The Vega audio - voice vario was largely engineered here in Australia by a very smart fellow down in Victoria who also flys gliders every chance he gets so he tests a lot of the design himself. It has an output to drive a needle slave, same as the B50 and B500 and Cambridge L nav etc - my Vega drives my glide computer which has a needle display. The vario has some neat features with the audio such as an averager callout of thermal strength as well as a user definable audio tone selection - you can select b50 tones, Cambridge , zander or create your own. The system uses the T.E , static and has on board accelerometers, uses DSP processing techniques, software updateable via an on board SD flash card ( pops out from the front )which also doubles as an IGC download of the flarm files from your flarm device. The audio also supports flarm messaging, undercarriage alerts and other user defineable alerts as well as a stall warning system based on the OSTIF award winning design developed a decade ago, requires a small static like port to be drilled in the nose. You can download the manuals for this vario at our website www.rf-developments.com go to the products page.
There are about 15 flying in Oz since April this year. You can also then interface to a PDA or a dedicated glide computer such as the Altair with colour moving map etc. I also have another vario which is mainly my back up instead of a mechanical designed and manufactured by Tasman instruments in Victoria ( see www.tasmaninstruments.com.au ) I have used other varios before and this one is as good as they get, uses latest technology sensors and can run off a standby 9v battery and also designed in Victoria by another smart Victorian - must be all that cold weather keeps them inside in winter designing varios? Cheers Nigel RF Developments Pty Ltd "A Queensland Company devoted to Research and Development in aviation electronics" Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web www.rf-developments.com Ph: (61) 7 54635670 Fax: (61) 7 54635695 **************DISCLAIMER************ The information contained in the above e-mail message or messages (which includes any attachments) is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended only for the use of the person or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the addressee any form of disclosure, copying, modification, distribution or any action taken or omitted in reliance on the information is unauthorised. If you received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete it from your computer system network. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Borgelt Sent: Thursday, 16 November 2006 12:18 PM To: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia. Subject: Re: [Aus-soaring] varios(was FLARM maths) At 06:46 PM 14/11/2006, David Griffiths wrote: >I am impressed >I did not even know that this type of gear was available. >Is this all prototype stuff or is it in production? You might like to look at the B500 on our site at www.borgeltinstruments.com Australian designed and manufactured, sold worldwide. Before getting too excited about varios without visual indicators people might like to consider how they decide whether to turn in a particular thermal that is encountered. The vario pointer isn't the only thing but I bet it is an important part of your decision. Relative netto was designed to help with this - see our website for details if you don't know what relative netto does(it is in articles). Changing the audio at the MacCready setting as we do in the B500 and B50 lets you know to look at the vario but for reasons explained by John Cochrane in his paper and nearly 40 years ago by Anthony Edwards, you fly at Macready settings that are quite low compared to the actual rates of climb you get so you might not make the decision to turn just based on that audio change. Likewise when picking a best path through the air, particularly when streeting, including the vario pointer in your scan is important. To be really useful here the vario pointer should be high resolution too. We rejected LCDs on the grounds that the pointer resolution was too coarse. When working very weak lift the speed of response and resolution of the vario itself becomes important. When working 5 knots at altitude a poor vario will do. When at 600 feet over a paddock trying to avoid an outlanding by working +/-0.5 knots you need all the help you can get. With some vario technologies there are unavoidable speed of response/resolution tradeoffs. Lastly, Total energy is total energy whether it is done by a probe providing suction below static pressure or whether you measure pitot and static pressures and add them electronically to provide the same thing. They both suffer from horizontal gust effects (see article on website) to the same extent but the pitot/static scheme has some additional problems - the pitot and static ports are more sensitive to yaw and sideslip than the modern two hole TE probe is and you need to organise the pitot and static signals to arrive at the same time at the instrument to avoid undesirable transient effects. Mike Borgelt Instruments - manufacturers of quality soaring instruments phone Int'l + 61 746 355784 fax Int'l + 61 746 358796 cellphone Int'l + 61 428 355784 Int'l + 61 429 355784 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] website: www.borgeltinstruments.com _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
