On Tuesday, 7 February 2017 15:36:20 UTC, Tango Eight wrote:
On Monday, February 6, 2017 at 10:56:51 PM UTC-5, wrote:
A question respectfully submitted to the pundits who lurk in these halls:

Please forgive me if this topic has been covered before; I have done a general search on this forum and have found no mention of it anywhere.

Having been away from Soaring for about 35 years, and having just come back last summer, I have been slowly re-immersing myself. Some things have not changed all that much, but wow, have varios ever changed a lot!

My question:

With the new generation of varios out there, specifically those that incorporate inertial sensors, would it not be advantageous for these varios to offer the possibility to the pilot of displaying the sailplane’s real time lift coefficient, CL? It would seem to me that while thermalling, this display would be useful as a ‘lift reserve indicator’, directly related to AOA. No extra sensors would be required, since these new generation varios have all the inputs necessary to calculate CL (i.e. total pressure, static pressure, g force, with the aircraft mass and wing area presumably entered on the ground, before the flight). Granted, the pilot would have to know his max CL for different flap settings, but that’s it!

Would not such a display be desirable?

Has this been implemented already, and I am not aware of this?

Reichmann pointed out the potential value of a lift coefficient meter in his book. If a meaningfully useable one could be made it would be very helpful for thermalling and as a safety feature.