In article , iPilot
writes
Racing with PW-5's on Olympics is more like racing with Optimist class of
sailboats. We're working to get the Laser done. Or at least Dragon.

How about the IGC Club Class, which already exists and can embrace the
soaring equivalent of Optimist, Dragon and Laser because it is not just
"one design" but compensates over a small performance bracket by
handicapping according to glider performance. You can certainly have a
viable IGC Club Class competition with PW5, Russia, K6, Skylarks and
gliders of similar performance. The organisers simply set the
performance bracket a bit lower than is normally done for Club Class
competitions (which rather sums up why the PW5 has not caught the
imagination of the world gliding movement).

It would appear that the world gliding movement is either too small or
too fragmented to embrace a successful one-design class. It might have
succeeded in the 1940 Olympics (which did not happen for obvious
reasons) with Hans Jacobs' great design, the Meise (also known as the
Olympia), but things have moved on since then. The Standard Class of
the 1950s was a great step forward in making gliders of reasonable cost
viable in competition up to the world level. It also spawned that fine
design the K6 and others. But it did not attempt to be a one-design
class and maybe that is why not only succeeded but is still with us
today. Is there a moral here that we should heed?

--

Ian Strachan
Lasham Gliding Centre