![]() ![]() They can cost more than the plane if you're not careful. Instrumentation: Heads Up Displays are great. Some adjustments in your flying style may mean the difference between flying and not flying. Whatever your means are, the price should fit your lifestyle without pain. That means a different things to different people. This takes a careful balance between weight, airfoil and material.ĥ. It's not quite so hard to get good performance. It's hard to achieve ultimate performance. We're supposed to enjoy our flight, not ride around on the edge of a razor blade all day. A respectable glide ratio, low stall speed and no bad habits in addition to survivability. How about a plane you can tie out once in a while, or that can fly in wave without worrying about the finish peeling off?Ĥ. Have you priced a refinish job on a glass bird lately? It can be more than the purchase price of a used plane. Maintainability: We thought fiberglass would last forever. You can accept a narrow cockpit more easily than a short one.ģ. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to stretch out in the cockpit? How many hot birds do you know of that have different size cockpits as different model numbers? The limiting factor here is length. Room: Americans are taller than their European ancestors. This takes low wing loading and a climbing airfoil.Ģ. It's what lets you fly while the hot ships are on the ground. It's what lets you tiptoe home when the day dies. You want a plane that can stay up when the birds are flapping their wings. Unless you live in Uvalde, strong days always happen on Wednesday. ![]() Let's forget about the plane we bought at the convention, and look at what we want a plane to do for us:ġ. ![]() What does that have to do with the kind of plane we buy? A lot. When you think about it, unless we're on a badge flight, we don't use the L/D of our plane in our daily flying. On the way home did you delight in how much faster you flew a triangle or did you chortle at how you outclimbed another glider? You were using sink rate and not L/D. When the day was done, did you compare notes on who flew the farthest, or did you see who topped out the highest thermal? You were using sink rate, and not L/D. Whether you fly a Grunau Baby or a Nimbus III, when was the last time you used the L/D in whatever you fly? Did you go out of glide range of the field? Or did you stay one thermal away? If it's the latter, you were using the sink rate of your plane, and not the L/D. What! The sacred Grail of sailplane performance is unimportant? Unless you are a world class competitor, it is. Yet it's strange that of the characteristics that we use when we own a glider, L/D is one of the least important. What we really want are 60:1 L/D, carbon fiber spars, a Kevlar fuselage and winglets: World Championship Stuff. We even admit that the sustainer motor, heads up display, and flight computer are a little beyond our means. When we buy a glider, we all use the same criteria: Lift/Drag (L/D) ratio. I'm talking about the one you bought the last time you went to the gliderport, read Soaring magazine, walked the display floor at the convention or thumbed through the pages of the Sailplane Directory. When you last bought a glider, how did you make the decision? I know, you don't own a glider. If you're in the many dollars category, this article is not for you. If there were more than that he was going to run anyway so it didn't matter how many there were. He figured that he could beat any three guys. I knew a guy in the Army who used to count 1, 2, 3. Granted, many sailplanes cost more than that, but if you're in the market for one of those, you are likely not buying your first sailplane. The three kinds of sailplanes are those that cost $5,000, $10,000 and $20,000. But you will find those materials in all types of aircraft. What sailplanes are made of has a lot to do with why you buy one. ![]()
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