Mechanical Vario

I remember the Solfahrtgeber, too, though I never flew with one. I
guess the biggest drawback was that because everything was mechanical,
they were calibrated for one type of sailplane. Buy a better glider
and you needed a new speed-to-fly vario. Otherwise known as planned
obsolescence.

Speaking of simplicity, I flew for a long time with a pure netto
vario. In still air, the needle pointed to zero. You needed at least a
couple of knots "up" to achieve zero sink, which is something that
quickly became automatic. The nice thing was that when you flew into
sink, the needle of the vario immediately pointed to the proper speed
to fly on the speed ring. There was no "chasing the needle" caused by
the sink rate of the glider increasing as you speeded up and the
needle moving a little more causing you to have to speed up a little
more until everything stabilized...by which time you were long past
the sink. In some respects the "relative netto" I use today on my
fancy vario/flight computer with the push/pull bars requires a little
more attention. Progress, progress.

Tim, I absolutely agree with you that the electronic/GPS revolution
that's taken over soaring is not all for the better. New pilots
struggle to understand how to set up all the gadgets they [think they]
need. But even the experienced hands have troubles. On almost any day
at any big contest you will find at least one pilot (often more) who
is frustrated because one of his fancy/expensive instruments isn't
working right, or at all. Years ago, I was annoyed when we went to
clock cameras here in the U.S. and I had to buy two new cameras at
$100 each, in particular when I never actually used the clock feature.
How quaint were my objections then! Now many pilots carry two flight
computers. And while that's still optional, everyone has finally
admitted that you need two GPS loggers, although thankfully a close
reading of the U.S. rules reveals you can get by with a recording
handheld GPS receiver for your backup at a cost of only a few hundred
dollars...on top of the IGC-approved primary logger. I enjoy being
relieved from the chores of navigating with charts and knowing
precisely how far out I am on final glide but I fought against GPS in
the cockpit in part because navigation used to be a skill we measured
in competition.

Fortunately I'm computer savvy, work in the IT industry, and so can
generally get the latest hardware and software to do what it's
supposed to do most of the time. But I do wonder how much more
difficult it has become for someone coming into our sport to afford
all this technology, to learn how to configure it and use it, and to
become familiar with our complex competition rules. The latest gadgets
make it easier for experienced hands to go faster with less attention
devoted to mundane chores but I think they also sometimes raise the
bar for newer pilots in several ways. Not the direction we want to go
in our shrinking sport. Just my opinion.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
USA