Derek, let me add to the posts by Jim and Dave a few notes on my experience with a derailleur bike and my Thorn Raven.
My derailleur bike, an Eclipse, has gearing quite similar to your Panorama. The Eclipse has 700c x 35mm Schwalbe Marathon Racers. I have a 24-36-48 triple ring at the front, and a 9-spd 11-32 cogset at the rear. (I used to run a 12-36 at the rear, a setup which gave me one more lower gear than the current set-up, and one less at the high end.)
My Raven has lower gearing than, say, Dave's Nomad: I have a 36T chainring and at 17T rear sprocket. The tires are Schwalbe Supremes, 26 x 1.6".
On both bikes, I use similar drop bars, Velo Orange Grand Cru randonneur bars.
The Eclipse is a titanium-framed light touring bike which I use for day rides. (It used to be my touring bike, but I had endless headaches with my rear derailleur, so three years ago I bought a Raven-mit-Rohloff.) The Eclipse weighs about 3 lbs less than my Raven, with comparable racks, lights, etc.: The Raven is just less than 31lbs, the Eclipse rather less than 28.
The gearing of the two bikes reflects their different uses: The Raven is my touring bike, so has three gears which are lower than the lowest gear on my Eclipse. The Eclipse has 4 gears at the upper end which are higher than the 14th gear of the Raven.
On regular rides--recreation, long trips in town, day rides--I rarely use the 2 or 3 lowest or highest gears. On these rides, the bikes feel different, as you might guess, but their performance (more precisely, my performance on the different bikes) is virtually identical. On my usual 55-km loop up into the hill across the river in Québec, my times on the two bikes are essentially the same--about 3 hours of riding in hilly terrain. The lighter Eclipse feels faster and nippier, but it isn't/I'm not. I think the reason is that the Raven fits me better, so that my power transfer (such as it is) is more efficient, and I get less tired on longer rides.
The "interior" gearing of the bikes is very similar: The "base" gear of the Eclipse, 5th cog on the middle ring, is almost identical in gear-inches to #11 on the Raven's Rohloff, 55 vs 55.07. This is by design -- these ratios let me maintain the 80-85 RPM cadence that works for me.
The differences in gearing show up when I have to climb hills with the bike loaded. I can climb hills on the Raven, lugging camping equipment, food and water, which I could never manage on the Eclipse, even when I used the 12-36 rear cogset.
As an example: This past summer, I did a 2300-kms-plus tour of the Rocky Mtns and Cascadia in the Alberta and the US states of Montana, Idaho, and Washington, and I was able to climb a lot of long ascents in the 6 - 10% range quite easily. The weight of my gear+food+water varied -- usually it was less than your 28 kg, occasionally it was more. I used my #1 gear only four times, three of those being on the last few kms of long climbs (25-30 kms) where the grade was about 10%.
On the other hand, I used my #3 and #4 gears a lot -- they were my default climbing gears. (And by the way, I had one day when the headwinds were so brutal that on level ground I used the same gears, #3 and #4, that I had used to climb Logan Pass in Montana's Glacier national Park.) It's worth noting that my three lowest gears on my Raven are all lower than the lowest gear on my Eclipse, which has the 11-32 cogset mated to the 24-36-48 triple chainring. I climbed nine high passes on my tour, and I don't think I could have managed any of them on my Eclipse with its current gearing, and probably not with its previous 12-36 either.
I'll be 70 next year, and my size and weight is not much different from yours--I'm 5'11", and weigh about 183 lbs at the end of each summer. Friends tell me I'm a strong cyclist ("for my age" left unsaid!), but I'm no speed merchant, nor ever have been.
We all have different capabilities and preferences, and it took me quite a few years to figure all this stuff out. I knew what wasn't working very well for me, but only in the last couple of years have I worked out the gearing so that it suits me and my purposes. I have low gears which are quite a bit lower than those of most cyclists. I only ever use them when I'm lugging a loaded bike up long and/or steep hills -- but on those occasions, I am soooo glad I've got 'em.
Hope this helps, Derek. I can give you the gear-inch numbers if you're interested--let me know if so--but you may not need or want them.
Cheers,
John
