Well, I finally got to fly my new mid-vents since my exam is done (I'm a certified CCNA now) and the weather has (FINALLY) decided to play along ... but the flight has led me to a new question.
I got the mid-vents because I found I often had wind that fluctuated such that the full vent was either under powered or sufficiently powered - basically averaging around the point where the full sail and full vent meet. I thought the mid-vent was the perfect solution to mother natures cruel trick, but it turns out she had another one up her sleeve just waiting for my mid to arrive
When I got to the field the wind felt like it was that annoying in between wind that I got my mid for. Since it seemed promising and wanting to keep my comparisons consistant, I whip out my handy dandy wind speed meter to confirm. Sure enough, it's fluctuating either side of the 20km/h (12mph) mark that I found to be my handy dividing line between the full sail and full vent. It's a bit gusty when the wind jumps up but I decide to put my faith in the race rods surviving the stronger gusts in the interest of keeping the lower end going - I figure if it's a problem I can always land and switch frames to 3 wraps.
So I setup my girlfriend and my mids on race rods and 80 feet of 90# line and take flight. It didn't take long for us both to experience time when the mid was losing power and you would have to use some fancy footwork to power up again. Then there were other times the mid was very well powered up - mostly not enough for me to worry about the frame, but there was the odd occasion. We never just fell from the sky, but we did get that sudden loss of power where you're doing something and you just start sinking - sometimes you couldn't even hover in those lulls.
After flying for some time anyway, she decided to work on her tan for a bit and I decided I wanted to fly my Blast for a bit. I pulled out the wind meter again and watched it for a couple of minutes this time and saw the wind was actually going down to 12km/h (7mph) sometimes and other times jumping to 28km/h (17mph) or higher. Yes we were inland, but we don't normally get fluctuations THAT big.
My question is what would be the best setup to fly in conditions like this?
The way I see it there are 2 choices - Either the mid vent and deal with low wind conditions, of full sail and deal with the high wind conditions ... but I'm not sure which is the smart choice here. If one were to go full sail, I'm not sure what you would frame it with, since the gusts would seem to demand a pretty strong frame for the full sail - I'd even consider the SLE there. I don't think vented sails deal with the 'low wind' conditions very well (at least not at my skill level), so that makes it a tricky choice.
I didn't have time to mess with multiple configurations, so I'm hoping to draw on the experience here.
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kwmf
Well, I finally got to fly my new mid-vents since my exam is done (I'm a certified CCNA now) and the weather has (FINALLY) decided to play along ... but the flight has led me to a new question.
I got the mid-vents because I found I often had wind that fluctuated such that the full vent was either under powered or sufficiently powered - basically averaging around the point where the full sail and full vent meet. I thought the mid-vent was the perfect solution to mother natures cruel trick, but it turns out she had another one up her sleeve just waiting for my mid to arrive
When I got to the field the wind felt like it was that annoying in between wind that I got my mid for. Since it seemed promising and wanting to keep my comparisons consistant, I whip out my handy dandy wind speed meter to confirm. Sure enough, it's fluctuating either side of the 20km/h (12mph) mark that I found to be my handy dividing line between the full sail and full vent. It's a bit gusty when the wind jumps up but I decide to put my faith in the race rods surviving the stronger gusts in the interest of keeping the lower end going - I figure if it's a problem I can always land and switch frames to 3 wraps.
So I setup my girlfriend and my mids on race rods and 80 feet of 90# line and take flight. It didn't take long for us both to experience time when the mid was losing power and you would have to use some fancy footwork to power up again. Then there were other times the mid was very well powered up - mostly not enough for me to worry about the frame, but there was the odd occasion. We never just fell from the sky, but we did get that sudden loss of power where you're doing something and you just start sinking - sometimes you couldn't even hover in those lulls.
After flying for some time anyway, she decided to work on her tan for a bit and I decided I wanted to fly my Blast for a bit. I pulled out the wind meter again and watched it for a couple of minutes this time and saw the wind was actually going down to 12km/h (7mph) sometimes and other times jumping to 28km/h (17mph) or higher. Yes we were inland, but we don't normally get fluctuations THAT big.
My question is what would be the best setup to fly in conditions like this?
The way I see it there are 2 choices - Either the mid vent and deal with low wind conditions, of full sail and deal with the high wind conditions ... but I'm not sure which is the smart choice here. If one were to go full sail, I'm not sure what you would frame it with, since the gusts would seem to demand a pretty strong frame for the full sail - I'd even consider the SLE there. I don't think vented sails deal with the 'low wind' conditions very well (at least not at my skill level), so that makes it a tricky choice.
I didn't have time to mess with multiple configurations, so I'm hoping to draw on the experience here.
Steven
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