July 2, 2001.

The Monarch F!

We have made a discovery! The Monarch F will get a much higher L/D with nose weights.

Mike and I also measured the position of the control stick vs the elevator deflection and found that
at the airspeed what we think should be approximately the best L/D we seem to use too much down elevator.
As demonstrated in the charts below notice that the L/D increases as we add weight to the nose.
We have two weights one roughly twice the weight of the other. With both weights installed the glider
definitely has the better L/D. The elevator has definitely less deflection down to maintain the same spped with the nose weights which leads us to one conclusion that if we reduced the amount of reflex we could have less control deflection and
have a better L/D. Pressures at the stick would definitely lessen which for some may feel uneasy but
easily remedied with springs. One other adverse side effect of adding the nose weights is that the glider cannot fly
well with very low speed. Some of these effects are due to the pendulum effect of the pilot under the high wing.

On this run we tested the airspeed again and found that with my GPS we where only about .8 mph off with the aircraft airspeed as seen below in the second chart.

Note that the sink rates and L/d reflect the days conditions and are not an indication of the true sink rate or L/d but they do serve a purpose in doing a comparison for things tried on that particular day.

June 24th. The second set of test runs was flown by Mike Couts in the morning of Sunday June 24, 2001. Our flights where done about 8:30 am to about 10:00 am so it was less than idea but good for more practice at setting times and such. The 30 mph run was compensated for in airspeed since we managed to get one airspeed correction by GPS. (thanks to Dave wells for the formula)

Since one must constantly tap the altimeter to get the correct reading and in all of our runs the GPS and Aircraft altimeter read pretty much the same we decided that the GPS was accurate enough for out testing after todays results.

We still have not been able to compensate for temperature and pressure... but the formulas are being entered in our spread sheets.

We only did three runs, within the limited time as well as the one 30 mph airspeed calibration.

Late in our testing session an addition to our rope of 500 ft made a great difference in our altitude gain... now to 1300 ft!!!. but it was late in the day and our radios had died.... so next session!!

There are still a number of errors and as we refine our methods the results will be more accurate.

As always one wants to get very high L/D results... but we also notice a great compromise in the enjoyment when you add a canopy... adn hte enjoyment goes down considerably. So we will refine our Monarch as much as we can without giving up the open cockpit feel. The addition of a small windshield does help with windnoise and does not get rid of the op[en cockpit feel..... so now to measure the effect of the windshield!

There is still the question of the correctCG placement. On these runs we noticed that the best sinkrate occured with a slight elevator down position, indicating a too aft CG or too much reflex in the airfoil..... point to ponder.!

Results for June 24, morning, with wind from the north at 3 mph, very humid, 3012 altimeter with 1300 density altitude at 1000 ft. Temperature was 65 degrees for the first test and 68 degrees F for the last test.

	June 24, 2001 test results Note the very high sink rate at 35 mph, we believe this might be in error . Due to lack of time we could not redo it.
	June 24, 2001 test results. Again the very poor results for 35 mph indicate we may have an error.

June 22, 2001. We did our first performance test runs in less than ideal conditons. It was just before a thunder storm with winds down runway 24 at 7 mph and diminishing. It was a good test run. We decided to time the Monarch F over a certain decent which in the air proved to be 300 ft. Mat flipped for the first pilot and with the many new things to be done swimming around in his head, he was so totally confused that he forgot what runway to call his departure. When at altitude Mat ran crossways to the wind from 900 ft. to 600 ft. holding a certain airspeed. There where lots of errors but this gave us the necessary understanding of what it takes to get performance figures. Holding a course and airspeed needed attention while constantly tapping the airspeed indicator, calling in information and getting back to airport. Our open cockpit had problems with the microphone picking up all kinds of static wind noise making the transmission difficult. At any rate we got some figures and have some more ideas on how to calibrate the airspeed and results for sea level.

First test run June 20, 2001 Wednesday

Conditions: Winds at 7 mph from the west, density altitude about 2000 and temperature falling ,starting at about 73 degrees F. We did these tests just before a thunderstorm and rain. The air was not perfectly calm.... but it was great to get out and give a trial run. The results are obviously flawed and we need to refine our methods and procedures but it gave us a start.

Next outing we will check our airspeed with a GPS..... found a formula that Dave Wells left me to do this by flying three different directions at a set airspeed then recording the GPS ground speed, temperature and pressure.

With Mike Couts as Pilot with the winds dying he got one good run in at 30 mph which indicated a much better sink rate of 163 ft. per min and an L/d of 19 but we had to cut his flying short due the rain and the imminent thunderstorm.

One of the things we did conclude is that there is definitely the best sink rate at around 30-32 mph indicated airspeed.... but exactly what the figures are is unclear.

June 19, 2001.Below we have worked up some theoretical performance data for the Monarch F. The Glider performance values at the bottom are a good guess that need to be confirmed with flight testing which we will do shortly.We also note that each airfoil program derives different theoretical values for the Airfoil drag.For this chart I am using airfoil II.