Zweefvliegen #4 Sifow is voor echte mannen

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'Sifow', short for 'Span Is FOr Wimps' is an attitude of mind. Years of gliding club bar-room discussions have bred a generation of pilots who cannot see past the end of their wing tips. "Oh yes I used to fly an LS7, but the LS8 gives me 2 extra points of glide at 76 knots so it is well worth the extra £30,000 to upgrade"...not convinced?...take a look at the rapidly falling price of LS7's! This warped state of mind is known as 'Tinsfos'; 'There Is No Substitute FOr Span', the mis-belief that the more performance you have, the more fun and satisfaction you will have..."Well I'm hardly going to do my Silver C in an Astir when the Discus is available am I?".

Now, don't get me wrong, if I was to represent the UK in the World Championships (I said 'if') then I would want the latest, fastest, best machine going. Why? Because in a non-handicapped competition you need every advantage you can get, tenths of percentages win competitions. My point is that 99.9% of the pilots who blindly worship the god of Tinsfos are just like you or I, recreational pilots who certainly want to do their best, compete, get their diamonds, but who if they engaged the gear of independent thought would realise that you can have fun, satisfaction and badge claims without becoming bankrupt.

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Lesson 1: "Carbon Fibre"

History of gliding (abbreviated): In the beginning was wood, made from trees. Then someone in the sixties said "Hey man, glass fibre, wow, made from glass and fibre and stuff..", so they stopped using trees to make gliders and used glass fibre instead. Sometime after this, someone else discovered a much more expensive form of glass fibre made of Carbon. This became know as 'Carbon Fibre', though there is no recorded history as to how the name came about. Now everything that is good is made from CF and everything else is pants.

Carbon Fibre has a number of major benefits in the modern gliding world;

1.
They make Formula 1 racing cars and expensive motorbike accessories out of it, so it must be good.

2.
CF is stronger and lighter than glass fibre or wood, which means you need less of it per wing, which means you can have much more space to put water ballast in. Water is neither light nor strong, so why bother? In competitions, pilots never take off in CF gliders without adding loads of extra watery weight, and then, when conditions get weak, they dump it and get out-climbed by the wooden ships.....so just what is the benefit of CF then?

3.
Despite needing less of the stuff, it is so expensive that gliders with CF spars cost much more money. This is good news as it keeps poor people in their place. Because water is nearly free, adding water to a CF glider reduces the cost per pound of all-up weight dramatically, yet still does not make CF gliders any cheaper.

4.
Paradoxically, pound for pound CF weighs exactly the same as both glass fibre and wood, yet still costs more. Gliders made from CF, such as the DG500 series are still really heavy to rig even though they use CF extensively.

5.
A 100k FAI triangle in the latest CF glider is still the same distance and shape as it is in any other glider.

6.
Remember, contrary to popular belief, Carbon Fibre in NOT magic.

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Op maandag 28 mei 2007 19:54 schreef Autoreply het volgende:
Vandaag nog twee examens gezien, hier was 't prima weer. Volgend weekend ophalen op het ZK, het wordt baggerweer dus ophalen