On Saturday, May 16, 2020 at 2:53:29 PM UTC-4, Thomas Greenhill wrote:
If you aren't a flight dynamics expert but have some fundamental understanding of aerodynamics, I highly suggest reading the following source if you wish to learn more.
https://booksite.elsevier.com/978012...SAILPLANES.pdf

The results for a few gliders we
Discus 2a:
For lift stronger than 5kn, max gross.
For lift [3kn, 5kn], half ballast.
For lift weaker than 3kn, no ballast.

Thomas

Thanks, Thomas. I read the article, and being a former CFI-I/MEI, I get the concepts. Being a current software engineer (vs a math engineer), with a bit of help breaking down the formula(s) into non-MATLAB software syntax, I can put formulas into LARGE bodies of software at proper places, without fully understanding the formulas. I'm working in the Kotlin language for Android phones presently.

What you show for the Diana2 fits for me, since that's about how much water I've had to lose to keep up with the leader in a flatland 3-5kt narrow thermal day race in Condor (running against his Condor "ghost" over and over).

He told me he thinks there's a "sweet spot" for water ballast given all the parameters, but I don't think he knows the formula(s) either. Just does it intuitively after years and years of experience (which I don't have).

Bottom line: Yes, I'd love to see your code. Maybe we could make an Android and iPhone app and give it out to the Condor racing community for evaluation? Nobody's going to die using it in Condor, if we "put a decimal point in the wrong place or something" (software engineer in the Office Space movie :-) )

Ben