So what did you think of the aircraft?
The Akaflieg Munich came up with a completely
mechanical automatic flap system which combined
airspeed and g load about 30 years ago. Didn't go
anywhere I was told because GERMAN glider pilots
NEVER fly in the wrong flap setting :-). I think
the Duckhawk electric flap is the way to go. The
Akaflieg guys I talked to said their
"automatic" was especially good in thermals.
The problem with the current technology varios is
that they respond to horizontal gusts. This puts
a lot of noise on the real vertical air motion
change signals which is what drives the optimum
speed to fly and will make the ride terrible and
the actual following of optimum speed to fly
questionably good. Human pilots do this by
mentally filtering signals all the time. Which,
when combined with flying the aircraft, leaves a
lot less mental energy and time for observation
and decision making. Try doing mental arithmetic
when flying an aircraft. It is at least twice as
difficult as when on the ground doing nothing
else. (I assume people still DO mental arithmetic? :-) )
I'm looking forward to seeing how the Dynamis
vario signal, which ignores horizontal gusts,
when integrated into the speed to fly, improves
the ability to dolphin soar/fly MacCready. The
signals should be much quieter and lots smoother
while responding a lot quicker the vertical air
changes. Might make this actually reasonably
doable in modern gliders even without an automatic MacCready and flap.
We have the first flight software version that does this. Just needs testing.
The problem is that as gliders got better the
horizontal gust problem (deflection of vario
caused by a given bit of air flown through) gets
worse as the SQUARE of the True Air Speed. A
gust that isn't a problem in a Slingsby Sky
cruising at probably a maximum of 55 knots
between thermals becomes really significant at
110 knots. The significance of my example is that
Philip Wills won the WGC in Spain in 1952 in a
Slingsby Sky and Total Energy was the "secret
weapon". I believe the probe was designed by Frank Irving.
The gust problem is mentioned in the 1969 Soaring
Symposium proceedings with the note that
"current technology is unable to deal with them".
Dynamis does and I think will be as significant
for modern gliders as the invention of the Total
Energy concept itself. Varios connected to just a
static source don't respond to horizontal
gusts but suffer from inadvertent pilot inputs
causing lift and sink signals which don't reflect
changes in the air, so it is possible that
Dynamis will be as significant as the variometer
itself, as for the first time just changes in the
vertical motion of the air being flown through are shown.
Matthew, I was going to mention using computer
vision to look at the clouds ahead to follow the
development of the clouds ahead. Ought to be
possible. Even just a time lapse photo sequence
with correct scaling as the distance decreases.
I'm still interested in the overhead view from
Himawari 8. I've used it while flying cross
country in the BD-4. If your track and present
position could be superimposed on it, it could be
very useful under some circumstances, particularly on long distance flights.
Glider drag reduction seems to have reached a
plateau without powered boundary layer suction
devices. That latter is where some IGC decisions
need to be made, not autopilots and AI and other
information/information processing things.
Given a lack of aerodynamic progress,
instrumentation, autopilots and information
processing will be where improvement is possible.
Mike
At 09:20 AM 7/6/2016, you wrote:
I was lucky enough to fly the DuckHawk for 8
hours this weekend - it now has a very
impressive electric flap system. There's no flap
handle, it's just always in the right position.
While the computer vision tech to read
clouds/terrian is a long way off (in my
opinion), I reckon a perfect dolphin soaring
computer, responding to the vario could be built
pretty easily with current technology.
On 5 Jul 2016 7:09 PM, "Mike Borgelt"
<<mailto:mborg...@borgeltinstruments.com>mborg...@borgeltinstruments.com>
wrote:
You can fly for long times cross country by using thermals. Who knew?
<http://phys.org/news/2016-07-great-frigate-birds-months.html>http://phys.org/news/2016-07-great-frigate-birds-months.html
Surprising they say the birds fly INSIDE clouds
using the thermals. They aren't meant to be able
to do this I thought. (See Philip Wills - Where No Birds Fly)
Mike
Borgelt Instruments - design & manufacture of
quality soaring instrumentation since 1978
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