On Sun, 11 Oct 2020 07:29:10 -0700, stu857xx wrote:

This things is still an interesting puzzle. No manuals or prices on the
web site yet.

If TE = mgh + 1/2mv**2, perhaps one could measure v and/or h with a
really good GPS instead of plumbing? (That might measure things with
respect to the ground instead of airmass, but given that's where the
next waypoint is, I'm still unconvinced that that is bad.)

That's been done. The ALOFT project, which developed a thermal-aware
autopilot for a 5m span carbon RC glider airframe measured air mass
movement using an onboard GPS well enough to locate and center thermals.
They claimed the signal was less noisy then the output from an onboard
vario.

That project was completed in 2007 and got its developer a PHD in aero-
engineering. Details (the thesis, a related paper or two as well as the
story of it taking part in an RC XC competition in California) are
available on the Internet, though you may need to use the Wayback Machine
archive to find all of them.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org