John Foster wrote on 8/14/2020 1:40 PM:
On Friday, August 14, 2020 at 8:00:04 AM UTC-6, Paul T wrote:
40:1 glide ratio sounds nice, but a VNE of 200km/hr seems a bit limiting
for anything but purely relaxed recreational flying.


What do you seriously thinking its aimed for?? -winning the Open Class
World Championships?

I'm not sure how much it costs new. But I'm sure that for the same money you can get an older and much better performing glider that you could grow into that you COULD eventually race in, if you wanted to, or work on records, or some other performance related soaring activity.

In the US, it can be raced competitively in the 13.5M class and the Sports Class.
I don't know how competitive it would be in either class, but I'm guessing it
would be at least "adequate". And, there are plenty of records to work for: the
SSA currently lists over 32 pending or confirmed records in the US in the last 6
months for the 13.5M class, and some of those flights also qualified for records
in Sports and Std classes.

Clearly, though, the goal was not racing, but a lightweight, low-cost
self-launcher that is easy to use. The UL ("ultralight") designation is important
in Europe, as it provides licensing and maintenance requirements that are less
onerous than other classes, but is irrelevant in the USA.

I just realized a benefit of the oddly rear mounted propeller: It can be
significantly bigger than the current FES propellers, at 1.3M versus 1.0M
diameter. That's a 70% increase in swept area, which should allow a more efficient
propeller to be used.


--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1