Performance World Class design proposal

In article ,
"iPilot" wrote:

2)Yes, the PW-5 is a true monotype for olympic specs : design is
public

What is so special in PW-5 model that cant be replicated in LS-4 if it's
being made public? You described the very idea of the monoclass. It is
independent of the specific model and can be applied on LS-4 as well.
About racing PW-5 in Olympics - it's the same as if in the sailing an
Optimist would be Olympic class. Leave the beginners gliders for beginners
and competition gliders for competitors.

You're way off.

The PW-5 is more like a Laser (and I own one). Not very fast but a lot
of fun. Both can actually go places, if not as quite quickly as some.
The optimist is more like ... well it's probably worse than even a 1-26.


The LS-4 I'd compare to a 12m yacht such as KZ-7 (the first fibreglass
12m). The best you could at one time get in a money-is-no-object class,
but now bypassed.

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------

On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 17:40:14 +0000 (UTC), wrote:


The Germans have been refining their production processes
for years. The people that work in the factories are
highly skilled and highly experienced.

Come on, this sort of argument covers vacuum.

How long did it take for Centrair till their ASW-20 copies had similar
quality than the Schleicher originals?
Ten years?



Bye
Andreas

Well. You may be right about PW-5. However, I'm not so sure about the LS-4
comparision. Nonetheless - making LS-4 a Performance World Class glider does
not mean that current WC has to be declared obsolescent - they both can
excist side-by-side.

Regards,
Kaido

"Bruce Hoult" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"iPilot" wrote:

2)Yes, the PW-5 is a true monotype for olympic specs : design is
public

What is so special in PW-5 model that cant be replicated in LS-4 if it's
being made public? You described the very idea of the monoclass. It is
independent of the specific model and can be applied on LS-4 as well.
About racing PW-5 in Olympics - it's the same as if in the sailing an
Optimist would be Olympic class. Leave the beginners gliders for
beginners
and competition gliders for competitors.

You're way off.

The PW-5 is more like a Laser (and I own one). Not very fast but a lot
of fun. Both can actually go places, if not as quite quickly as some.
The optimist is more like ... well it's probably worse than even a 1-26.


The LS-4 I'd compare to a 12m yacht such as KZ-7 (the first fibreglass
12m). The best you could at one time get in a money-is-no-object class,
but now bypassed.

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------

Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 17:40:14 +0000 (UTC), wrote:


The Germans have been refining their production processes
for years. The people that work in the factories are
highly skilled and highly experienced.

Come on, this sort of argument covers vacuum.

How long did it take for Centrair till their ASW-20 copies had similar
quality than the Schleicher originals?
Ten years?

Centrair is far from being an example of quality and efficiency. Nevertheless
their Pegase were good enough for my taste. I have never flewn a German ASW20
but i have flown several ASW19 and i don't see anything in them obviously
better than in the Pegase for example - an understatement. Yes i maintain that
the so-called high quality of such or such product is mainly commercial
bull**** which covers nothing real.



Bye
Andreas

--
Michel Talon

The short tailed glider link is here,It is NZ by the way ,can't have the
Aussies
claiming credit for this one )))
http://www.foamworks.co.nz/sg/people.htm
"iPilot" wrote in message
...
Gerhard. You should look at the Bob's webpage (www.hpaircraft.com) about
the work he's doing on HP
24. I personally know a person wh's self educated in aerodynamics and
who's building a modern
version of the Horten 3 (different seating position, different profiles,
stiffer construction) and
there's and Australian (or NZ?) group of people who are building a
short-tailed glider. All of them
are amateurs and afaik, none of them is learned aerodynamics in school.

About the Performance World Class. If the outer shape of the glider is
defined precisely enough,
anyone can build a copy without aerodynamical analysis - only construction
has to be engineered.


Regards,
Kaido



"Gerhard Wesp" wrote in message
...
Bob Kuykendall wrote:
Eric, you know I disagree that these are huge expenses. I continue to
believe that with modern softwares, and using modern
commercially-available composite products, that sailplane development
is within the grasp of a conscientious amateur.

I disagree. IMHO, sailplane development is an extremely complex task
far out of reach of anybody without some very sound aeronautical
engineering education. And not only that, it also requires a good deal
of experience---read: your first design will not necessarily be the best
one. :-)

That said, I'm open to be proven wrong by counter-examples. Anybody
knows any?

Cheers
-Gerhard

On Sat, 4 Sep 2004 18:59:00 +0000 (UTC), wrote:


Centrair is far from being an example of quality and efficiency. Nevertheless
their Pegase were good enough for my taste. I have never flewn a German ASW20
but i have flown several ASW19 and i don't see anything in them obviously
better than in the Pegase for example - an understatement. Yes i maintain that
the so-called high quality of such or such product is mainly commercial
bull**** which covers nothing real.

Most license-built 20F's and the early Pegase were a disaster
concerning airfoil precision. Fortunately it got better then.

I think (potential) glider owners are extremely snotty, especially if
they speak German.
Non-german gliders hardly have a chance on the huge German market,
even if they offer similar performance, handling and quality for a
substantial lower price. I'm thinking about the Genesis and especially
the current Lak's here.

I think quality and durable detail solutions need a certain
experience, which itself needs a certain number of planes built.




Bye
Andreas

You must be having a laugh! The quality of Centrair
gliders is far below the quality of the German manufacturers
from whom they stole (yes, stole) the IP and moulds.

Ben.

PS. I once read an article about what happened between
Centrair and Schliecher - most interesting.


At 11:48 04 September 2004, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 17:40:14 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:


The Germans have been refining their production processes
for years. The people that work in the factories
are
highly skilled and highly experienced.

Come on, this sort of argument covers vacuum.

