PILOT SPIN
Pilot Zone => Pilot Zone => Topic started by: PeterNSteinmetz on October 31, 2021, 06:58:02 PM
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New to me 1-26E glider. N126RM at her new base E68 - Estrella Sailport.
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20211101/f6b6519253d80ebc8f714e9a6c20a080.jpg)
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Excellent!
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Beautiful! Lotsa blue sky there.
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Very cool. I need to learn more about gliders.
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Very cool. There's a glider club at a grass field near me that offers instruction and rentals. I may do it this spring but I don't understand how they fly without motors. And if someone says Bernoulli, I'll pull the car over!
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Very cool. There's a glider club at a grass field near me that offers instruction and rentals. I may do it this spring but I don't understand how they fly without motors. And if someone says Bernoulli, I'll pull the car over!
Potential energy.
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Very cool. There's a glider club at a grass field near me that offers instruction and rentals. I may do it this spring but I don't understand how they fly without motors. And if someone says Bernoulli, I'll pull the car over!
I guess it does have one, the one in the tow plane.
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Beautiful! Lotsa blue sky there.
Thanks. Those skys and sunsets is one of the things AZ is known for.
Very cool. I need to learn more about gliders.
Very cool. There's a glider club at a grass field near me that offers instruction and rentals. I may do it this spring but I don't understand how they fly without motors. And if someone says Bernoulli, I'll pull the car over!
It really is excellent training for power pilots. I became much less fearful of engine out emergencies after flying gliders.
Perhaps consider coming down to Arizona Soaring near Phoenix in February or March. They are a commercial operation so can provide as much instruction and flying as you like in a couple of days or a week. Great conditions toward the end of March with lots of lift.
Potential energy.
That is the basic answer for gliding flight. In fact, one can easily show that the lift over drag ratio is equal to the glide ratio = distance forward over distance down by equating the potential energy lost to the work done against the drag.
For soaring of course the energy is really coming from the heating of the atmosphere. One looks for those thermals which give annoying turbulence in power planes and rides them up in a spiral.
An interesting fact taught to me by my gliding instructor. The average power in all the thunderstorms on earth is 500 TW. That is about 26 times the total power produced by mankind.
I guess it does have one, the one in the tow plane.
Mostly in the US we use aerotow for the engine in the towplane. There are also winch launches where the engine sits stationary on ground and tows in a long rope or wire attached to the glider. Also auto tow, usually done with a long rope.
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Potential energy.
Gravity is your engine.
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Gravity is your engine.
Not exactly. Even the glider sitting on the runway surface is acted on by gravity, yet it's not going anywhere because it's potential energy with respect to the ground is zero. Unless maybe your glider somehow is at Courchevel lol!
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Gravity isn’t a force. We just like to pretend it is. It’s actually a warp in the space-time continuum.
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Not exactly. Even the glider sitting on the runway surface is acted on by gravity, yet it's not going anywhere because it's potential energy with respect to the ground is zero. Unless maybe your glider somehow is at Courchevel lol!
What force gives the potential energy (height above the ground) it's actual energy?
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What force gives the potential energy (height above the ground) it's actual energy?
Well, yeah, gravity, but that alone doesn't make the glider fly. One needs gravity (always there) plus additional energy, be it potential or kinetic.
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Without gravity, height (altitude) wouldn't matter. But we all know the real answer. $$$. :D
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Without gravity, height (altitude) wouldn't matter. But we all know the real answer. $$$. :D
But less of it with gliders ;)
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Someday you ought to buy a motor for that thing.