My "philosophy" is to design a rig that matches sailing trip requirements first, then adapt our skills and build. If the sailor can not sew, draw, work with wood, GRP, aluminium, then learn, this is a great opportunity! This is what I am doing now... A couple hours per day, learning Solidworks a bit, reading "PJR" a bit (glad to know that "Practical Junk Rig" acronym!), taking notes of boat & rig design tricks that would seem to match my sailing needs (like using "double sheets" for example, more ropes but reducing stress on battens, making it easier to replace with material found at remote places). Very soon I will post my first drawing on the technical forum, a drawing showing where I am thinking to do my first hole on deck )--: How I am thinking to build the partners... So that skilled JRA members can stop me from doing mistakes, before doing the actual hole (--:

Probably more important than matching a rig to a type of sailing, or a rig to a type of boat, is to match the owner/builder to the rig. When I'm asked by a prospective junkie to recommend a rig, I need to know the skills, tools and facilities available. I check on "How good at sewing are you? Can you draw and work out the details of what you want to make? Can you cut and weld alloy/laminate wood/work with resin and carbon fibre?" Only when there's a holistic picture can a recommendation be made, so to go back to Georg's originally question, pros and cons of various rigs could well be listed, but that only gets you part of the way towards choosing which of those rigs to build. 

I'm watching you folk!  Literary and musical metaphors are all very well but don't let them become the topic!  Back to the topic, I'd agree with Annie that Arne's cambered version of the HM sail is a good choice, for inshore or offshore work.  Alan has sailed in excess of 10,000 NM across the Pacific with his and is delighted with them  I have sailed about 2000 miles along the  east coast of Australia, in very mixed weather, with mine and am equally pleased.

David suggests that the further offshore one goes the less camber you should have, which is an interesting observation.  He either has, or intends to remove some of Tystie's camber from his Fantail type sail.  I'd also be happy with a flat or flattish sail for extended offshore cruising.  Few of us choose to cross oceans to windward and my experience is that once the apparent wind is 60 degrees or more off the bow, camber is less important, at least in the open sea.  Perhaps the HM sail benefits more from camber than the Fantail sail, which can get lift from inherent twist in the fanned battens?

Georg Warnecke wrote:where can i find the pros and the cons of the different junk-rig types?

i just "discovered" the aero-junk and i wondered if every junk rig has it's own pros and cons…

Plough through the Technical and General fora, Georg :-) You'll find many posts on the different types of sails. I wish we could generate an index of posts in each forum, but unfortunately Wild Apricot does not provide such a facility.

Chris Gallienne is writing a book about the history of the western junk rig. That will cover most if not all of these developments. He's getting on well with it - see posts in the Join In forum here.

Good advice, Annie, you teach your 'children' well!

we mus be of very similar vintage......