How long did it take for Centrair till their ASW-20
copies had similar
quality than the Schleicher originals?
Ten years?



Bye
Andreas

Ben Flewett wrote:
You must be having a laugh! The quality of Centrair
gliders is far below the quality of the German manufacturers
from whom they stole (yes, stole) the IP and moulds.



You are both a snob and uninformed. First "Intellectual Property"
doesn't exist, and so cannot be stolen. What exists is copyrights,
which is clearly not of any concern here and patents, which could apply
to the situation, but don't in fact since nobody has claimed that there
has been patent violation in this case.
Second Centrair has certainly not stolen moulds, or Schleicher would have
prosecuted them. What they have done is building ASW20 under license
from Schleicher, and i don't see anything wrong there except the quality
of the products, which seems according to some of the posts here, to
have been inferior to the quality of the corresponding German products.

Things became unfriendly when Centrair offered the Pegase at a price
largely inferior to similar German gliders. Saying that the Pegase was a
copy of the ASW20 is bull****, the wing had been redesigned completely
by the French aerospace organisation called ONERA, and it was such a
success that the Pegase was in par with other similar gliders up to the
introduction of the Discus which was markedly better. I have seen and
flied a lot of Pegases, they are wonderful gliders of perfectly adequate
quality, and certainly better than the similar ASW19 from Schleicher.
Snobs of your sort that would only consider flying a German glider, and
preferably a 100 000$ glider are also very common in France. They
are the main responsible from the decline of soaring worldwide.

This being said i don't pretend that Centrair was a wonderful factory,
no more than Schleicher and so on. These are small factories with
limited resources, on the other hand building gliders in not rocket
science.


--

Michel TALON

Well, the fuselage is a perfect copy, the wing planform is a perfect copy,
the structure is a suboptimal copy and the airfoil is a new (and
definitively better) development.

So with all these copies and the French government paying for the airfoil -
no wonder why the selling price of a Pégase is fairly interesting if you
don't need amortization.

And even though development cost was low, pricing was interesting and
marketing was largely supported by FFVV subventions, Centrair went bust. Now
if you can't make money under these conditions, how to make money if you
have to pay for engineering ?!

But of course, that's all the fault of German manufacturers...

--
Bert Willing

ASW20 "TW"


"Michel Talon" a écrit dans le message de
...
Ben Flewett wrote:
You must be having a laugh! The quality of Centrair
gliders is far below the quality of the German manufacturers
from whom they stole (yes, stole) the IP and moulds.



You are both a snob and uninformed. First "Intellectual Property"
doesn't exist, and so cannot be stolen. What exists is copyrights,
which is clearly not of any concern here and patents, which could apply
to the situation, but don't in fact since nobody has claimed that there
has been patent violation in this case.
Second Centrair has certainly not stolen moulds, or Schleicher would have
prosecuted them. What they have done is building ASW20 under license
from Schleicher, and i don't see anything wrong there except the quality
of the products, which seems according to some of the posts here, to
have been inferior to the quality of the corresponding German products.

Things became unfriendly when Centrair offered the Pegase at a price
largely inferior to similar German gliders. Saying that the Pegase was a
copy of the ASW20 is bull****, the wing had been redesigned completely
by the French aerospace organisation called ONERA, and it was such a
success that the Pegase was in par with other similar gliders up to the
introduction of the Discus which was markedly better. I have seen and
flied a lot of Pegases, they are wonderful gliders of perfectly adequate
quality, and certainly better than the similar ASW19 from Schleicher.
Snobs of your sort that would only consider flying a German glider, and
preferably a 100 000$ glider are also very common in France. They
are the main responsible from the decline of soaring worldwide.

This being said i don't pretend that Centrair was a wonderful factory,
no more than Schleicher and so on. These are small factories with
limited resources, on the other hand building gliders in not rocket
science.


--

Michel TALON

Bert Willing wrote:
Well, the fuselage is a perfect copy, the wing planform is a perfect copy,
the structure is a suboptimal copy and the airfoil is a new (and
definitively better) development.


The Pegase fuselage looks like the ASW20 fuselage but not the point of
being a perfect copy, i don't think so. All fuselages of this period
look the same.

So with all these copies and the French government paying for the airfoil -

The same as universities paying for airfoil development everywhere in
the world.

no wonder why the selling price of a Pégase is fairly interesting if you
don't need amortization.

And even though development cost was low, pricing was interesting and
marketing was largely supported by FFVV subventions, Centrair went bust. Now
if you can't make money under these conditions, how to make money if you
have to pay for engineering ?!


As i said Centrair is not an exemple of an efficient business, and this
was un understatement. Even RS who had an extremely successfull glider,
the LS4, went bust. There is no limit to the amount of money incompetent
and greedy managers can throw through the windows, just take a look at
Messier and Vivendi.

But of course, that's all the fault of German manufacturers...


German manufacturers have done wonderful job, i will not discuss that.
What they are completely unable is keeping the prices under control.
Each and every successfull business has to focus on keeping prices
under control, even Daimler-Benz and BMW have done great efforts in this
direction and are able to deliver cars at reasonable price considering
the quality and performance of their products. There is absolutely
nothing anti german in what i am saying, i am only criticizing the
german glider manufacturers for their unability in stabilizing prices.
My salary has not augmented the last ten years, basically, i don't see
a single reason why a glider price should augment in the same time
frame. But in fact they have more than doubled. I am quite sure that the
salaries of the workers doing the job are as stagnant as my own. Hence
the problem is the vast inefficiency in the leadership of these
businesses, exactly the same inefficiency you very rightly criticize at
Centrair. Sorry to say that but building gliders is not a place to make
money, if you want to become billionaire, you better sell toothbrushes.







--

Michel TALON