At 01:36 10 December 2003, Arnold Pieper wrote:
Jeez,

This things comes full circle about once every 2 weeks
it seems...

The only one-design class I know of is the 'World Class'
(the PW-5), there
are no others.

Gee, where I come from the most active one design is
1-26ers.

The LS-4 and the Jantars are 'Standard Class' gliders,
which were
competitive in this class during the 70s.
Today, you can fly all of them in the sports class
(since this class uses
handicap), where you can in fact mix both old and new
together.

The PW-5 was designed to be the Olympic class glider,
and therefore be
easily manufactured by anybody (in the same way the
Olympic sail boats such
as the Star, Laser, 49er, etec which are manufacture
in many countries at
various costs).
For those who want to compete in the olympic games,
this is the way.

I was not aware that soaring was in the Olympics.

For those with big budgets and ocean crossing aspirations,
there are many
other 'Professional' classes, all the way up to the
Maxis, Volvo Ocean
Racers, or the Americas Cup (for those who like spending
millions in local
'drag racing').

Likewise in Soaring, PW-5 are for the World Air Games.

So traveling to the World games is considered low budget?

If you like more performance, buy one of the other
classes and have fun.
Stop bitching about it.






'Stewart Kissel' wrote in
message ...
After sifting through the thread and some email discussions
with others, I thought I might direct this thread
back
to where
it started from. With the number of racing classes
available, and
particularly the sports class-maybe one design is
the
problem
as much as the PW5. I get a lot of LS4 promoters,
but a new
LS-4 built in Eastern Europe(with instruments, trailer,
software,
parachute) is still going to cost considerably more
then the used
ASW-20, Ventus, LS6 that are in the low $30k range
these days.

It would be difficult for me to trade in my Ventus
plus at least $20k in order to play the one design
game. Now I am not a
racer type, but I suspect the one design concept was
geared to
entry level racers, which I qualify as. So perhaps
one design is
an idea which was not to be in our current environment.