In message s, Martin
Gregorie writes
On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 21:02:37 +0100, Robin Birch wrote:

In message .com,
writes
I have to fall firmly and loudly into the "digital is good, electrical
insturments can be reliable, mechanical varios belong in museums" group.

Most of what we do
flying we just want a trend or rough peak - analogue - say (in my personal
opinion) thermal centering.For saying that a particular thing is better or
good enough, say is that thermal good enough to stay with or is it falling
off so we want to go to another, digital in the form of an averager is the
absolute best.

Agree 100% I really like the vario display on an SDI C4 and a Tasmin
V1000 vario. Both use analogue for instant reading and digits for the
averager. Both are easy to use.

OTOH what are you doing looking at the vario in a thermal :-)
Flying club K8s that I keep forgetting to put the battery in and so the
mechanical is all I've got or my Astir when I've forgotten to charge
them and they've gone flat on me after 4 hours :-))

I find the sound from a C4 makes centring very easy and all I look at
is a glance at the averager from time to time to see if its time to leave
the thermal yet.

I very much like the idea of a B.40 as backup vario because it has its own
internal battery and switch-over circuitry. I just wish it used an LCD
analogue display rather than a needle for the instant rate display.


--
Robin Birch