|
On my 12 mile engine out glide, I punched up the
NRST button on my GPS to find the two closest airfields were both 12 miles away
(gulp!). Since I knew I was going to be gliding around 85 mph that any
sort of headwind would considerably shorten the glide. Fortunately I had
been paying attention to the wind direction as I was outrunning a cold front, so
turned 120 degs for the downwind field.
From 9500 MSL I arrived over the selected
airfield with approx 1500-2000 ft AGL. I had altitude to do a 360 and a
couple of hard "S" turns to loose altitude and even then came over the fence at
100 mph. This with a stubby wing RV-6A.
I did have time in that 8 minute glide to find out
that my best glide speed (at that weight) was 87 MPH which produced a 750
fpm rate of descent. Any slower the rate went up and any faster the rate
went up. Also were I found what airspeeds the prop would stop at as well
as what it took to get it going again. So a rather productive 8 minutes
all things considered {:>).
Ed Anderson
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 9:29
AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Glide
distances
That's true, if you are flying cross country, and are halfway
between two airports, you would want to pick the one that's downwind, not
necessarily the closest field.
I figure with 1nm per 1000' of altitude,
just orbiting the field on a test flight, there is plenty of margin built in
since I can supposedly glide about 1.65 nm / 1000' with no wind.
Tom
wrote:
Perry,
There always something. Gotta remember winds. Being downwind of the airport
at the distance limit would be a problem.
By the way, when flying skydivers I figured out a very easy way to determine
winds aloft with a GPS. Fly a circle keeping your airspeed constant. Your GPS
groundspeed will be highest when heading downwind and lowest when heading
upwind. Do the simple math on speeds to determine how much. I'm not
suggesting you do this during engine-out, just when you're curious and have a
desire to fly in circles.
Tom
--- Perry Mick <pjmick@viclink.com> wrote:
I've never tested engine out glide, but I also plan with 1000 ft/min.
And if you assume a 10:1 glide ratio, you can glide 10,000 fpm, or 1.65
nm or 1.9 sm per 1000 ft. of altitude. When I do test flights, I try to
stay within 1 nm of the airport for each 1000 ft of AGL. For example,
5000 ft AGL, stay within a 5 nm radius. Easy with GPS.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
http://my.yahoo.com
Homepage: http://www.flyrotary.com/
Archive: http://lancaironline.net/lists/flyrotary/List.html
|