Using new variometer technology to display real time lift coefficient?

On Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 1:42:02 PM UTC-5, wrote:
Sounds like you are trying to find a use for stuff in the instruments.
My question would be what are you trying to accomplish?
UH


Goal: To increase the pilot's awareness of how close to the stall the aircraft actually is. This could be of some use during thermalling flight, especially at low level or when encountering gusty conditions. A poor man’s AOA meter, if you will. If properly implemented, it should help avoid stall/spin accidents... I believe that aircraft landing on carriers carry such technology (AOA indicator), as well as certain business jets. Before the days of microprocessors, this would have been difficult to implement. See Soaring magazine, March 1975 to give you an idea of pre-microprocessor attempts to do this.

Since many modern varios already have sensors receiving and interpreting the required inputs to calculate CL, it should be simply a software modification to actually calculate this value. Perhaps the most difficult part of the whole implementation would be to present the pilot with this information so that it would be useful to him (Visual? Audio?).

i think good training is better than making an instrument "think for you" in this case. good fundamental training allows you to recognize an oncoming stall. outsroucing it to an instrument is needless, and in my opinion more dangerous than doing this one the old fashioned way. you have to learn to feel the glider. your ass is a more sensitive instrument for this purpose. like evan said, use the force. having said that, i've read some stuff about people putting yaw strings on the side of their canopy and making the critical angle of attack. THAT is a poor man's AOA.

Training is frequently the answer, and yet things that should be overcome by training keep happening.

Maybe we need training on how to do training so we can train the trainers.

9B

On Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 1:44:38 PM UTC-8, ND wrote:

i think good training is better than making an instrument "think for you" in this case. good fundamental training allows you to recognize an oncoming stall. outsroucing it to an instrument is needless, and in my opinion more dangerous than doing this one the old fashioned way. you have to learn to feel the glider. your ass is a more sensitive instrument for this purpose. like evan said, use the force. having said that, i've read some stuff about people putting yaw strings on the side of their canopy and making the critical angle of attack. THAT is a poor man's AOA.

On Wednesday, February 8, 2017 at 12:44:38 AM UTC+3, ND wrote:
On Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at 1:42:02 PM UTC-5, wrote:
Sounds like you are trying to find a use for stuff in the instruments..
My question would be what are you trying to accomplish?
UH


Goal: To increase the pilot's awareness of how close to the stall the aircraft actually is. This could be of some use during thermalling flight, especially at low level or when encountering gusty conditions. A poor man’s AOA meter, if you will. If properly implemented, it should help avoid stall/spin accidents... I believe that aircraft landing on carriers carry such technology (AOA indicator), as well as certain business jets. Before the days of microprocessors, this would have been difficult to implement. See Soaring magazine, March 1975 to give you an idea of pre-microprocessor attempts to do this.

Since many modern varios already have sensors receiving and interpreting the required inputs to calculate CL, it should be simply a software modification to actually calculate this value. Perhaps the most difficult part of the whole implementation would be to present the pilot with this information so that it would be useful to him (Visual? Audio?).

i think good training is better than making an instrument "think for you" in this case. good fundamental training allows you to recognize an oncoming stall. outsroucing it to an instrument is needless, and in my opinion more dangerous than doing this one the old fashioned way. you have to learn to feel the glider. your ass is a more sensitive instrument for this purpose. like evan said, use the force. having said that, i've read some stuff about people putting yaw strings on the side of their canopy and making the critical angle of attack. THAT is a poor man's AOA.

I don't feel any need for this instrument myself. I'm perfectly happy doing minimum controllable airspeed exercises and recognising the onset of the stall with my own senses. Often when I'm sitting back and letting someone else fly I'll be hearing the airflow sound change as gusts partially stall the wing. Suggest to them that they fly a couple of knots faster and suddenly we're climbing much better.

One can use stall speed to calculate the CL max.