On Wednesday, June 10, 2015 at 11:58:41 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Wednesday, June 10, 2015 at 12:06:04 PM UTC-5, Jim Lewis wrote:
Mostly very helpful but isn't atan(D/L) the glide angle rather than the glide ratio? Maybe once again it's largely a matter of vocabulary. I certainly don't know. Thankfully, being fairly dumb about these things has not seemed to diminish my flying skills - wishful thinking?

It's all good. I still say my answer to Dan Marotta's question
"How come nobody ever states that these G loading increases are for level flight? Since the glider is always descending, wouldn't it be better to include something about the descent rate being maintained? What about a climbing turn? Maybe some trig including the flight path angle?"

was correct. Including the table of G-loading for various bank angles and L/D ratios. The decrease in G-loading (or lift force) due to the flight path through the airmass being descending, not level, is very small for typical sailplane glide ratios, but it is still very real and fundamental to understanding the theory of gliding. And yes you are absolutely right of course, on my last post I meant to type "glide angle" not "glide ratio". Glide ratio (in still air) would be simply L/D. If you are defining lift correctly. If you are using lift to mean the total VERTICAL aerodynamic force, than you can no longer say that the still-air glide ratio equals the L/D ratio. The L/D ratio and the W/D ratio are very close to each other, for flat glide angles, but they are not exactly the same.

OK, enough on that. Really!

S

It's good to know I can reduce my G-loading by opening the spoilers, or dropping the landing gear.