SAILPLANE PERFORMANCE MEASURED IN FLIGHT

Abstract

In the past year, membens of the SSA Flight Test Committee have completed a portion of a continuing test program to measure the performance of a number of sailplanes. The long-range goal is to provide a body of performance data which will at least be consistent within itself and, hopefully, also be sufficiently accurate to be of interest in terms of absolute performance. A 100-hr test has essentially been completed on the T-6, a modified HP-14 sailplane; this sailplane then was used as a basis for comparative tests to establish the performance of seven othen sailplanes. This summnary report describes the T-6, the perfonmance data obtained, the test techniques and data reduction procedures, and then briefly covers the comparison tests and results obtained for the othen seven sailplanes.