is TE probe needed?

Some years ago I build a TE-Probe per Dick Johson for our club's
1-26D. See http://www.postfrontal.com/PDF/PW5_TE.pdf. or search the
SSA site for how to. The whole project cost me a couple of bucks and
took about 1 hr to do.
I mounted the probe just behind the removable turtle-deck
(accessibility issue). I used a phenolic block with a hole for the
probe so that I could raise or lower it to find the "out-of-boundary-
layer" position. about 6-7" did the trick.
And the results were great. Thermal-flying was much eased.
Heinz

..
On Jul 13, 3:50*pm, JSoar wrote:
My homebuilt self-launching sailplane is getting very close to it's
first flight. However, to make a long story short, I don't have any
good place to install a total energy probe right now. I have an old
variometer that I was planning on starting with, if it still works.
Otherwise I may need to get a new variometer for it, like the B400 or
RAS-V1000. But I see where they require a TE probe. Can these or
similar varios be used without a TE probe and still get useful
results, maybe just hook it up to the static system? Or are there some
small low cost varios that don't need a TE probe?

Thanks in advance,
Jerry Bookerwww.jsoaraero.com