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Showing results for tags 'glide ratio'.
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Anyone know the glide ratio for my 63 M20D. I need to input that into my Stratus 2. Can not find it in the POH. Thank You!
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The weather turned nice here today with clearing skies, calm winds, and warm temps. So I went flying. Don't tell my wife. Okay, go ahead; she already knows. As I like to try new things and learn more about my baby (27 months mine) today's flight was to see first-hand how far I could glide in a power out situation. And boy was I surprised! I've always been told and used 10-1 for a glide ratio calculation so anytime I'm cruising I figure I can glide about 1.6 nm for every 1,000' AGL in calm air. Looking at my POH it's a bit more optimistic showing a glide ratio of over 11-1. But in today's test flight I beat that easily, achieving a glide ratio of 13.8 - 1. Needless to say I was gleefully surprised! I set this up by departing my home base to the south climbing to 10,000 AGL about 20nm from the airport. I turned east and reduced power to slowly stabilize the temps as low as possible (to minimize the possibility of shock cooling) before turning back north towards the airport. When I was 16nm from the airport (GPS distance) I pulled the power to idle and the prop control all the way back keeping the airframe in a clean configuration. I then trimmed for an airspeed of ~100ias and started the glide. It was weird seeing the prop turning so slowly (<1,000 rpm) and the engine was making virtually no power. I couldn't hear the engine running and before too long the EGTs on my JPI830 went completely off-scale (low). I occasionally advanced the throttle just a bit to make sure it would power up, but for only a half-second or so (not long enough to affect the results I believe). As I approached the airport I couldn't believe how HIGH I still was; I had expected to be set up for an approach after starting 16nm out at 10,000AGL. Instead I decided to go ahead and milk the glide as far as I could (down to 1,000AGL). When I crossed the threshold my altitude was still 2,900AGL! So, I continued to the 0nm point at the airport's center before turning west. From that point I glided another 4.5nm before finally dropping down to 1,000AGL at which point I eased in some throttle and prop to arrest the descent. I babied it back in to the runway on a long base-to-final to avoid heating it back up too quickly after the long descent at no power. I had glided 20.5nm or approximately 124,500' while only giving up 9,000' of altitude! This is much better performance than I expected. I will qualify by stating that I was at a weight of 2,300#; not gross. But I also was a bit faster than the book speed for best glide which is stated as 98ias (105ias @ 2,740#). I don't know how much another 440# would affect the glide but my POH only has the one graph for this calculation and it doesn't state which weight is shown. I suspect it's for gross. In any case, from now on while cruising I won't necessarily rule out those airports 20nm-22nm away while in the 10,000AGL range. In fact, for most of my flights I believe that a glide ratio of 13-1 is fairly conservative based on today's test flight. Any comments, questions, suggestions? I'd love to know if anybody else has done this and what their results were. CNOE