Sheriff Responds to AOPA

kirk.stant wrote:

Precisely. 70 degrees is about 3 Gs, would give you a turn diameter of a little less than 200 ft (!) at 55 knots. But I doubt many pilots actually practice constant 70 degree banked turns, it's not as easy as it looks. Hard enough to get a lot of pilots to bank over 30 degrees - grrrr!

It sure is fun to rack it up when you find the right thermal - the harder you pull, the faster you go up! Do it with someone you know across the thermal and it gets really interesting...

When I was pre-solo, on a very unprepossessing March day
in the UK (solid stratus at 3400ft), my very experienced
instructor "found"[1] something. Given the conditions,
it can't have been a thermal.

We were flying at 70kt in a K13 and noticing the G force,
but we were rising at =10kt until we abandoned the climb
at cloudbase.

There was a glider opposite us sharing the thermal, so
we kept an eye on each other's position by looking at
the top of our heads.

Glorious, and a good anecdote for indicating why
flying in gliders is almost entirely unlike flying
in spamcans.

[1] I hesitate to say "blundered into"