darryl ramm's blog

Schemp-Hirth is developing the new Arcus, a 20m flapped two seat glider based on the Duo Discus. I love the Duo Discus and the Arcus  looks very interesting. Schemp-Hirth say the airfoil for the Arcus is developed by Dr. Werner Würz and others contributed to the modified planform and winglets. There is some of the kind of pointless “Is it a flapped Duo Discus? Is is not?” discussion on r.a.s. Well it’s a 20m flapped double seater based on the Duo Discus XL with tweaked/modified airfoils and planform etc. Like nobody is going to just be crazy enough to take the exiting Duo and just cut flaps into the airfoil. It’s going to be changed and the aerodynamics updated. Is a “flapped Duo Discus”?  You bet, and that would be pretty good marketing to leverage off all us Duo Discus lovers.

Anyhow  I pasted Schemp-Hirth’s artists renderings for the Arcus and Duo Discus XL over each other and you can see the large version PDF if you click on the image above.  This of course depends on the accuracy of the artist renderings Schemp-Hirth uses in marketing materials.

This is some very obvious Monday morning quarterbacking. But I am extremely negative about Sun Microsystems. I think Sun’s board is crazy for not taking the IBM $7B acquisition offer.  Maybe they think they can pull something better off, but it is hard to think who that suitor could be and why they’d value Sun at more than $7B. Sun has been churning though money and has been undergoing endless changes for ages. And while there have been occasional better days; the slumping economy must be hammering them and overall they are on a downward spiral to irrelevance. A sad outcome for this once strong Silicon Valley company. And now that an acquisition has been so publically aired that’s got to further hurt potential customer willingness to buy into Sun’s future.

The shit storm that Sun is about to be dealt from stockholders and their lawyers is going to be interesting to watch.

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