sailplanes

All sailplanes are gliders, but not all gliders are sailplanes.

A little research on Wikipedia tells me that modern sailplanes get a glide ratio of something like 50:1.

Birds and sailplanes can however hang around areas of rising air to overcome their natural sink rate.

So no, you can't get more that about 20:1 glide ratio no matter how good is the weather (for sailplanes).

The distinction is less pronounced nowadays, because there is no mondern aircraft designed as gliders-but-not-sailplanes, but historically there were planes that fit this niche, mostly military transport of WW1 and WW2 vintage.

Radio controlled model gliders and sailplanes have been popular among hobbyists for decades.

I've definitely flown some sailplanes etc (up high!) or played around with long-duration gliding on my old electric flying wings.

I used to fly sailplanes which were extremely sensitive to these things and that feeling is there again in VR.

Apart from all those thousands of sailplanes people fly every week.

These days, gliders/sailplanes are commonly launched using winches or tow planes.

It's an exaggeration, but thinking that sailplanes could be used for commercial transport is almost like thinking that wave surfing could be used as such.

I've been building and flying model airplanes, sailplanes, powered and helicopters for many decades.

Sailplanes are gliders that can “soar”, i.e.

Most common question I got when I flew: "What do you do if the engine stops?" My answer: "Turn around go home and land" It does help that I started out on gliders (sailplanes) first, of course...