On Aug 23, 11:11*pm, Andy wrote:
On Aug 23, 1:14*pm, johngalloway wrote:

All glide angles converge at
the destination *so any glide angle that I can keep constant will
bring me to home at my arrival reserve altitude.

With the very, very, big caveat that there is no intervening terrain.

There is actually significant potential for advancement in gliding
computers. That is the display of a vertical profile view of the final
glide, complete with terrain. *This display is known as the VSD
(Vertical Situation Display) in some non gliding display
applications. *This type of display can clearly depict a multi-angle
final glide path when that is required to clear terrain and also make
the goal at the required finish altitude.

I suspect that this type of display would also be very useful for
understanding the effect on glide path and optimum MC when there is a
significant wind change when rounding the final turnpoint.

Andy (GY)

Personally I love the SoarPilot final glide table. There's a picture
of it at
http://www.soaringpilot.org/dokuwiki...l_glide_screen
It displays a table of MC settings (values 0-5, or 0-10 by 2) along
with
the speed to fly and a choice of arrival altitude, required altitude,
or
difference from glide slope. I find it very easy to follow on final
glide --
if I'm picking up energy I can see how fast I can fly and still
arrive,
or if I'm losing energy I can see how much I need to slow up and still
make it back.

The only problem with SoarPilot is that it runs on PalmOS,
which goes on outdated hardware these days. There's a version of
StyleTap that runs on the iPhone, but there's no serial port or
bluetooth
to connect it to any other devices in your plane. I don't know if
anyone
has gotten it to work on the PNDs that are being used nowadays.

-- Matt