The Harley-Davidson Lesson
A phenomenon that still persists to this day.
A while back I was at a meeting of the Seattle Area Soaring Society. The featured speaker was the new ‘high-tech’ glider kit manufacturer of the month. We were told all about the amazing materials that his glider kit utilized. One thing that the starry-eyed manufacturer said that stuck with me was that there were even more tantalizing materials in the pipelines that would momentarily become available. When we had these materials, then we could really build great gliders!
This boundless faith in the ‘Holy Grail’ of technology reminded me of stories I had heard about doctors telling families of terminal cancer patients that “… there is no known cure right now. However, I am in contact with the latest research developments and so if a breakthrough occurs, I will immediately utilize this new treatment on the patient.”
After mulling over the mad dash for ‘me-too’ high-tech glider kit production that has taken place over the past couple of years, I began to realize that soaring is changing so profoundly in its emphasis, its goals and its philosophy that it is paralleling what happened in motorcycle manufacturing in the 1970s and early 1980s.
The Japanese caught US manufacturers off guard by producing lightweight, inexpensive and reliable motorcycles that took over an ever larger market share. Before they knew what had hit them, US companies were going out of business. Soon, Harley-Davidson was the only US manufacturer left and they were just hanging on by a prayer. In the meantime, the Japanese were becoming ever more obsessed with performance technology. They added cylinders and increased compression ratios. They even seated the drivers in the most aerodynamic positions. You still see some motorcycle drivers zipping along curled up in a near fetal position. As technology took over and performance-to-weight became the driving force, something very basic was lost. What was lost was the main reason that had made motorcycling popular in the first place.
Somehow, the people at Harley-Davidson figured this out just in time. They went to work to improve the quality of their machines while maintaining the human appeal of the old Harley motorcycles. You see, it was learned that people like motorcycles for the personal freedom it gives them. They like the throaty sound of the large cylinders, they like a machine that lets the human body relax and enjoy the ride.
The resurgence of Harley-Davidson was so dramatic that the industry knew it had veered way off course and had lost sight of why people enjoy the hobby/sport of motorcycling. Now, the Japanese motorcycles look more like Harley-Davidsons than genuine Harley-Davidsons do and motorcycling has once again discovered its soul.
A common theme that I am hearing from people is that soaring is not as much fun now as it used to be. Some people have come back to flying my gliders because they say that they have never had as much fun soaring before or since. What attracted most of us to soaring was the simple joy of being able to put a heavy sculpture into the air and watch the miracle of it remain airborne with no motor. We cheered as better designs and control systems appeared because we could stay up longer in less favorable conditions and cheat Mother Nature even farther. Many believe that this performance curve hit its zenith in 1982 with the advent of the Windsong. Nothing new or significant in surface controls, maximum L/D or minimum sinking speed has occurred since to help the hapless pilot achieve better air times.
In the headlong dash for the most ‘bullshitically correct’ (BC) glider, the soaring pilot has become the big loser. The market has become a cookie cutter of sameness. To be BC, the glider wings must have a Schumann planform, the fuselage must have a strip of kevlar in it somewhere and the wings must be pre-built. To carry BC to even new levels of absurdity, in a recent soaring column in Model Aviation, the soaring editor was defining the ‘new breed’ (read bullshitically correct) as having four servos in the wings and a wing span of between, 112" and 118".
What dribble! As long as the control surfaces are moving properly, the glider does not care where the servos are. Why 112" to 118" span? Perhaps for F3B, the launching device restrictions makes this size optimal — but for thermal duration flying — come on! In short, there is nothing new about this breed, from the controls they use to the swept wing planforms. People like Dwight Holley, Dick Pike and Bob Bougher were putting servos in the wings of swept-wing Maestros in the 1970s for gosh sake.
Most recently, when the Saber was about to be the first competition glider kit to use the officially ignored and even denigrated SD7037 airfoil, I was advised not to use it based on writings of Michael Selig, himself, and in a personal admonition from Harley Machalis who built the wind tunnel prototype. Based upon the wind tunnel test results and upon my own prototype evaluations, the Saber came out with the SD7037 rather than the Selig recommended SD7032. The result of the Saber’s success opened the floodgates for the SD7037 which is now the most popular airfoil in thermal soaring.
My 25 years of experience in the hobby has taught me to do my own homework and to not blithely take the accepted truisms of the day as fact. Interestingly, in a recent magazine soaring column, even Michael Selig conceded that ‘tips up’ contributes to increased tip stall problems in slow speed turns. Tell me this is not so! I thought that every BC glider design from ‘here to eternity’ would have to be tips up!
A few days ago, I was amazed while at the flying field, to hear a flyer extolling the virtues of an original set of wings that he had designed. These wings used the BC (Schumann) planform but they even had the trailing edge of the tips swept. With a knowing look, I was informed that Martin Simons had said that swept tips provided a dihedral effect. I was blown away with this earth-shattering crumb of knowledge. I guess that with BC design, even the most basic knowledge has taken on a ‘mystical-techno’ quality. I told this well researched flyer that any wing sweep provides a dihedral effect He was dumbfounded to hear that even normal sweep, including sweep of the inboard section, contributed to the dihedral effect. Whatever happened to the dispensing of knowledge without mysteriously shrouding it within our favorite theories of BC aerodynamics?
It may even surprise you to know that BC gliders have not taken over areas of the country by outperforming the gliders that are designed to fly the farthest and stay up in the lightest lift. They have taken over areas because the best flyers started flying them — so the BC gliders started winning contests. Had the less skilled pilots kept flying the better performing designs, they would have improved their chances against the ‘top dawgs’ but alas, they too fell off the tree of wisdom like overripe fruits. With no respectable flyers in an area flying the better performing gliders, the BC gliders look good. No one is aware that they are hotshots in a sea of mediocrity.
Humorously, in parts of the country where all the good flyers did not abandon the great thermal ships like the Saber, Anthem and Lovesong, the ones who did change over to the BC gliders amidst great hoopla and fanfare have been soundly getting their fannies fairly well trounced this contest season. None of the new gliders is as good in light air as is a Lovesong, saber or Anthem. None of them appears to have an advantage in maximum L/D at reasonable thermal searching speeds. What is most significant is that the new ships, with the high-speed compromise airfoils, zoom right through light lift, giving the pilot no indication, in air that a Saber, Anthem or Lovesong would sense and could even climb out in. Getting air times is not about jetting aimlessly around the sky listening to your glider whistle. Getting your air times is about having a glider that is adroitly feeling its way through the medium of air and is faithfully telegraphing back even the most subtle information to the pilot.
I guess the real question is: “what is glider flying really about and what is it about glider flying that originally captured our imaginations and that has held us transfixed for months and even years?” For most of us, the art, the mystery, the outdoors, the freedom, the challenge and the oneness with nature are some of the captivating forces. However, if soaring continues down the path toward ‘new breed, bullshitically correct, copycat sameness’ and the dubious pursuit of technology as an end in itself, soaring will end up like the motorcycle industry of 1978. For our sport to continue to evolve, to grow and to bring the maximum pleasure to its participants, we need to have the Hogs and the Choppers — not just the wound-up-tight Kawasakis.
©1993 Bob Dodgson
This article originally appeared in the 93–1 edition of Second Wind, the Dodgson Designs in-house newsletter. Read the next article in this issue, return to the previous article in this issue or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
