Looking good, but you still couldn't get me to fly in something without atleast one working fan on it...
It's not so intimidating once you actually fly one and see what it can do. They're made to glide well, remember... very different story than a light single with a failed engine.
Even the lowly 2-33 has a 22.3:1 glide ratio (compare that to a C172's 12:1!!) , and that's way at the bottom of the glider performance scale. Another common older trainer, the Blanik L-13, will give you 28:1. And it just gets better from there. The really hot glass gliders nowadays can do better than 40:1 !! That means from 1000 feet you can glide almost 8 miles!!
But for XC stuff, catching thermals and terrain-induced updrafts and waves is what really makes it happen. Glider pilots fly incredible distances using these techniques. Even if you are just staying local, coring thermals can keep you up for hours and hours.
You can glide farther in a glider (duh), and maneuver comfortably at speeds that would scare the heck out of you in a Cessna. So even if you fail to make it to your intended landing area (which is rare except when people are pushing hard on a cross-country flight), you are looking at a pretty uneventful emergency landing.
And if you still mess it up, say, putting a wing into the ground or a tree while trying to turn low to the ground, the low speed will help, and most gliders are built with the most strength around the seats.
The 2-33 welded-steel center section is built like a tank- people have walked away from very nasty crashes in Schweizers. I recall one where two gliders collided and one of them, a 1-26 I think, spun in, with one wing gone, from several thousand feet. Pilot walked away with minor injuries.
That would not be the case in any light single I can think of, except maybe a Cub or other steel-frame bird.
by beaky » Wed Jul 15, 2009 5:59 am 
