On Sunday, August 9, 2020 at 7:07:42 AM UTC-4, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Sat, 08 Aug 2020 23:58:05 -0700, Tango Whisky wrote:

Thermals are turbulent, and a 1 sec time constant means that the vario
would be all over the place and completely useless. Use your butt
instead.
Best fast electronic I've used is the (now quite ancient) Borgelt B.40.
Somehow it manages to be both fast and adequately damped: the needle
never jitters about, but I agree with Tango Whisky - never ignore what
your butt is telling you.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

I agree. There's something about the damping that seems to just work across multiple gliders, some with questionable pneumatic systems. If someone said I could have one and only one vario, it would be the B40 with the 9 volt battery strapped to the back.

I always found it funny that my sage was almost "too good". The reality, at least for those of us who fly in turbulent environments like mountains and ridges is that you need to do a lot of "soft averaging" to achieve decent climbs, and I have found with multiple varios from different manufacturers (Cambridge, Clearnav, Butterfly, LX) that I always end up configuring them for something like a 2 second or slightly more response time. Anything else makes it hard for me to integrate the information to form a picture. In other words, seat of the pants says we just flew into lift; old-fashioned pneumatic Winter Vario and the latest electronic gadget start to confirm a second or two later; trend seems to be continuing; now did one side feel better than the other; start the turn and keep the bank moderate at long as the trend is getting better...

With faster response, I usually found myself making a "panic bank" too early and having to take more turns to get centered.

But that's just how my brain is wired.

P3