplane fraternity. If - within -
their own rules and ship-related-categories - perceived inequities have crept
into existence at the world record level, by all means address those
inequities in some manner. But to ostensibly pretend that there *are* no
fundamental differences between engined/engineless sailplanes is, to me, a sad
- fatuous, even - method, with perhaps unintended negative consequences for
the sport, when to *recognize* the reality of the differences is arguably more
beneficial for the sport.

Now if IGC wants to go down the slippery slope decried by 'jfitch' it has
every right to do so...and should rightly (in my view) expect to be excoriated
for so doing, because to do so would arguably be to be 'disrespecting' the
sport through trivialization.

Not all ideas are of equal merit, and the idea of forcing bureaucratic
equality between engined/engineless sailplanes by in-future 'de-accrediting'
record attempts of engineless ones lacks any merit obvious to me. I write that
as 'a soaring nut' with no aspirations of ever making a record flight, at any
level of the sport.

Respectfully,
Bob W.
  #65  
Old March 18th 17, 02:56 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
RR
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Posts: 82
Default All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

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

  #66  
Old March 18th 17, 04:07 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Posts: 41
Default All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

On Friday, March 17, 2017 at 12:11:19 PM UTC-4, wrote:
Performance is increased by convenience. Let's flip this round why are motor-packers against separate records?


That is the exact question ...why not keep two sets of records and be done with it....

Dennis
DC
  #67  
Old March 18th 17, 04:12 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Posts: 1
Default All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

I've owned a PIK20E for about 350 hrs of flying. The engine definitely changes the way you fly and think. The biggest advantage (when good landing fields are available) I would move on for better lift when moderately low, in the motor glider. In pure gliders, I will usually accept weak lift when below my working band of altitude, so possibly wasting lot's time when a good lift is ahead on course. Of course the MG climbs worse or not at all in weak lift, where as the Libelle I fly now will climb in very weak lift. I used the motor many time for avoiding landing out. Yes, you better give up at a higher altitude with a MG, the motor got me into a few dicey situations I now know were risky, and looking at the traces of MG flights on OLC of pilots some take serious risks getting low. You better expect the motor to fail at any time! The PIK was a complex airplane to fly lot's of ways to screw up (I think I found a lot of them), a lot more to worry about. I learned a huge amount about flying XC in the MG that I wouldn't in pure gliders.. Mainly stay on course when getting low, don't dart all around desperately looking for lift, move on from lift when it gets weak. I was able to launch earlier and fly later in the day, knowing if the lift isn't there the motor will probably prevent a landout. So, yes both have advantages and disadvantages. As far as being in the same category for record flights, no way the motor really changes the equation.
  #68  
Old March 18th 17, 04:28 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Sierra Whiskey
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Posts: 38
Default All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

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.
  #69  
Old March 18th 17, 04:28 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Dan Marotta
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Posts: 4,601
Default All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

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
  #70  
Old March 18th 17, 06:02 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
jfitch
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Posts: 1,134
Default All US Records are Now Motor Glider Records

On Saturday, March 18, 2017 at 6:18:06 AM UTC-7, BobW wrote:
On 3/17/2017 9:47 AM, jfitch wrote:

snipThe ability to be able to selectively end your soaring performance at
will, in the air, is a significant benefit to the pilot./snip

What - exactly - is preventing you from doing this in your engineless
glider? (Nothing at all?)

Have you even taken a motorglider cross country? (No?)

The soaring day ends when you are over a landing site and too low to
continue. Engine or no. Once again, the endless whinging seems to be from
people with no experience in motorgliders, who perceive the grass must be
greener over there. Buy one and fly it for awhile, then report back. You
will find that the "benefit to the pilot" is convenience, not performance.
Penalizing convenience in the record rules is a steep and slippery slope
with almost no bottom.

Clearly there are differing, strongly held, opinions regarding the question of
whether or not there are fundamental differences between engined/engineless
sailplanes...and more to the point of this thread, of whether or not IGC ought
to recognize the reality (or not) of those differences.

If it isn't already obvious, put me in the camp of "We hold these truths
(differences) to be self-evident..."

