Who Discovered Thermals?

Lennie the Lurker.

Al

On Mon, 28 Jun 2004 18:28:08 -0500, Robert de León
wrote:

In Martin Gregorie's post I noted the adaptation of a variometer originally
used in Zeppelins.

Pass. All I know is what Simons says: "The origins of the device went
back to nineteenth century ballooning. Lippisch had used one when
working with Dornier on Zeppelins. It had not been realised till now
that soaring pilots needed such a thing.". This was in the context of
a paragraph about the introduction of the vario, why it wasn't needed
for ridge soaring and why it was needed for thermalling at altitude
over flat land.

Was this the first vario for gliders?

Simons thinks so. Reading between the lines he also thinks that the
involvement of Lippisch, who was hired as a designer for the RRG
Research Institute in Darmstadt, provided the link between airship
instrumentation and gliding.

I'm assuming the original development of varios for ridged airships was to
give the crew rising and falling airmass readouts so that they could
correctly trim and shift ballast to keep the ship relatively stable.

That seems very likely.


--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :