It seems most of the 18 meter gliders in the US are motorgliders (like
the DG 800, ASH26 E), and most of the pilots aren't interested in contests.

In South Africa, the older open class gliders like the Nimbus 2, ASW
17, LAK 12 and Kestrel have been combined with the 18m class. The open
class is thus for the ~55:1 gliders (ASW 22, Nimbus 3 and 4's, ASH 25
etc). This makes task setting more appropriate and challenging for the
newer open class gliders and fills up the 18m class with gliders with
similar performance - and allows the old open class ships to be raced
on appropriate tasks.

All classes are handicapped on a system that divides the day into a
weak, intermediate and strong category and normalised to an ASW 20.
Thus on a strong day - gliders with longer wings are not penalised as
they do generally not fly faster than the 15m ships - but on weaker
days they are handicapped for the benefit of the longer wing. Water
ballast performance is used for the strong and intermediate days in
the calculations, but the un-ballasted performance is used for the
weak days. The determination of the type of day is done after the task
based on the speeds of the top finishes.

A lot of work has been done by the competition committee to try offer
fair competitions for all pilots - no matter what they fly.

Clinton Birch
LAK 12