Slide wheel or rule glide computer, where to buy?

[Jonathan St. Cloud]

Can anyone out there tell me where I can purchase a small hand held final glide
computer (like a revolving or slide rule type) that can be easily
used to compute final glide from GPS data (eg distance to fly,
head and tailwind components, altitude needed etc)?

Years ago I had a FSW or FWS glide computer, that I bought from wings and wheels, they no longer have any and I cannot find the one I purchased years ago.

Thanks

[[email protected]]

On Friday, July 3, 2015 at 10:22:14 AM UTC-7, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
> Can anyone out there tell me where I can purchase a small hand held final glide
> computer (like a revolving or slide rule type) that can be easily
> used to compute final glide from GPS data (eg distance to fly,
> head and tailwind components, altitude needed etc)?

E6B works really well for this. Line up altitude and distance (in NM), and the pointer shows glide ratio. Recalculate every few miles and if glide ratio stays constant or decreases, you're OK, if it increases, you may need a climb.

Many cool pilot watches come with one ;-)

-Tom

[[email protected]]

On Friday, July 3, 2015 at 1:22:14 PM UTC-4, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
> Can anyone out there tell me where I can purchase a small hand held final glide
> computer (like a revolving or slide rule type) that can be easily
> used to compute final glide from GPS data (eg distance to fly,
> head and tailwind components, altitude needed etc)?
>
> Years ago I had a FSW or FWS glide computer, that I bought from wings and wheels, they no longer have any and I cannot find the one I purchased years ago.
>
> Thanks

I made several myself in the ooooold days. I even had a program that would
print out a circular slide rule with windows to set the MC value and then
read out your best speed to fly. Unfortunately the diskette containing
the program wasn't any good so that's lost to posterity.

It's easy enough to make your own slide rule if you want. I recommend
using Excel or Google Spreadsheets to print out logarithmic scales and
with that you can paste together a slide rule from some cardboard.

The simplest approach is to remember some basic ratios. 200 feet per SM
is about 26:1, or 300 feet per NM is 20:1. Even with sophisticated GPS
based flight computers I like to keep those in mind to figure out how
close to the hairy edge I am. For that matter that's all I used when I
started cross country flying (GPS and rule of thumb).

Matt

[[email protected]]

On Friday, July 3, 2015 at 1:22:14 PM UTC-4, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
> Can anyone out there tell me where I can purchase a small hand held final glide
> computer


We probably have it. Which glider?
Tom Knauff