At 09:48 PM 10/09/2007, you wrote:
>I've flown a sailplane listening to the audio of a hang gliding vario
>while occasionally looking at the (inaccurate) needle of the glider's
>own vario. Since most of the sensations in a thermal are through the
>seat of your pants, does it really matter if the needle on the vario
>resolves to 0.05 kts up, or 0.5?
Why do you say the glider vario was inaccurate? It likely was on a TE
probe and the hang glider vario probably wasn't. They are then likely
to read differently even if both varios read the same on the test
bench in steady state conditions simply die to the effects of
horizontal gusts. I once did some testing with identical TE probes on
the same glider running identical varios only the probes were in
different locations and they gave different indications in pullups.
Best location was with the probe on the landing gear door.
Understandable when you analyse the physics of what is going on.
Yes the resolution of the pointer does matter. It is used to confirm
the other sensations and hi res pointers convey information from
speed of movement in very short time. Low res takes longer and
eventually is more tiring..
There's more to this than you think.
>And on a closing note.... Having spent the last week deep in the guts
>of a Blanik, my thought is that if the Wright brothers had invented
>one of these, the world would have beat a hasty retreat to the simple
>and elegant solution of weight shift control. In the time it takes to
>remove and replace a flap, you could build several hang gliders! Think
>about it. No weight and balance. No spins. No control surfaces.
>Nothing to grease. The entire airframe costing around the same as a
>glider canopy. And I'm not even going to get into the relative debate
>on safety.
I agree, the Blanik is a maintenance disaster. It is actually a jet
trainer without the engine. I realised this when I had an office on
the mezzanine floor above the Macchi maintenance hangar at RAAF Pearce.
Definitely not designed for simple maintenance by amateurs or for use
on dusty Australian gliding fields.
Should be given honorable retirement as beercans.
Mike
Borgelt Instruments - manufacturers of quality soaring instruments
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