I bought an Open Cirrus earlier this year and am very happy with it.

Good points: extremely well-mannered to fly, easy to land, good rate of roll
for 18m (nearly), excellent performance provided you fly slowly enough, good
scratcher and long legs for final glide.

Not so good points (no real bad points): seating is quite upright but with
legs horizontal (fine once you get used to it but a little odd for me to
start with), not easily adjustable for very tall pilots (I'm near the top
limit at 6' 1"), airbrake Hotelier connections are hidden by spar (mine has
Wederkind safeties so this is no problem), early models (including mine)
can't take water, quite heavy wings.

I've dealt with the rigging issue by making a simple wing root dolly for
maneouvring the wing around, and use two trestles to take the weight. No-one
has to take any weight for more than a minute, usually less. Result - all
those who've helped me rig say it's dead easy and very little effort.
Aluminium step ladders make really good trestles.

If you fit in, and like making steady progress without much turning to
thermal, an Open Cirrus would be well worth considering.

"Shawn Curry" wrote in message
hlink.net...
Bill Daniels wrote:
I've sold my old glider and now I'm in the market for a new one. This
time
I'm going the single-place route.

There seems to be a sweet spot in the price/performance curve when
looking
at the older open class gliders like the Open Cirrus, Jantar 2 (A or B),
LAK
12 etc... I haven't ruled out 15 meter gliders but I'm never going to
compete in anything more than Sports Class. I just want the performance
to
get home from the high country in Colorado.

Any thoughts?

Bill Daniels

A one man rigging kit. No seriously. When I was looking earlier this
year my list included these, but the weight of the wings was a big
deterrent (I suspect a Lark is no lightweight though).
A nice trailer, especially if you're getting a big ship.
Mosquitoes, Mini Nimbi, and ASW-19s are in the same price range, they
don't have those long legs though. I got a Mosquito.
There's a discussion along these line on www.GliderForum.com

Cheers,
Shawn