Hi Howi,
First of all, I want to apologize for my writing in english, but my german's to bad ;-).
My name is Michael and I live in Belgium. I have 2 x HKM ASW-28. One sailplane and one 'KTW' version. Both can be configurated in 6 meters and 7.20 meters.
The HKM ASW-28 is really fantastic, even more better than crakop describes it's here ;-)
I have several models. Also a VENTUS 2CX 6 meters. But, you can't compare these planes. The quality, finishing touch and characteristics are much, much more better. I dare to say that HKM's ASW-28 is like a F-1 car belong the sailplanes.
Dr. Helmut Quabeck did calculations for HKM to improve their ASW-28. He made even a better plane from it. Ingo van der Forst has a 'beta-version' of the ASW-28 that was made before Quabeck did his calculations and improvements. So, he's the right man to compare both versions.
This year, in Nettetal, Willy from HKM wanted to test how high he could go without loosing the ASW-28 out of sight. It was the 6 meter configuration. The fieldchief blamed him, because he was on 1.045 meters altitude, although we had only 150 meters. Willy dove down with an average speed of 298 km/h. On my gps, I saw that he did for a little less than 1 sec a topspeed of 406 km/h. Imagine this... this counts on the quality of the plane.
If the weather is good for a flight, then it's no problem at all to fligh more than 1 hour with this plane. And that's a pitty for the waiting guys on the same frequencies ;-) ;-) .
Of course, everything has it's price. But one day in Lelystad (Holland), I hit a tree with my ASW-28. It was a sunday. I called HKM and Willy told me that my wings were ready the next day. I mean, this is service and that counts too.