On Monday, June 8, 2015 at 12:44:48 PM UTC+3, wrote:
On Sunday, June 7, 2015 at 4:15:05 PM UTC+10, Craig Lowrie wrote:
Climb and glide with the Jet is NOT optimal...


Actually my spreadsheet says that climb/glide is the optimal method even with the jet. I was somewhat surprised by this as with piston retractable engined motorgliders it obviously is as the L/D with engine extended is so bad.

I'm glad someone else worked this out. You're pretty clean with a jet, but it's most efficient at as close to Vne as you dare to go, so your L/D is probably only 15 - 20, whereas once you shut the jet off you'll want to fly at a speed where your L/D is 40+ (well, 30+ anyway).

Running a jet to sustain level flight at 60 - 80 knots is silly, unless that's all the thrust it has, but even then a slightly more powerful jet that lets you go faster will use less fuel.