View Single Post
  #34  
Old September 28th 19, 09:27 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
2G
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,439
Default Borgelt Dynamis variometer

On Monday, April 8, 2019 at 9:11:36 PM UTC-7, Mike Borgelt wrote:
On Wednesday, 27 March 2019 02:52:17 UTC+10, wrote:
When will this marvel be available for purchase!?!?


We're doing a couple more local installations in the next few weeks. After that we should be good to release more widely.

All feasible gusts are removed by the way Dynamis does TE.

The gusts that really matter aren't just the very short term ones. They are annoying, add to workload and make you tired or make the vario useless for a couple of seconds. Also cause you to slow the vario response to remove some of these problems but you then lose timely information about the vertical motion.

The bad ones last for a several seconds or more and lead you to believe there is a thermal there, causing you to turn. A bad 360 turn in what wasn't really a thermal, or one as good as you want, costs 30 to 60 seconds. Not slowing down soon enough in a thermal encounter because you aren't sure it is a core can cause you to fly completely through the core and out the other side, wasting more time.

I believe and know, after looking at the AirGlide vario manual, that Dynamis is very significantly different from that instrument. That vario seems to mix the netto vario with AHRS derived airmass. You'll get reasonable horizontal vector wind but if you know that to within 2 to 3 knots and maybe 10 degrees you'd be happy. You wouldn't be happy with a 2 to 3 knot vario offset.

The wind calculation in Dynamis is fast and super accurate.

Yes Dynamis works in climb mode as well as cruise. That was a bonus. The design criteria were - get it to work in cruising flight seamlessly including in the normal heading changes made in cruise, so we had to cope with turns. Climb was originally intended to be the usual pressure based TE vario but coping with turns in cruise made it work while climbing in thermals. The fast response and lack of sensitivity to the gusts reveals more structure in the vertical motion in thermal turns.

No, Dynamis is not a "longer integration time" or better put, longer time constant low pass filter. You can see in the video a couple of times where real lift is encountered, Dynamis is just as fast as the 1.5 second time constant LX vario. Once again, Dynamis IS NOT a filter, Kalman or otherwise. The video also shows a few times that ā€œgā€ effects are present on the pressure vario, absent on Dynamis.

We did a LOT of work, flying and logging on the inertial stuff before 2013. Seemed messy and only good for short term gusts with great difficulties in turns, even the usual heading changes to go to a different cloud. You really don't want artifacts on the vario because you turned or to be switching between inertial and pressure based varios when flying straight or turning. We judged it not worth the effort of proceeding with that for what we considered minor performance gains.

Other things Dynamis is not: No Flarm, no moving maps, no AHRS, no logger..
Just a full function honest variometer (vario, netto, relative, speed command, averagers and two channel audio with serial data output).

There are so many compact loggers on the market that the world doesn't need any more. Also a pain to get calibrated every 5 years if built in to the vario, particularly if there are installation issues.
My moving map is Tophat on a A$100 Lenovo Tab 3 7" tablet. Brilliant sunlight readable screen and fast smooth operation. A A$20 trackball and you don't have to touch the screen. Connected to Dynamis and Flarm via our two channel Borgelt Bluetooth mixer to get Flarm targets on the screen.


As for Patents: Some while ago I read a web article on patenting your million dollar idea. The conclusion was that unless it was a $40 million idea you were going to be out of pocket. There are no World patents. You need to patent in various jurisdictions. Some MAY have reciprocal arrangements with each other. This is very expensive and time consuming and doesn't get you any protection except the right to sue anybody infringing in those jurisdictions. I'd rather not spend my time talking to lawyers and in any court you are always rolling the dice. Better to go to Vegas and put your money on the red or the black. Quicker, cheaper, less stressful and you KNOW what the house percentage is. The OTHER problem with patents is that you have to describe your invention and the operating principles. Great way to tell your competitors about it so they can your device works and figure a way around the patent.
There is a reason that SpaceX has few patents - the Chinese would simply copy them and ignore any patent infringements. Imagine trying to sue what are State owned businesses in a dictatorship. Good luck. Elon Musk has said SpaceX has industrial secrets instead.

Mike


Any update on when the Dynamis vario will be available for sale (it wasn't when I ordered by ASH31Mi last year)?

Tom