Udo Rumpf wrote:


Eric, I think your turns are way too shallow and fast to make use of the
strong cores.

Bill Daniels

You might be right, but I'm not routinely outclimbed by other pilots
wherever I fly, even by US World team members, so experience suggests
I'm not too far off the mark. I do try tighter banking occasionally, and
sometimes it helps, but it usually not, so the 40 degree bank is what I
normally end up using.

Perhaps you are circling more tightly than needed, your thermals are
much smaller than the ones I encounter, or as Udo suggests, it's the
wing loading difference. Or all items...

It would be interesting to look at the circling times of good contest
pilots using contest flight files, or perhaps the OLC files. Circle time
(our primary parameter in the discussion) and circle diameter can be
obtained directly from the flight trace, the true airspeed can be
determined by noting the highest and lowest ground speeds during the
circle and taking the average. These can be plugged into Frank's web
calculator to get the bank angle.


--
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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA