| Phil says "After
playing aeroplanes all week as a maintenance manager for Ansett Airlines
of Australia, I have accumulated 1200 hours (playing aeroplanes) since
starting gliding in 1982". He is a member of Beaufort Gliding
Club, operating from Bacchus Marsh Airfield 35km from Melbourne, Australia,
and flies the Libelle VH-GBP he rebuilt from a wreck acquired in 1989.
He is a cross-country and performance coach specialising in sports
psychology. Club Class competitions play an important role in his
flying agenda. Phil's best distance is 617km and he has been placed
2nd and 3rd in the 1995/1996 Club Class Nationals.
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Trying out a new vario can mean
having to let go habits you have been trying to refine for a long time
as it is the combination of flying skills and aircraft response to vario
activity that determines how well you climb and glide.
Malcom Crampton , the designer of the Tasman V1000 vario and fellow
club member, asked me to try out a production variometer, one year after
the prototype release. I have been using a Cambridge L-Nav, GPS-Nav combination
for some time and thought I used it fairly well.
Installing the V1000 is extremely simple. One electrical connection
and one tube connected to the TE, prior to any filtering used for other
varios. Oh yes, cut a 57mm hole in the panel. To give it the best shot
I mounted it top centre in the panel to use as the primary centring vario.
This proved more than a simple task as my Libelle has very little room
for extra instruments in the panel. Three panels layouts later the task
was completed.
The V1000 uses pressure sensing technology along with altitude compensation,
programmable smart gust and response filtering and displays a liquid crystal
-10 to +10kts segmented display. Press the red button to turn on and the
unit displays all sequences and audio before settling on a display of
the meter and numerical averager. The averager is continuously displayed
and in flight remained in unison with the Cambridge to 0.1kts displayed.
The yellow button selects variables, response time 1 to 4sec in 0.5sec
increments. Audio mode allows silent sink tone below 0 and sink tone.
Lift tone above zero is about twice the sampling rate of the Cambridge
and is enhanced at the 0 to 1kt range so that positive small responses
are not missed.
Some clever programming is included so that erroneous gusts are not
over running the positive small indications. This is very evident when
thermals are entered in the gust zones immediately before the core is
reached. This is the area you feel when we are saying "get ready,
climb ahead".
Audio volume and battery voltage can be displayed by pressing yellow
or red and yellow buttons together. Does it work out in practice? The
answer ís yes, very well. Not too many bells and whistles to confuse the
early flyer but operationally sound to give excellent confidence to when
to turn in t |
