Paul Klissner wrote:
> On my TD planes, I use rudders for flying thermals. In that kind
> of flying a rudder is very important for making flat energy-efficient
> turns.
Isn't "flat" and "energy-effiiceint" kind of any oxy-moron? The former implies some
deal of skid through the turn, which isn't energy effiencent. This has had me
somewhat confused for some time. I took a full scale glider ride with a pretty
experienced competition pilot a while back, and noticed that all the thermal turns we
made were coordinated, with the little yaw string dealie straight up the canopy. They
also seemed to be at a fairly high bank angle. The primary purose for the rudder
seemed to be to prevent the huge amount of adverse yaw, not for flattening out the
turn. So why is it that r/c gliders do flat thermal turns in small thermals when the
big guys do coordinated turns in big thermals? Exposing the side of the airplane to
the airstream by skidding around the turn can't be terribly efficient. Is it just
because our thermals are so much smaller that we need to skid around to stay inside
them?
Can someone enlighten me on this?
Brett
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