On this particular aircraft there is an Avionics bay that is not pressurized (at least that's what I think he called it). At any rate, yes, we would have to place the ALTi2 in an unpressurized area of the aircraft to get anything close to meaningful. I don't think it would do much good to check the cabin pressure ya' know <G>. I mean, what the heck, at least it'll be "fun"...Much more interesting than discussing whether we should or should not list planes that win at contest along with the placement of the winners, what constitutes a soaring "team" (pilot+plane, pilot+timer, timer+plane,pilot+?, etc), or who's the latest dealer to "bash". <BWG>
Before we decide that there's nothing good to come of it, let's at least try it and see what we find out...Hmmm??? A bit of knowledge might be somewhat revealing...
The point is that an unpressurized area of a plane is still not going to be at the same pressure as the static pressure outside. The Sundowner is not pressurized. The altitude readings when measured from the alternate static source in the cabin not only are inaccurate, but the inaccuracy varies with things like airspeed, and whether or not a little four-inch-square window is open or closed.
I'm sure your device is a very accurate measurer of whatever pressure is fed to it. However, trying to measure altitude from the pressure inside the fuselage is going to be inconsistent from one flight condition to another, and from one airplane to another. Even little things such as the seal of a hatch or the taping of the wing roots could alter the numbers. To be really useful, the device needs to have a fitting to attach a tube to, and that tube needs to run to properly positioned static ports.
It's easy to generate very impressive looking numbers. Generating accurate numbers usually requires considerably more work.
Don Stackhouse @ DJ Aerotech [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.djaerotech.com
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