On Tuesday, January 17, 2017 at 10:32:44 AM UTC-5, Jacopo Romei wrote:
Hello everybody,

as a newbie, I often find myself wondering
- how far a specific glider can be pushed
- how far a specific glider can be pushed by *its* average pilot

The second point is very important because, as obvious as it may sound, no glider "gets there" alone and it surely must be matched by a pilot with related skills.

By the way, end-to-end, I thought that crunching & aggregating some yearly OLC data, I could find a relevant answer.

As of today, on gliderreview.com every glider is shown along with its average flight lenght in the previous year. That allows for anyone to get both information: how far is any glider usually flown and, most important, how far outside of my comfort zone any glider is.

Sure this is based on OLC-uploaded flights only, but still any statistics is based on sampling and OLC to me is a quite reliable and representative data population. In other words: crunching 14 thousands flights will be enough for me to get the idea. ;-)

Enjoy!

--
Jacopo

i think there are too many variables to draw a reliable conclusion. i am also starting to think that you'd be surprised how far a specific glider can be pushed. people often takeoff too late and land too early. daniel sahzins 1000k in a 1-26, or this ~840Km flight in a PW5 are proof that the pilot is the biggest variable and not the glider. when i was younger i thought an 15 meter 750k thermal flight originating in upstate NY was pure fantasy, but dale kramer was damn near doing it. it amounted to taking off at 10 AM and flying until 6:00.

it's interesting to see what distances different gliders are being flown, i just doing think you'll get an accurate assessment. most people will go alot shorter than whats possible, but with the right person you'd be surprised how far it IS possible to go. at contests (which account for many of the cross country flights posted to OLC) the full soaring day isn't usually used.plenty of reason why the numbers won't be accurate.