"nafod40" wrote in message
...
Todd Pattist wrote:

I had my doubts about using this technique in a slippery
glass ship, but I found it to work fairly well, except I use
trim back. I have tried this in my Ventus C, once for a
total of 10,000' descent, once for 8,000' descent and once
for 5,000' (a real waste of altitude, but each was after a
wave flight and I was cold). I found that trim back
(thermal setting), flaps at -1 (one notch negative - zero
and positive flap settings are limited to 80 knots), wheel
out and brakes full open worked best. The 10,000' and
5,000' descents were entered level, became a gentle stable
turn and remained fairly stable with some phugoid speed
oscillation. The turn would sometimes steepen, sometimes
shallow or even reverse.

When flying in the military, we used to play games and see what we could
fail and still fly the plane IMC. I found I could get by with a turn
needle, an AOA gauge, a balance ball (or a balance string) and an ASI.
The turn needle coupled with the balance string could be used to
maintain wings level. Basically use rudder to keep the turn needle
centered, and wing to balance flight.

The AOA with the airspeed, oddly enough, worked fine for pitch once you
got used to it. The AOA responded instantly to pitch inputs, and let you
immediately correct them. From a controls standpoint, it gave great
derivative information. The airspeed then let you dampen the slow pitch
deviations. It was a great integrator. One could replicate an AOA
indicator by a string on the side of a cockpit.

I could fly a PAR to mins using this technique. Tiring, but doable.

So the turn needle is the only thing seriously lacking in a glider.


You can fly with just the turn needle and ASI if you learn to control
airspeed trends.

For those of us flying with a PDA with GPS and TAS input, there are several
inexpensive software programs that derive bank from TAS and rate of change
in ground track and display it as an attitude indicator. It's not perfect
but it should get you out of a cloud.

Bill Daniels