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Written by Dave Bingham
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Monday, 14 December 2009 |
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This posting is the last resulting from my recent trip to New Zealand. I like to fly as many flying machines as I can and mentally compare them to one another. This may differ from some of you whose primary objectives or only imperative is to fly the longest XCs possible. Regardless there is very little discussed on adverse yaw which is much more important in gliders because of their large wing spans than say small single engine power planes. I would like to discuss adverse yaw as it applies to power planes and then to gliders. I conclude that there is a significant between various gliders in their adverse yaw characteristics. I hope to provoke a discussion on my findings which may be unique to me or may be universal.
For most modern small power planes such as my old Lancair ES or my current Jabiru J250 one takes off with feet on the rudder and at pattern height feet are off the rudder in smooth air until entering the pattern at the landing airport. Wide turns are made purely with the ailerons without the use of the rudder. Narrow turns require the use of the rudder except for the Lancair which had differential ailerons (the degree the left aileron moves up is different from the deflection the right aileron moves down and so on). The Lancair has the most coordinated and pleasant flying characteristics of any aircraft I have ever flown. Now there are super busy rudder aircraft like the tail dragger Citabria which are, in my opinion, uncoordinated requiring constant input on the rudder. Other power planes such as the Bonanza require a yaw stabilizer otherwise you are continuously kicking the rudder from one side to the other side to fly in a straight line.
Is a constant input on the rudder a major consideration? Probably not! Youwalk along a road and are you continuously conscious of every movement you make? No! Your subconscious takes over from your active brain and deals with your motor mechanics otherwise you would come to a full stop maybe on your ass. So now to adverse yaw with a glider.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 14 December 2009 )
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Written by Dave Bingham
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Saturday, 07 November 2009 |
 | Mountain Mike had launched much earlier, released over Kingsberry and had to work finally getting into the wave. I released at at 7.5k msl 2 miles west of 395 into light rotor, got into the wave at about 8.5k and with an average climb of about 500 feet per minute stopped at 18k. I communicated with Reno Approach. After about half an hour at close to 18k and gently crabbing at various speeds to keep a steady altitude on the lee side of the Sierras I noted my transponder (Becker) was not operating and had an error message -ERROR E10. Has anyone experienced this before with a Becker transponder? If so what is it saying? Unless you have a task to achieve boating around at 18k for about a half hour gets boring so I usually set my task to get down in the shortest time by finding sink, boards out and keeping just in green line limit. It took me a about a third of the time to get down than it took to get up. Anyway it was close to 0 degrees F at 18k and my feet were beginning to complain of the cold. An almost ritual Minden wave flight! |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 07 November 2009 )
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Hey SPOT - I'm missing... |
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Written by Dave Bingham
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Saturday, 24 October 2009 |
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  I decided I would put my self into the position of a member of a search and rescue which had been alerted that a certain person Dave Bingham was missing and that he was carrying a Spot tracker and that a recording of his flight might be found at the URL ssa.com which has a repository of recent Spot tracks for a few pilots around the US (maybe around the world). Now being an average person I am going to assume (maybe incorrectly) that I know how to turn on a computer and bring up a web browser and even type in the address bar ssa.com and press enter. The SSA home page comes up. I don't see anything with the words track or Spot. The thought occurs to me did I get the words track and Spot correctly or did I mistake the message. OK what to do? Should I call back the original message giver and ask for clarification or should I play around and explore pages outside the home page? I explore SSA pages and if I am lucky I notice that cunningly hidden on the SSA page at the one from the bottom of the long list is "Sailplane Tracker". That's funny! I was told a glider with a pilot named Dave Bingham was missing. What's a sailplane? Is a sailplane the same as a glider? Anyhow I click on "Sailplane Tracker' and sure enough a list of names come up including Dave Bingham.
I click on the name and the Spot shared page message comes up. Now seeing the Spot message page for the first time is very different from seeing the message page for the hundredth time. What does it say and how do I get information from it? There are no GPS coordinates or times listed only the day on the shared Spot pages. So what to do now? Finally I see an icon that says "show on a map" and I click it. A map comes up and the Spot messages are displayed but which is the first and which is the last in time. Its not obvious which!
Since I view most flights both on SeeYou and Spot everything is intuitively obvious to me now but for a neophyte that is not the case. What I have just described could be a nightmare for many people and could possibly waste valuable time in a search and rescue mission. So lets think through some of the issues I am raising:
1) Many people have very limited understanding of computers so everything should be designed to be INTUITIVELY OBVIOUS. SSA should rethink and redo this valuable Spot repository function and before releasing it test it out on a few average Joe guinea pigs. Make sure that most people can quickly find the relevant information.
2) The Spot shared page does not (at least in my case) show either GPS coordinates nor times of the messages (tracks). This is a serious deficiency and has to be fixed. My normal message page shows all this info but to use that page would require entering a name and password.
3) I use my Spot in all my 3 flying machines - SparrowHawk ultralight, Stemme motorglider and the LSA. So messages seen in the SSA repository might be from either so why does the SSA require you to list the glider manufacturer and model in your profile and repository? Keep the repository simple and remove that unnecessary and not pertinent information.
Its always easy to criticize something especially when there are no clear cut presidents. I am very pleased that the SSA has reacted positively to the suggestion made after Thierry's tragic death this summer by I think Marty Hellman that a Spot repository could be a valuable resource in assisting search and rescue missions. I support this. However it is clear this project is still in the formulative mode and needs to be refined for it to become a simple help tool. I would welcome comments on my criticisms and suggestions to make the SSA Spot repository easier to use. |
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 25 October 2009 )
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