Thermal mapping

"Wallace Berry" wrote in message
...


So, would your idea work? I proved it would but all that heavy gear
will be
pretty hard to get into a glider. Throwing out bits of toilet paper
probably works better. Hmmm, Lets see.....what would a toilet paper
dispensing machine look like...

Bill Daniels



Someone beat you to it. Ted Teach had a 1-26 with a toilet paper
dispensing mechanism in the turtledeck. It was a little trapdoor with a
cutting edge. Open the door and toilet paper unrolled into the
slipstream. Close the door and it severed the paper. Repeatedly opening
and closing the door supposedly dispensed tp chaff to be followed as a
thermal marker. Teach's 1-26 also had a reprofiled nose and canopy and
doors that enclosed the landing gear (retractable gear being against the
rules in 1-26 racing. Mark Connor later had this 1-26 and was undoing
all the "Teachisms" on it.

In all seriousness, the bubble experiments produced some very good insights
in low level convective airflow. Neutrally buoyant bubbles have no
aerodynamic qualities of their own so if they are seen to move, it is
because airflow is pushing them. Bits of paper and other debris do have
some aerodynamic qualities so the data is corrupted. Up to that point there
were several studies that used smoke, but that can't be analyzed
numerically. Discrete bubbles provided a means to measure speed and
direction of airflow in 3D to high precision.

Later, larger scale experiments with Mylar balloons were even more
interesting. First pairs would be released and tracked for many miles by
radar. Eventually, large numbers of these balloons were released
simultaneously along a crosswind line in thermic conditions and watched by
radar as they traced out thermal streets.

Today, most work of this kind is done with LIDAR (Laser Radar) which can
track naturally occurring tiny aerosols of pollen and dust revealing the 3D
structure of airflow with great precision over a large area in real time.

Now, putting a LIDAR in a glider WOULD be interesting.

Bill Daniels