Dick Johnson methodology for measuring glider performance

On Tuesday, July 12, 2016 at 7:45:32 AM UTC+1, Tango Whisky wrote:
The method by Dick Johnson works for gliders with limited performance. Even in "still air conditions", which are typically found in meterological high pressure regions, there are wide-area vertical movements of air. There is no way that the method by DJ can work them out. They are just a few cm/s - so if you try to measure a 1:30 or 1:35 ship, that's not a big deal.

Now, if you are measuring a ship with 1:45, a 5 cm/s air mass movement will give you an error of 7%, or about 3 points.

That's why in Europe, DJ measurements are widely disregarded.

Instead, we have the Idaflieg (which is kind of the federation of Akafliegs) doing their measurements in collaboration with DLR (the German Research Institute for Aerospace). These measurements are based on two key points:
One is a calibrated (the "sacred") glider, which has been an Open Cirrus, then a DG300-17 and now I think it is a Discus 2/18. This glider is measured ynd calibrated extensively (takes about 1-2 years).
Second key point is that the glider to be measured flies in parallal to the calibrated glider, and in the basic form of the measurement, pictures of both gliders are taken after each intervall of flying at a defined speed. By using the (precisely known) fuselage length of the calibrated glider, you can get the vertical distance between the gliders very precisely.

This method gets rid of any air mass movement and is very accurate. It comes at a steep cost though: a calibrated glider (which is used for nothing else), two tow planes to FL120 at 5 p.m., and one of the tow planes flying alongside the gliders during the descent.

Bert
Ventus cM "TW" (measured by Idaflieg to 1:47 ;-) )

I don't disagree with this post but I would say that, overall, DJ's testing was good at pointing out the gliders that performed particularly well compared with its competitors - and this was often confirmed by the choices of top competition pilots. Example: ASW20 versus Mini Nimbus and LS3a.

John Galloway