Speed to Fly for Glider Pilots

[@daveandrew589]

Paul MacCready was enough of a genius that one of the aircraft he designed (Gossamer Condor) is hanging in the Main Hall of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington DC. That's a pretty rarefied location. The Gossamer Condor was the aircraft that won the Kremer prize for human powered flight in 1977. It's so lightweight that it's the only aircraft in the museum that moves in the drafts from the air conditioning system. Well worth a visit.

[@alfaalfa9488]

Awesome thanks

[@KestrelYI]

Appreciate the lesson!

[@designbydave]

Thanks so much for this! I've been live streaming glider flying in Microsoft Flight Simulator on Twitch and getting several people popping in that are curious but have no knowledge of glider flying. So, I've been working on a knowledge bank to refer them to. This is going in it. Also a good re-fresher course for me.

[@soarboulder]

Condor is a much better simulation for Soaring. With Condor you can also join online sailplane races with soaring pilots around the world.

[@BretChilcott]

Great video! Thank you for sharing your knowledge. How does the distance between thermals effect the MC settings?

[@soarboulder]

Fly your chosen MC speed between thermals unless they are too far apart to make at a high speed. L/D Max would be the slowest to fly. If you don’t think you can make it at best glide, go towards a safe landing field.

[@IhabFahmy]

Thank you. Useful information But it would really help to explain WHY the selected speeds are what they are, rather than just "learn it the way it is". You do that sometimes (e.g. why we fly Min Sink in a thermal), but you don't do that in many other places (e,g, why fly Best Glide plus 1/2 headwind speed... why 1/2 not just plus headwind speed? Where do the load factors come from? Why is Best Glide obtained by drawing a line from the origin to the polar curve? etc... etc... etc...). Glider pilots are not afraid of a little physics or trigonometry.

[@BillPalmer]

Plot it out on the drag polar and you'll see why 1/2 the windspeed is an approximation for the optimum speed to fly into the headwind when referencing the ground.