Doing the math on 4300 ft over 6.5 miles, you get 8:1. That is if you actually believe it was 6.5 miles, and if my recollection of actual altitude is correct. I'm sure I'd lost some altitude before I got the transponder dialed in and they had a fix on me. A couple of days before the crank problem, I'd discovered the "glide to target" function on my Garmin 195. You can pick an airport, GOTO it, and start a descent, and the GPS will tell you what glide rate you need to make it there, and at the same time what your actual glide ratio is. I guess if it says you can't make it, then you might as well pick somewhere nice along the way! This all assumes that you can actually THINK while this is going on though! I've got to tell you that while I appreciate all the comments about how I kept my cool under pressure, anybody else would have done exactly the same thing....because you have no other choice than to focus on getting back on the ground in one piece!
That's where I'll pick up my flight testing when I resume. This time I think I actually have the nerve to switch it off (from high altitude, over the airport), and vary the descent rate while watching the "glide ratio" on the GPS. From that, I'll know for a fact what it is. Maybe that's how Ken did his tests. It would be nice to know if best glide really was as good as his numbers show, down at 60 mph or so. That's a big difference in range... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
