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A PW5 Narrative
By Bill Snead
Have you been wondering what it's like to own and fly a PW-5? Probably in history of Soaring there was never been a sailplane which has aroused such passion, both positive and negative, among glider pilots. My history of participation in and absence from soaring probably gives me a unique perspective on the PW-5.
I learned to fly in a Schweitzer 1-19 starting in 1954. From 1954 until 1978 I was very active in soaring. In 1958 my brother Ned and I entered the Nationals in Bishop California in our TG-2. I have owned, or leased for competition, a Schweitzer 1-26 and 2-32, a Ka-6, Hp-14, and Standard Libelle. In the late 1960's and 1970's I flew in numerous regional and national competitions in these sailplanes. My total time flying sailplanes is about 1600 hours. In 1978, I quit soaring to pursue sailboat competition.
When I quit soaring in 1978, I really expected to take a five or ten-year break then return to the sport with the best 15-meter sailplane that money could buy. Fortunately, the booming Texas economy put me in a position to afford a world-beater sailplane. However as I shopped for sailplanes, I could not get excited about anything but the PW-5.
In competitive boat sailing, I felt that that racing the small one-design boats had been more fun than racing the larger yachts. From my almost sixty years of experience, I have found you do better selecting a boat, a glider, or a woman if you act on your instincts. The fact that the PW-5 was the winner of the World Class Glider Competition organized by Federation Aeronautique Internationale gave me confidence to act on my instincts. The competition requirements called for a simple but safe design and with good performance. The idea being that the World Class would offer soaring competition where all the pilots would fly sailplanes of equal performance.
There were forty-two designs from 20 countries submitted in the first stage of the competition. Eleven gliders were in the prototype competition. Seven gliders reached the final stage (comparative tests) at the Oerlinghausen Gliding Center in the autumn of 1992.
I bought a new PW-5 from Peak Soaring in March of 1999. In 1999, I logged 42 flights in the PW-5. In 2000, 44 flights were logged. Most of this flying has been cross-country and in contests. The total cross-country distance in the years 1999 and 2000 is 6941 miles. My total flight time in the PW-5 is about 252 hours.
One of the nicest things about the PW-5 is its ease of rigging. The ship is light at 416 pounds. The wings are especially light. The wing panels weigh about 80 pounds each. All of the pins necessary to assemble the ship are attached to the glider with the exception of one pin that attaches the horizontal stabilizer and elevator. An old man can easily assemble the ship with the help of a delicate lady and one wing stand.
The PW-5 is easy to handle on the ground. There are four keys to the PW-5's ease of ground handling. First is the lightweight. Second are the 13.5-meter wings. Third is the high wing design. Finally is the nose and tail wheel. I can relatively easily push it around the airport by myself with out the aid of any dollies. The fact that the ship rests on its main gear and nose wheel even without a pilot makes it track straight and stable. With a bicycle wheel clamped to a wing and a towrope attached to nose tow hock, you can even pull it along behind a car without a wing walker. This is not really safe, but you do see it occur.
The design claim for the PW-5 is that pilots weighing as much as 240 pounds and standing up to six feet four inches tall can fit in the glider. Since I am only 5 ft 10 inches tall and weigh 200 pounds, I have not really tested the upper limits of the pilot size range. The seating is comfortable and the visibility is good. Some pilot reports have noted that it is hard to see the tow plane if the glider flies in a high tow position. While I can understand the comment, I have never really had trouble keeping the tow plane in site.
The cockpit ventilation is through a hole in the nose and a small scoop in the storm window. In over 200 hours of flying the PW-5, I doubt that the storm window vent has been closed more than 30 minutes. When a large (after market) air scoop is placed in the storm window, ventilation is adequate. A larger hole in the nose and good place for air to exit the cockpit would be a welcomed improvement
Why does the PW-5 have so many wheels? Having a main gear, a nose wheel, and an extended tail wheel, the PW-5 is well equipped with landing gear. With a 200 pound pilot on board the PW-5 loads its nose gear with 141 pounds of force. This is because the main gear is further aft than most sailplanes. Upon touch down the sailplane quickly rocks forward on to the nose wheel. The good news is that the PW-5 would be difficult to ground loop on take off or landing. The bad news is that the sailplane tends to go wherever it is pointed when the air speed falls below about 20 knots. The PW-5 is equipped with both a nose and CG tow hooks. This also results in excellent stability when aero towing.
Sitting nose down on take off and landing results in good aileron effectiveness at low speeds. I suspect that the tail wheel arrangement is to prevent the tail from banging down excessively hard on a quick start on a ground launch. The PW-5 will probably avoid most of the ground loop accidents that sometimes occur with other designs.
The PW-5 is well designed for low time pilots. The glider has a benign stall, is not overly sensitive in pitch, and with all those wheels easy to land. Much like a tricycle landing gear airplane, it tends to stay landed when the main gear touches down. Many of the common types of sailplane accidents have been considered and a design feature has been included to reduce the likelihood of such accidents. The spoilers work fine.
In March 1999, I paid a little over $19,000 for a new PW-5 FOB Colorado. This included the glider and instruments. The glider came with an air speed, altimeter, compass, and a diaphragm compensated mechanical PZL variometer. To keep up with the competition, I have added a Cambridge GPS-NAV logger, a total energy probe, and a Cambridge L-NAV. I also bought an Avionic (Polish) trailer from Peak Soaring. The trailer has been excellent. The whole package of new equipment was right at $30,000.
