engine off we pay, engine on, we dont!
That's a good one, Pace! Is that vessel under sail, or under power with the mainsheet hauled in?
As has been said before, most glider pilots prefer NOT to fly IMC. If I ever bother to renew my Instrument Rating, I would rather like a full panel and all the bells and whistles as well, meanwhile I certainly stay out of cloud.
Those who do enter cloud are nearly always airline pilots! An awful lot of airline pilots enjoy real flying on their days off. Well used to instrument flying, and no doubt using whatever help one can get in the open airspace from any radar operation still functioning. As soon as TCAS makes sense, no doubt it will be adopted by these chaps.
Motor gliders, or turbos, whether self-launching or sustaining, well, if they can afford that sort of equipment, and TCAS did any good, it should be a requirement, so there.
But.....whether any LARS operator could make sense of a gaggle of 15 or 20 gliders in a single thermal (all separated of course and looking out with eyes on stalks) I very much doubt.
There will be about 20 gliding competitions this summer in the UK. All will be NOTAMed. you do read NOTAMS, don't you? Tasks will be set each soarable day, up to 500 kilometers in distance. So gliders not always hovering over gliding sites.
If you acquaint yourself with what the probable weather conditions are going to be and convection is likely, if you are flying power, why not disport yourself above all that nasty turbulence and fly on top? ( Helps if you lean the Lycoming....... )