On Fri, 5 Apr 2019 13:38:55 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

ia m from europe and followed this "buying a 15m flapped glider" discussion. i want to congratulate you guys to the civilised, friendly and informed exchange of ideas on that topic. in some other forums for gliding people are much more rude.
i personally fly a standard class glider and don´t think the difference in performance is that great if you don´t fly with MC settings above 2,5m/sec.
to get a nice trailer, which has been mentioned here, and that the ship will not need too much refurbishing soon is more im portant in my opinion. plus, wether you feel comfortable in the cockpit. i guess back pain after 3 hours equals -10 performance points.


Martin,
I can only second every single word.

In my experience the IGC index reflects pretty well the real-life
perfomance of a glider, the difference between, say, an old Cirrus and
an ASW-20 being less than 15 percent, even with the latter carrying
water ballast.


Cheers
Andreas