I readily admit ignorance of any nuances that do (or do not) result from how
IGC allegedly proposes to bureaucratically "unrecognize" the reality of those
differences, but since I *think* I was the one who originally mentioned the
capital acquisition cost increment as one difference (I haven't bothered to go
back and check), and 'jfitch' (used merely an identifier; no disrespect
intended) is evidently in the camp believing 'the cost argument is specious,'
I submit that it is not, to the extent that it us useful as a means of shining
light on one of those differences. To argue that in sum there IS no actual
cost increment misses several points (acquisition cost, maintenance costs,
etc., ad nauseum).

Further, to reason that this difference (and others) does not exist (as IGC
apparently has chosen to do) says more about IGC thought process than it does
about the very real differences...even if today the *performance* differences
are far smaller than they were (say) in the time before the PIK-20E (which
most people would accept as the first engined sailplane without 'an obvious
engine-related-performance hit').

Now Joe Average Citizen's response to this particular argument likely is
something along the line of: So what? BFD. Surpassing indifference. Etc.
Clearly not so to Sailplane drivers...who as a group can be presumed to
recognize some of the finer nuances contained within this uplifting, if
arcane, sporting activity. As a member of that group, I would hope and expect
IGC as a sub-group with a (self-selected?) charter to (among other items)
create/support/help-recognize sailplane-related sporting endeavor, would
understand that some of those nuances unimportant to Joe Average Citizen are
quite important to various members of the sailplane fraternity. If - within -
their own rules and ship-related-categories - perceived inequities have crept
into existence at the world record level, by all means address those
inequities in some manner. But to ostensibly pretend that there *are* no
fundamental differences between engined/engineless sailplanes is, to me, a sad
- fatuous, even - method, with perhaps unintended negative consequences for
the sport, when to *recognize* the reality of the differences is arguably more
beneficial for the sport.

Now if IGC wants to go down the slippery slope decried by 'jfitch' it has
every right to do so...and should rightly (in my view) expect to be excoriated
for so doing, because to do so would arguably be to be 'disrespecting' the
sport through trivialization.

Not all ideas are of equal merit, and the idea of forcing bureaucratic
equality between engined/engineless sailplanes by in-future 'de-accrediting'
record attempts of engineless ones lacks any merit obvious to me. I write that
as 'a soaring nut' with no aspirations of ever making a record flight, at any
level of the sport.

Respectfully,
Bob W.


No one has yet been able to articulate the distinction between owning a trailer and a motor. Both are an expensive convenience for a retrieve, with some ancillary benefits. If you can prevail upon the IGC to separate motor and non motor gliders, perhaps they can also separate records set with access to a trailer from those who don't.

If the $35K for an engine is put into a 6% annuity, it will pay over $500 each month on a 6 month soaring season, for 20 years. That is not counting maintenance, add another $100/month. How many retrieves do you do? The 'pure' glider is at a distinct cost advantage by paying only for those retrieves needed. Pay for them in advance, if it changes your mindset.

There are a few people here (who have no experience in motorgliders and are therefore speaking from ignorance) claiming that it is "self evident" that motor and motorless gliders are entirely different, and are stealing national records by depending on the engine. This is presented on faith, without even the weakest of evidence. Show me, in any existing national motorglider record, the point where they were low and in danger of needing the engine to survive. You cannot, because it does not happen. All of these records are set in the Great Basin on booming days when the ground clearance is typically 10,000 ft or more. You are making an extraordinary claim. You need to provide extraordinary proof - or any evidence at all. Look at the flight logs. What you say is happening, isn't, as an observable fact.

In perusing the national records, another thing becomes evident: no one (or very few) 'pure' gliders are making record attempts, even with separate records kept. An example illustrative of this is the single place open class triangle speed records vs. single place motorglider: the average age of the current record in non motorglider is 22 years, the average for motorgliders is 2 years. This difference is typical of all record categories and it is an astonishing difference. Many of the 'pure' glider records date from the 1980's. No wonder the SSA wants to collapse this inactive category. You'all are complaining a lot more that you are flying, apparently. If anything, this is evidence that 'pure' gliders are causing soaring to die, not motorgliders.
 




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