"Ralph Jones" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:25:30 -0700, Ralph Jones
wrote:

On Thu, 6 Dec 2007 15:28:23 -0700, "Bill Daniels"
bildan@comcast-dot-net wrote:

I was very pleased to see the advert in the December issue of "Soaring
Magazine".
See: www.safeflight.com

Does anybody know more about this device - especially the price?

Hope it works out. A design for an AoA indicator appeared in _Soaring_
twenty or thirty years ago, but it was really crude. IIRC, it had its
own separate pitot and static sources, and connected them across a
vertical, tapered tube similar to one side of a pellet vario. A solid
metal ball rode in the tube, its mass serving to sense acceleration,
and its vertical position gave a measure of AoA.

The vane types found on jets work splendidly, but they're mounted high
up on the airplane where people and vehicles don't bump into
them...the equivalent on a glider wouldn't last long!

I presume the Safeflight device uses the pitot/static/acceleration
principle...that should be relatively easy with contemporary sensor
technology and chips.

Oops, no, I see on the website that it uses a vane. That's likely to
be a problem...

rj

Note that they say the vane is removable. You would probably install it as
you would a TE probe just before flight and remove it just after landing.

Bill Daniels