Aerobatics in semi acrobatic certified sailplanes

On Thursday, October 4, 2012 8:02:37 AM UTC-4, jams wrote:
Thanks for all the input.




Kirk,



Your sentence: 'Glider acro (unless in a Swift/Fox, etc) is a relaxed,

gentle form of the art. It's not about pulling a lot of G, it's about

energy management, and not exceeding VNE.' Sums up exactly what I'm

interested in. I dont want a pure acro aircraft, because I dont want to

do anything to mad but would like to be able to explore more than just

loops and chandelle during flights.



Also having found what G forces are generated in the figures i'm

interested in (in the PIK aerobatics supplement), and your comment about

not much neg G occurring, suggests that most sailplanes could handle

what the PIK was doing in the video anyway.


Regards


James

Successfully executed positive G maneuvers are not a problem for many standard category gliders. But, there's a good reason why most of them are not approved or not recommended for acro. Failed maneuvers can quickly go badly wrong and put you into a situation where you can rapidly exceed the speed and load limitations. Rolling over the top in an overly aggressive stall turn or dishing out on an aileron roll would be two examples. When I was routinely doing a lot of acro in an L-13AC, it was the "oopsies" that really tested the limits, and this was in a glider that is much less slick than the high-performance ships in your examples.