On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:40:11 -0800, kirk.stant wrote:

90 degree bank is a lot steeper than most pilots imagine. Unless you are
current in acro anything over 60 degrees will feel like 90. And unless
its a transient condition caused by turbulence any intentional 90 degree
bank for more than a few seconds would result in an impressive sink rate
regardless of the strength of the thermal. But it makes for a good
hangar story: "There I was at 300 ft over the nuke cooling tower,
banked to 90 degrees and barely climbing..."

It stands to reason that you can't climb in a 90 degree bank because
there's no vertical lift vector unless, of course, you so much top rudder
fed in that you're climbing on lift generated by the fin and fuselage
sides.

However, a couple of times I've certainly been using around 70 degrees
bank and still going up like the clappers:

- once on a Pegase 90 when I was climbing in the chimney plume from the
Stewartby Brick works just west of Bedford. That was odd: there was
nothing (not even sink) outside the plume and in it you could center
nicely by maximising the smell of furnace oil fumes. It was very narrow:
I had the stick almost fully back to turn tightly enough and needed to
extreme bank to turn that tight, bit I got 6-7 kts out of it

- a similarly tight thermal with no apparent reason for it being too
tight, over our airfield. This time solo in the club's Puchacz and again
cranked over at least at least 70 degrees and with the stick well back to
turn as tight as possible. Any wider turn left me out in the surrounding
turbulence and sink. Again I got a strong climb to cloud base directly
under a nice street.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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