Peter,
It won't be long before all of gliding is
regarded as just a branch of vintage aviation, if it isn't already.
I wish it wasn't like that but wishing won't make it so.
Think about it. The advent of mass relatively low
cost mass jet air travel nearly 60 years ago has
meant that flying is no longer seen as
exceptional. What do you think will happen to
sport aviation of all kinds when there are lots
of low cost automated vertical takeoff and
landing small aircraft that require no piloting skills?
Right now a Chinese company is testing a
completely automated single occupant electric octocopter in Nevada.
Mike
At 06:45 PM 6/29/2016, you wrote:
"Gliding ain't what it used to be. "
Spot on Mike.
After your devastating analysis is it any wonder
that Vintage Gliding is becoming more popular?
Fortunately there are still some skills
required. You still have to land your glider successfully.
On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 5:50 PM, Mike Borgelt
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]>
wrote:
Depends how you define it and what level of help you consider cheating.
We already have total energy (automatically
removes effects of pilot induced airspeed
changes aka "stick thermals" so you don't do this mentally.
We have netto which removes the effect of glider
sink rates at different speeds so you don't have to estimate this.
Speed command - a simple push or pull to fly at
the correct speed instead of tables or MacCready rings
A final glide computer.
Wind estimation algorithms instead of estimating
wind speed and direction from drift in thermals
, drift of clouds, smoke and dust etc.
GPS to eliminate navigation as a task or skill
required to fly well. It also eliminates the old
skill of going around turnpoints efficiently.
The real rot started there BTW. The Danes
seriously suggested at IGC level to ban GPS in gliders around 1991.
It, along with all other radio navigation aids,
was in fact banned in contests until the IGC allowed it.
So we will now have an AIÂ with a terrain map,
meteorological data and task to generate
likely best paths through the air and generate steering commands.
I'm not sure of the virtue of a pilot being a
wetware or meat servo to move the controls and
center the yaw string. An automatic yaw string
centering autopilot is pretty simple.
Likewise move the flaps automatically to be in
the right setting for the airspeed and g load
(already done in the Duckhawk IIRC). Then
connect the elevator to the speed command and
tune the ride for hard or soft just like was done in the F-111.
I guess we could leave the pilot with a small
rotary knob to adjust the heading in response to
the AI recommendations and how seriously the pilot regards them.
Gliding ain't what it used to be.
I think it will decline to be of interest to a
very small number of people as a relic of the paleo aviation era.
The future is likely to be small aircraft which
take off and land vertically using distributed
electric motors for that and a small piston
engine for cruise with large amounts of
electronics(oh a cube 10cm on a side I'd guess
would be a large enclosure) and very few
piloting skills required. Automatic traffic
de-confliction. Will beat the hell out of cars
for any serious distance. A number of companies
are working on this including one mob that have
a somewhat popular internet search engine.
Mike
 At 04:54 PM 6/29/2016, you wrote:
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="----=_NextPart_000_00AE_01D1D226.E2DB5430"
Content-Language: en-au
It might sound a little esoteric to some but in
my opinion, cheating is not winning...
Â
_________________________________________________________________________________________
 Ross McLean
Â
From: Aus-soaring [
mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Borgelt
Sent: Wednesday, 29 June 2016 12:42 PM
To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia.
Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] (no subject)
Â
How are they going to tell? Even if there are
no autopilot servos the AI in the PNA will be
advising the optimum flight path, in its opinion.
It will be interesting scrutinising the software in your flight computer.
Mike
At 09:32 AM 6/29/2016, you wrote:
I note that the new Stemme S12 comes with an
autopilot. We're very close to autonomous full-scale gliders.
Are we going to be allowed to use autopilots in
competitions? I look forward to the IGC minutes on this one ;)
On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 4:26 PM, Mike Borgelt
<<mailto:[email protected]>
[email protected]> wrote:
Wonder what this could do in a glider?
<http://www.newsweek.com/artificial-intelligence-raspberry-pi-pilot-ai-475291>http://www.newsweek.com/artificial-intelligence-raspberry-pi-pilot-ai-475291
Mike
Borgelt Instruments - design & manufacture of
quality soaring instrumentation since 1978
<http://www.borgeltinstruments.com/>www.borgeltinstruments.com
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