Modern gliders, as was said before, pretty much have to be white to protect the composite structure. Same thing as with the airlines being somewhat limited in their choice of color on the composite parts on the big iron (or is it “big plastic&iron” these days?).
A ram air turbine on a glider? Some algebraic exercise will tell you that a 300 kg glider doing 110 km/h with a 40 glide ratio will have a total drag of about 7.5 kgs. Not more. We add mylar strips to canopies, rudders and so on to prevent drag from air leakage. Competition pilots polish their aircraft to increase performance. Drag is The Enemy.
That amounts to an energy conversion rate of about 2250 W. Say that you create a ram air turbine assembly to power a strobe with an efficiency of 50%. That’s a wild assumption, and I think it will be rather difficult as you will have to count in the total drag of the installation in the efficiency calculations. If the strobe needs, well, 100W, making full use of those capacitors (how big and heavy will they be?) suggested to produce only very short flashes? You’ll have to use 200 W of potential energy. To get the energy conversion up, the GR will go down to under 37 and the sink rate will increase from .76 to .83 m/s. A GR 50 glider would go down to GR 45. In gliding, that is significant. And I think the figures for efficiency and power consumption are optimistic, although I’ll happily redo the calculations with more exact figures if someone can provide them.
The way transponders work pretty much dictate that they are very energy consuming. They’re emitting a lot of radiation energy every interrogation. Not something you’ll want to run off batteries for a day as you’ll have to lug around a significant amount of batteries! Further, they’re comparatively heavy, bulky and expensive. I’ll have a look around for that Becker thingy - it’ll be interesting to see how they’ve solved it.
ADS-B and VDL mode 4 is the way to go. Installations are being flight tested.
Fluorescent panels are indeed often required in mountain flying. Not since they help visibility in the air, to the best of my understanding, but rather to aid search and rescue should the worst happen.
Cheers,
Fred