On Mar 1, 9:10*pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:
Eric - see answers to your questions below:

I assume you are talking about wave flying in Class A airspace. Class A
* is not necessary to take advantage of a high Vne. Class A's advantage
is altitude, making it easier to traverse gaps in the wave. High speed
flight comes from strong lift, which can be very strong at 18,000'.

I was referring to the reference in the original post that stated the
DuckHawk was designed to take advantage of dynamic soaring at the
boundary of the Jetstream. Last I checked the Jetstream is typically
found in Class A. I have no idea how you'd get to the boundary of the
Jetstream on a typical summer soaring day via thermal. In the winter
you might use wave. I'm not sure why you'd cruise at 200 kts under
thermal soaring conditions, even when the lift is averaging 10+ knots,
which is quite rare. That kind of speed could be useful for XC in
wave, but that is a niche market based on my observations. I'm not
sure I'd optimize a design for that scenario if I wanted volume
production unless it didn't come at the expense of performance under
more mainstream soaring conditions.

The material is a polycarbonate (like Lexan), quite tough, lighter, and
relatively easy to form compared to the thicker acrylic used on larger,
heavier, and faster gliders. It's a good choice for the SparrowHawk.

I was referring to what they might use on the DuckHawk in contrast to
the SparrowHawk. 200 knots is pretty fast to have a coke bottle for a
canopy - at least for me.


I doubt that any glider depends on the strength of the canopy plastic to
absorb energy in a pinch!

I was talking about the fuselage which is quite thin - though I can
understand how you might have gotten confused because of the reference
to the canopy just before.

9B