FES vs Gas Engine – Finding a Thermal?

With the FES, the vario still shows sensible readings but will show
positive proportional to the power you've put in if the motor is
running. So you'll see climb rate going up in thermals (and down in
sink), and you can sort of guess there's a thermal there - reduce
power, see what happens. There's so little penalty to stopping the
motor and re-starting anyway, just whirl a little knob.

Now, if the FES controller and the vario (both LX) talked to each
other and we could have the vario FES-compensated, that'd be
pretty cool..!

You could even imagine a "get me home" mode which tried to
maintain altitude by adjusting power - so you could slow in lift and
extend the range.


At 20:28 24 August 2017, V1 wrote:
While reading the FES article in June Soaring (yes, I=E2=80=99m
behind in
m=
y reading), I noticed the author=E2=80=99s comment about
searching for a
th=
ermal while FES was running, then shutting down FES as he
started to
climb.=
This is a topic I don=E2=80=99t recall seeing discussed in any
FES vs gas
=
comparisons.

In my Solo-powered Ventus 2cxT, my experience has been that the
vibration
(=
and possibly disturbed airflow) caused so much wild gyration in the
vario
r=
eadings that it seemed pointless to try to determine if I was flying
into
r=
ising air, so I just climbed first, then shut down the engine and
started
a=
thermal search.

My question =E2=80=93 do others have experience to share about
their
abilit=
y to find thermals while a sustainer or self-launcher (either gas or
electr=
ic) was running? If electric has an advantage here, this could
reduce the
r=
un-time needed and conserve =E2=80=9Cfuel=E2=80=9D.=20

- Frank