Short Wings Gliders

On Jan 28, 9:01*pm, DRN wrote:

Aaaarrrgggg....

It's not too late to let your representative know how you think he
should vote on this issue.

At 15:15 28 January 2009, Dan Silent wrote:

production runs of over 1000? ...over 500?
none in the past!

Schweizer built 700 1-26s. Took 'em a while,
though.

Jim Beckman

At 04:52 29 January 2009, Greg Arnold 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.

http://www.126association.org/graphics/tsa_grid.jpg

Jim Beckman

Jim Beckman wrote:
At 04:52 29 January 2009, Greg Arnold 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.

http://www.126association.org/graphics/tsa_grid.jpg

Jim Beckman



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.

On Jan 28, 8:30*pm, Dan Silent wrote:

think about the PIK without spoilers, so designed to win,
and it did..... but what a mistake to have such a solid
and durable sailplane with flaps and no spoilers because of a new class or
a new regulation!

A mistake to embody simple, effective, terminal-limiting glidepath
control that reduces stall speed instead of increasing it?

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. 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

Bob Kuykendall wrote:
On Jan 28, 8:30 pm, Dan Silent wrote:

think about the PIK without spoilers, so designed to win,
and it did..... but what a mistake to have such a solid
and durable sailplane with flaps and no spoilers because of a new class or
a new regulation!

A mistake to embody simple, effective, terminal-limiting glidepath
control that reduces stall speed instead of increasing it?

I flew a spoiler-less flaps-only glider for years. Not once did any of
the following happen:

1) forget to connect the spoilers during assembly
2) have an automatic spoiler hookup fail to work during assembly
3) fail to perform a spoilers PCC if needed
4) accidentally leave the spoilers open during take-off
5) accidentally have the spoilers "pop open" during take-off or flight
6) feel the need to install a Piggot hook to prevent 5)
7) have the flaps-only glide path control fail to get me down very
quickly even if I was grossly too high on final approach

We are aware of perhaps the only downside of such a configuration: If we
are being sucked upwards by unwanted strong lift, if the airspeed is
high it may not be possible to deploy the flaps in order to come down.
I don't believe this has been much of an issue in practice.

Regards,

-Doug

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.

Bob

A comment.

Have you thought about some simple tooling a kit buyer could rent for
putting togther critical assemblies (wing to fusrelage, tail asembly,
etc.).

If you furnished the tooling then you would have comfort the kit was
assembled as you deisgned and tested It.

There are of course those who will build the tooling from your plans
because they are on the minimum dollar schedule.

Good luck. Will be nice to have somethig made in America vs ??????

We can use all the jobs and keep the $ home.

Big John






On Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:01:58 -0800 (PST), Bob Kuykendall
wrote:

On Jan 28, 9:30*am, Derek Copeland wrote:

Why not just make a one design, mass produced 15m glider (preferably with
optional plug in 18m tips)...

Root bending moment scales something like exponentially with span,
regardless of whether the span is part of the orignial wing or added
later. So if you want to add 3m of span, you'd better design the wing
structure for it from the get-go.

We've already seen that even in what passes for mass production in the
glider world that the per-unit cost and price of a 15m ship are great
enough to severely limit the potential market, driving down production
rates and driving up per-unit costs. This is driven to some degree by
the complexity of the aircraft and the materials that go into it. It
is driven by a greater degree by the cost of the tooling, the amount
of floor space and volume it occupies, and by business expenses
relating to maintaining, heating, and lighting commensurate shop
space, and by wages and other labor costs. Big gliders require big
tools, and big tools require big shops, and the bigness seems to scale
with something like the square or the cube of the span.

The only thing I'm bringing to the party with my own 15m/18m design is
to keep overhead down to the barest of minimums and to offload a bunch
of the more labor intensive tasks of assembly, fitting, and finishing
to individual kit builders. The RV series of homebuilt airplanes
suggests that there is a great deal of manufacturing capacity
available in that market.

My interest in smaller gliders is chiefly in that they would fit into
smaller shops and smaller garages, opening up more potential market
for kit sailplanes. I also think that the potential kit market might
be more receptive to simplifications such as 90-degree landing flaps
instead of airbrakes as we saw with the Schreder HP kits and the
Monerai.

Thanks, Bob K.

On Jan 29, 10:06*am, 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.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Why does everything revolve around flying for competition? Why can't
we look at what would best promote and encourage more people to learn
to fly sailplanes?

Maybe the younger generation and their quest for adrenalin laced
activites would find competitive soaring compelling, but how many can
afford their own sailplane? I see in soaring magazine that there are
some that can do that, kudos to them............I would be interested
to know the economic situation they are in to allow them the luxury of
flying sailplanes competetively.

I imagine a lot of us recognize the comp pilots as great guys/gals who
have done what it takes to fly in contests but beyond that, could care
less about them or their exploits.

I would rather read articles in soaring about great exploration
flights in the mountains by recreational pilots instead of Joe Go-fast
in his nifty new racing glider and how he won by 5 seconds.

I also find the concept of some one brave enough to consider offering
a sailplane that was fun to fly and had reasonable cross-country
performance to allow the recreational flyer to afford a new sailplane
and have a blast flying it. Rather than offering another glass slipper
that only Cinderella can afford. (just a metaphor folks)

There is room for all of us in the soaring tent.

Brad