Hi Kevin;

IMHO, Soaring is a blast! so to is reliably having a $100 breakfast/
burger.
Like everything else the answer is it depends and it depends on what you
want.
When it comes to gliding it depends what kind of lift you can encounter
and how often you can use it -> thermal, ridge, wave, dynamic soaring?

L/D does not necessarily equate with fun.  A lot of glider pilots never
leave gliding distance of the airport and like to lolligag as long as
possible in thermals or ridge, for some with larger budgets only the
highest L/D micro-cockpit sailplanes will do for cross-country flying.

Important factors are L/D, minimum sink and the speeds for each.

Higher wing loadings give higher min sink and a maximum L/D at a higher
speed which can be critical in ridge and wave soaring to
fly/penetrate/make headway upwind or make the next thermal.

If the wind picks up you want a good penetration speed and high L/D to
make a landout safely, inflight restart is also be nice but many of the
retract engine sailplanes drop from an L/D of 40 to 10-15?.  Most
usually have a field already picked in case the engine can't extend or
start.  Some of the motorgliders such as the Sonex and Sinus can restart
easier but pay a L/D penalty at all times.

Turning radius is important in thermalling and increases rapidly with
increasing wing loading/stall speed.  Weaker days have fewer narrow
thermals - this favours aircraft with lower stall/wing loading/sink
rates.  On a rare day our Citabria can thermal engine off with the corn
husks.

Some of the retract prop/engine sailplanes can taxi - albeit poorly.

Some other options - Silent 2, Apis, Europa, Windex, Diamond Katana
Extreme, Grob 108?, mitchell wing?

I recommend trying out some glider club rental ships before I invested
in one, there are also a few other things to learn.

Cheers
Cary



> having surrendered my medical recently I have been looking at  motorgliders.  the concept of ridge soaring in the cascades sounds  like a blast.  my question- of how much importance is L/D as far as having fun?  you just restart the engine when you can't glide far enough, right?  I'm sure it's not that simple.  I have rented sailboats which have lots of room but are so slow.  is it like that?
> the Sinus has a 30:1 ratio and conventional taildragger gear.  the xenos (big wing sonex) has 22:1 but is much cheaper.  retract sailplanes can get 38:1 but can't ground taxi.  I know that cruise speed is a big deal with planes, but in reality it is hard to tell how fast you are going by looking out the canopy.  aerobatic capabilities prove way more fun than top speeds. (ever fly a glasairII? boring, heavy controls, $10K gyro, so no rolls!)
> I have always been impressed with the depth of experience in this group and figured someone could answer my questions.
> Kevin Lane  Portland, OR
> e-mail-> n3773@comcast.net