ventus C 17.5 versus ls6-18

At 10:06 05 November 2004, Stuart Kinnear wrote:Which is the better glider ??Stuart KinnearThe one you are sitting in!
Tom Serkowski
ASH-26E

These are both very rare gliders here in the US, to be sure!

However, if one checks out European gliding championships, the LS-6c 18's
(and a few 17.5's) abound and do very well in 18m competitions.

For some reason, the US has not caught on to the 18m class. Why is that?
(ie. no 18m regional competitions, only one nationals.)

J4
"Tom Serkowski" wrote in message
...
At 10:06 05 November 2004, Stuart Kinnear wrote:Which is the better
glider ??Stuart KinnearThe one you are sitting in!
Tom Serkowski
ASH-26E

John Bojack wrote:
For some reason, the US has not caught on to the 18m class. Why is that?
(ie. no 18m regional competitions, only one nationals.)

Actually, there was at least one 18M regional contest in the US this
year, Region 11 at Minden. It was pretty successful (7 gliders, out of
26 total), and we will no doubt do it again next year.

BTW, this contest (and the winner of the 2004 US 18M Nationals) points
out a possible reason why 18M racing is not quite as popular as some
expected, 15M gliders are very often faster on the same tasks...

Marc

Marc Ramsey wrote:
John Bojack wrote:

For some reason, the US has not caught on to the 18m class. Why is
that?
(ie. no 18m regional competitions, only one nationals.)


Actually, there was at least one 18M regional contest in the US this
year, Region 11 at Minden. It was pretty successful (7 gliders, out of
26 total), and we will no doubt do it again next year.

BTW, this contest (and the winner of the 2004 US 18M Nationals) points
out a possible reason why 18M racing is not quite as popular as some
expected, 15M gliders are very often faster on the same tasks...

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.


--
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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

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