During the two years of ownership, there have been no AD's. So far nothing has broken.
My greatest fear in buying the PW-5 was that it might not have the reach to stay up in weak soaring conditions. In actual experience, I have not really had any trouble staying up. During the first half of the 1999 season everywhere I went to fly the ground was very wet. For the first three months of the season, I was rarely above 3000 feet above the ground and the lift rarely averaged over 200 feet per minute. On a "no contest" day at Albert Lea, I stayed up 2 hours and 45 minutes and never climbed above higher than 2500 feet above the ground. On that flight the L-Nav showed an average rate of climb of 30 feet per minute. I have actually had more trouble landing out unexpectedly flying in strong conditions. When pushing for high cross-country speeds, if you leave mediocre thermals below 2500 agl, you can meet the farming public. If conditions are strong, the down drafts are also strong and thermals are spaced further apart.
One of the criticism of the PW-5 is that they don't do well flying into head winds.
I find that if the lift is decent (over 200 feet per min) I can fly into winds up to about 18 knots. In winds over 20 knots it is better to go cross wind or down wind. On the last day at Littlefield the GPS was showing winds from 27 to 38 knots. I gave up on going up wind and drifted down wind 107 miles.
What kind of speeds can you expect to make cross-country in the PW-5? The lift available, the wind, and how high the lift can be worked will determine the speed made good cross-country in a PW-5. My highest speed around closed course occurred at the 2000 TSA Labor day contest. The PW-5 achieved a speed of 54 mph around a 154-mile pilot option speed task. This was an excellent soaring day with 500 to 800 feet per minute lift to 11,000 feet above the ground. The wind this day averaged about 6 knots. Most of my triangle or out and back flights in good central Texas soaring conditions yielded average speeds in the mid 40 mph range. If lift is averaging under 200 feet per minute and you are only able to get 2500 feet above the ground, speeds in the high 20 mph to low 30 mph range can be expected. Even in these weak conditions I was able to stay up and keep moving.
During the last two soaring seasons, I have had several memorable flights. On August 28, 1999, I flew 7 hours and 44 minutes downwind and covered 355 miles. This flight started at the Fault Line Flyers field near Austin, Texas and ended about 30 miles south east of Amarillo, Texas. A tail wind of 2 to 3 knots and very good lift for about 60 percent of the flight aided this flight. On August 6, 2000, I again flew down wind distance. Starting again at the Fault Line Flyers field, I flew 7 hours and 21 minutes north covering 333 miles and landed just north of Oklahoma City. During the 2000 summer, I attempted four 300-kilometer triangles. Two of the flights fell short at 167 miles and 179 miles. The other two triangles were completed at 44 and 42 miles per hour.
Record attempts are an exciting part of owning and flying in the World Class. Since the class is new most of the world records in the World Class are not out of reach. On 29 July 2000, I attempted to better the out and return record with a flight from Fault line Flyers Field to Ozona Texas and return. This would have been a 622-kilometer round trip. The flight got off to a good start, but a storm front approaching for the north blocked the Ozona turn point. I turned 15 miles short of the turn and rode the storm front back to Fault Line Flyers. This 8 hour and 45 minute flight covered 591 kilometers under the free out and returns distance rules and 609 kilometers under the free three point distance rules. An application for a world record is pending on this flight. This was an exciting flight. At one point I flew 1 hour and 47 minutes without circling along the storm front.
During the 2000 soaring season, I completed the requirements for two diamond distance awards. The flight to Oklahoma City was used to meet the 500-kilometer free distance requirement. One of the 300-kilometer triangles was used to meet the distance to a goal requirement. Also, the four best flights were good enough to win the SSA Region 10 Cross-Country contest.
In two flying seasons, I have entered the PW-5 in two Nationals, a regional, and five weekend contests. While the World class Nationals were rained out in Albert Lea Minnesota in 1999, the class had great weather for 2000 Nationals in Ephrata Washington. We regularly flew from 120 to 180 miles at speeds between 45 and 50 plus miles per hour. It is fun to fly against competitors in exactly the same type sailplanes. In addition to feeling equipment equality, there seems to an enhanced feeling of comradeship when everyone is in the same ship.
Other than in Nationals, all of the contests in which I have flown have been handicapped contests. The PW-5 carries a handicap of 1.206. I was convinced that the handicap factor was indequade until I was soundly defeated by a Schewitzer1-26 at the 2000 Texas Soaring Association Memorial Day contest. I had won the contest the year before in the PW-5. I really believe a skillful pilot can win sports class contests in the PW-5 with a little luck.
Several people have asked me if the World Class will grow into an active competition class. Bill Bartell, Pat Tuckey, John Dupree, Allan Willis, and Francois Pin are excellent pilots who have been active in World-Class contest flying. Many pilots, who own PW-5, s do not yet have a great amount of experience flying cross-country much less of contest experience. Therefore, it will take a few years before there is a large group of competitive World-Class flyers. I see this situation as ideal. There are some really good pilots flying which allows you to gauge your own skills. On the other hand, there is not a gang of skilled pilots keeping you out of third or forth place at the Nationals.
In summary, it has been great fun flying the PW-5. Even a winter soaring trip to Australia and 40 hours in a Hornet, did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for the PW-5 and the World Class. One design soaring competition, on a world stage, has been a long time reaching our sport.
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