Best vario for airmass awareness across the speed range

wrote on 1/24/2020 12:48 PM:
Jim H and Jim, I wonder if this generation of glider guiders could even find or center a thermal using a simple mechanical vario lol How far we have advanced but also how far we have digressed in skills.

In the olden days we flew with slower, lighter gliders, so a slower vario without
audio worked fine. Now we cruise at 90 kts and thermal at 60 with full ballast.

But even then, pilots were using TE and Netto.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

On Friday, January 24, 2020 at 12:48:34 PM UTC-8, wrote:
Jim H and Jim, I wonder if this generation of glider guiders could even find or center a thermal using a simple mechanical vario lol How far we have advanced but also how far we have digressed in skills.

A simple mechanical vario was new tech when I learned. Real varios have a red pellet and a green pellet as the only moving parts. Those were the days. I don't miss them. My current glider has a full in-flight infotainment system that can even play full length movies - great for those long boring final glides.

It's hard to feel thermals at 90 knots in a carbon glider full of water. At 17 knots in a hang glider (1lb/sq ft) you really get a feel for the structure of the thermal which can be quite exciting at times.

I've been flying with a CNv the past few years. I like it a lot. Much better info on airmass and dramatically easier centering the thermal. But there are times I ignore it and rely on an old Winter mechanical. I'm talking about a turn or two, not an extended climb. So I can still fly without the newer gadgets. I just don't feel like it.

Chip Bearden
JB

Jfitch, I just acquired another restoration project which still has one of the old pellet varios lol. I always wondered how immediate the response time was with them.

As to flying ships with the higher wing loading and faster cruise/thermal speeds, yep, thats an entirely different situation. Electronics become more vital for efficient flying. I still made a point of flying occassionaly with just my mechanical vario when I had my ventus just to train my a.s.s. as to how my ship felt when plowing thru lift and how to center up a thermal without accurate aids. I remember one flight trying to get home from hawthorne late in the day when my battery pooped out. I got home using the mechanical winter, and watching when the airspeed would slightly jump when entering mild lift. That little jump in airspeed told me what I needed to know ling before the winter said anything lol.

On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 8:39:31 AM UTC-5, Jim Hogue wrote:
Any suggestions? Either currently available or coming in the near future (next year or so) would be ok, I am not in a rush. Prefer it would fit in one 57mm hole.

I take care of navigation and tasks with other standalone devices (full on OpenVario with its own vario/STF sensor board, and a Kobo backup) so I don’t really need any nav functions. Above all I want the best total energy and gust compensated technology available, the best to allow me to understand airmass movement while cruising across the full speed range. I want MacReady speed-to-fly function (although I use that as advisory information only, I don’t aggressively dolphin fly...). I also need climb/cruise and airmass awareness audio functionality of course, head-out-of-the-cockpit being best.

I fly an ASH-26E, and I would prefer a system that can work off just pitot and static, avoiding the vertical fin mounted TE probe (which gets hammered during engine runs). This is because thermalling during powered climb can be important to me when flying out of high density altitude airports. But if using the TE probe gets me significantly better airmass awareness in cruise, I would take that.

I am attracted to the FLARM voice warnings that the S8/S10 units give, but I would do without this in order to get the best airmass awareness.

My OpenVario gives me a thermalling assist graphic which seems to work great, but if the new system offers improvement here I would like that also.

Please offer you experiences and knowledge here. Thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Jim J6

You can still obtain the AirGlide with the Triadis sensors and cables. Just ask around. Nothing is even comes close to its abilities. Can be used without a TE probe with astonishing accuracy.

On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 8:39:31 AM UTC-5, Jim Hogue wrote:

I take care of navigation and tasks with other standalone devices (full on OpenVario with its own vario/STF sensor board

From the translation of Air Avionics statement:

AIR Avionics wants to support interested parties and the open source community, gain further knowledge and software components.

One can dream that the Butterfly tech will find its way into Open Vario eventually.

Interesting that you mentioned this.

I built my Open Vario a couple of years ago with the sensor board, which includes all the normal pressure sensors plus all the necessary accelerometers for full motion measurements, with this in mind. I had great plans to code up the equations of motion, and use a kind of model following algorithm by Kalman filters to extract air mass data. Before retiring, I supervised a group of engineers who did essentially this to analyze flight test data for a fast jet program I worked on, it worked great. It is some pretty serious math, though, and I quickly found that it would take a whole lotta learning for this dimming mind to get this done solo. Plus the learning to code and implement into the OV, easier but still time needed. Plus the flight testing and development to get it to work right, this would take the most time and effort of all. Definitely could be done, though, I believe. Years of work probably.

I decided I ought to get some quality soaring in while I still can, so it has been back-burnered.

Anybody out there want to take on this sort of project with an OpenVario? I could pretty easily build another one for that purpose....

Cheers,
Jim J6

On Monday, January 27, 2020 at 8:20:58 AM UTC-5, Jim Hogue wrote:
Interesting that you mentioned this.
It is some pretty serious math, though, and I quickly found that it would take a whole lotta learning for this dimming mind to get this done solo. Plus the learning to code and implement into the OV, easier but still time needed. Plus the flight testing and development to get it to work right, this would take the most time and effort of all. Definitely could be done, though, I believe. Years of work probably.

One can dream that the Butterfly code will be Open Sourced if they don't find a buyer that wants to make a commercial retail product of it.

On Tuesday, 28 January 2020 01:46:37 UTC+2, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Monday, January 27, 2020 at 8:20:58 AM UTC-5, Jim Hogue wrote:
Interesting that you mentioned this.
It is some pretty serious math, though, and I quickly found that it would take a whole lotta learning for this dimming mind to get this done solo. Plus the learning to code and implement into the OV, easier but still time needed. Plus the flight testing and development to get it to work right, this would take the most time and effort of all. Definitely could be done, though, I believe. Years of work probably.

One can dream that the Butterfly code will be Open Sourced if they don't find a buyer that wants to make a commercial retail product of it.

Air Glide S ISU has 14 sensors in it. I doubt just a code will help you. Kind of sad that interest for this appeared the moment it was taken out of production.

Does anyone know exactly what the 14 sensors are in the Air Glide ISU? I will guess:

3 axis accelerations
3 axis rates
3 axis magnetometers
Static pressure
Total pressure
Total energy probe pressure (differential, actually redundant to Static and Total if you know or are willing to compensate for the aircraft’s position errors)
Outside air temperature
GPS

Please correct me if I have guessed wrong.

OpenVario with sensor board has most of these but lacks the GPS (but is routinely connected to FLARM etc.), OAT (input hardware for a probe exists but I am unaware of if it has ever been used), and the magnetometers (I am sure a magnetometer module could be designed or an existing one adapted to plug into one of the OV’s available input ports). With a bit more work, I think the OpenVario could host all the necessary sensors.

But of course, a huge task is to create a display which will pleasingly and effectively communicate the airmass information to the pilot so he can use it effectively. This by itself is a huge challenge. There are good ideas already in use out there, but I suspect improvements could be made.

Lots of challenging and interesting work to be done. Any takers?

Cheers,
Jim J6