Hey Tony

My first 300km flight in my Cirrus I averaged below stall speed....

One of my difficulties moving from the plywood overcast was the much
greater variation in speeds. Wood and fabric ships often have a very
small drag bucket because of the airfoil and construction. So you fly
between thermals at a speed not that vastly different from your thermal
speed.

Then you get into something with very laminar wings and flaps and cruise
speed is anything up to 3x stall. Kestrel has about the same handicap as
a Ventus. Stall is 32.5kt - full of water at max wingloading and with
thermals in the 4-5m/s range my flight computer is indicating 90kt
cruise. That is a bit optimistic but not that much.

The ASG29/Ventus2/JS1 crowd disdain to fly slower than 110kt (200km/h)
between thermals most of the time...

Consequently I'm still waaay too slow in the Kestrel. It just feels
wrong to cruise at 80kt. But that is her sweet spot for most of our
conditions.

Even in our winter conditions the efficient cruise speed makes long
flights possible. Get it wrong and the retrieves are correspondingly
long. Personal record is 126km...

All I can say is thanks for GPS - at least you can get people to find
you down some obscure farm road in the middle of nowhere.

That said, there is no difference in the fun you can have at any given
performance level - it is just the distance you can cover , places you
can reach that changes. (and the cost, never forget the cost)

On 2011/06/08 04:08 AM, Tony wrote:
Gary,

Last year I did an out and almost return Diamond Goal attempt in the
Cherokee. The write up for that one is on my Cherokee II blog as well
as Soaring Cafe. Total distance on that one was a touch over 300 km
but i ended up landing 4 miles short of the starting airport at 7:30
PM. That one was a 6.5 hr flight, about the same as Sunday.
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0...tId=1688698192

I also did a 300 km straight out flight last year for Gold Distance
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0...tId=1618688367

Interestingly the speed I made in the Cherokee on the out and return
was about the same as I made in the NG-1 on Sunday. I bet if I was in
a Nimbus I could still average 30 mph!


--
Bruce Greeff
T59D #1771 & Std Cirrus #57