| Archive for San Gabriel Mountains Discussion Forum Open discussion board for activities in the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California |
| Funyan005 |
Badass way to see Mt. Whitney(Glider)The run down the valley at the end is amazinghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjTmNJmJXbk |
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| TacoDelRio |
Friggin' sweet!
What the hell are all those goddamn noises? Siren = overspeed, right? THat other shit gets annoying... I thought flying a glider was supposed to be peaceful... |
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| Tim |
Holy crap!! That made my day. Nice flying. Damn pansie hikers! Haha, they just wanted to buzz someone. What a waste, they were eye level with the hut!
I thought that too when I took my first glider ride. But nope, man there is a lot of wind noise. I think the woo-woo noises is from the variometer. This instrument measures the rate of climb or descent and emits a sound that changes in pitch and rhythm accordingly. You can see and hear in the video how the sound changes to match the vertical speed indicator as the needle goes up and down. (the VSI is to the right of the airspeed indicator which has the green and yellow arcs). When the needle is at the 9:00 position, you're not climbing or diving. It goes up for climbing and down for diving. The siren is probably from the spoilers being deployed. |
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| TacoDelRio |
Thanks Tim, I figured you'd be able to tell me what's up.
I take it the variometer went nuts when their altitude remained the same, but the AGL # shrank drastically. |
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| Tim |
The vario might have gone nuts because they were flying through updrafts and downdrafts. It more or less measures the rate of change of altitude with respect to MSL. But on a glider they use a special "total energy compensated" vario to measure the rate of change of total energy of the glider. It has something to do with thermals and compensating for changes in altitude due to airspeed or something like that. I don't know exactly--this glider flying crap is complicated!
What you're thinking of is a radar altimeter which measures AGL by sending out a radio wave downward to measure the distance to the ground. These are typically only found on helicopters, large commercial aircraft or military aircraft. |
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| kgw |
Wow. That would be a rush! | ||
| RichardK |
GliderAstonishing video! Now, if Steve Fossett could not handle the Sierra downdrafts, what chance does a glider have? |
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| edenooch |
that looks like a must do! 
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| Tim |
Re: Glider
Fossett was flying a Super Decathlon, a very different plane than this glider--a Duo Discus, which is a modern high performance composite sailplane built in the Czech Republic. I love eastern Europe! They make great R/C gliders and message board admins. Anyhow, I'm not sure if a downdraft would affect the two planes equally, but the glider would have a better chance of recovery because the glide ratio is so much higher than the Decathlon. Sailplanes routinely fly in the mountains to take advantage of the mountain wave lift so the pilots are also probably use to flying in and reacting to any weird air. |
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| TacoDelRio |
Sank yuh! | ||
| Hikin_Jim |
Re: Badass way to see Mt. Whitney(Glider)
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