Crestline Soaring Society

I'm pretty sure I put the nosecone on my UltraSport before I launched, but it wasn't there later in the flight. I did a couple of sets of wingovers after launch, so it's possible that it came off after/during those, but the velcro was by no means worn out. I launched Crestline at 14:45 on Sunday, June 22, 08. There were a number of other pilots at launch, and I was the first to launch. None of the pilots I later asked said they had seen it. If I left it on the ground it was windy enough that it might have blown into the parking lot. Maybe some spectator kid found a funky new hat.

If you found it or heard about it, please let me know.

With square-tip gliders (plastic tip fairings) the common wisdom is that if you don't have your nosecone that you should leave the tip fairings off to keep the sail from inflating and causing the bottom surface to bulge down, which moves the center of lift backward. I can now attest that this does indeed happen, but it wasn't a constant thing. It flew fine most of the time during my 2.25 hour flight, but sometimes, it seemed to be when I was exiting a moderately strong thermal, the nose would start to drop and the basetube would come back about 5 inches. Letting it trim there for a few seconds would allow things (pressure?) to normalize and the bar would come back out. I never fought the pitch change much, so don't know if it would have stayed that way.

I've purposely flown square-tip gliders in the past with the nosecone on and the tip fairings off and also without either, and they exhibit no such effects; no adverse control effects of any kind, actually. Some loss of performance and some tip flutter, sure.

Good Flying,
Ken Howells