I've tried my Compaq Aero with GNII to see how well
I could stay straight and while it may be better than
nothing it sure isn't great. When set to the minimum
scale, between the short trailing track length and
the frequency, it is relatively slow to show banking
change.


At 16:48 09 September 2005, Eric Greenwell wrote:
David Smith wrote:

If Bumper is correct and the Garmin 196 GPS driven
attitude display can be used for a emergency cloud
descent then presumably the turning glider on a Winpilot
screen will give the same information, or will it
????

My experiments with GPS for turn indication showed
success depends very
much on the wind strength: below 20 knots, it's probably
OK; above 30
knots, it's definitely not.

In strong winds, the heading changes displayed become
very sensitive to
turns when flying upwind, and very insensitive when
flying downwind. The
more wind, the worse it gets. This quite different
from a gyro
instrument, which has the same sensitivity regardless
of the wind.
Perhaps a pilot could practice and become adept at
it, and maybe, maybe,
in smooth air it's not a problem, even in strong winds.

Since wind is a always feature of wave flying, I do
not want to rely a
GPS to save my butt during an encounter with clouds.
I have a T&B that I
practice with periodically, though I've never come
close to entering a
cloud. Other club members have, however.

--
Change 'netto' to 'net' to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA