One common misconception about drogue chutes is that they will make you 'land slower'. They don't change the wing's stall speed at all, wing doesn't know what is hanging below it. This causes a bunch of accidents. They only create drag, and to keep the same airspeed the pilot must then pull in, steepening the descent. The advantage I see on them is a shorter ground effect and for landing zones with tall trees around you can dive steeply right after. Effectively making a topless land in a space comparable to a single surface, but NOT slower at all, and not even more safely if you don't know how to deal with it. They are a good "nice to have" for restricted LZ, of course must learn first on big ones.
All right, I'd also add that it must be deployed at a good altitude, to get used to the new HG behaviour and to have time for plan B in case of malfunctions. Speed remains a key ingredient, the more you have the narrow you land and the safer are the turns. A good designed drogue stop working around 30-40 kph to avoid affecting the stall phase. I personally use a woody valley one.
Hmmm I would argue about "pulling in" to keep same airspeed. The added drag doesnt change the airspeed or trim seeting. We pull in to increase our speed, to have enought kynetic energy to be able making a nice flare before pushing out (stalling the wing).
I'd like to add: Drogue chute is a very valuable help during out-landings, such as while cross flying or during comps. By pulling very hard on the speedbar is possible to kill the glide-ratio a great deal and therefore being able to land in a very short and unknown field with high obstacles at the field's entrance. Cheers.
Fratello !!!! Thanks for commenting - hopefully, see you very soon down at Mt.Cucco ! Dudu is still recovering, but maybe he'll join us as well. Stay safe, see you soon brother. Abraci
As to the losing the most altitude in turns issue. Because turning in itself increases sinkrate the same airspeed turning compared to straight ahead will produce a higher sinkrate. Also, pilots tend to fly slower straight so the difference can be quite large. (sorry if this has been addressed, but I had to turn off the sound due to the background music)
The end of the video where you talk about aerodynamics and polar contains quite a few inaccuracies. Parasitic drag increases with the square of the speed. This is not due to Reynodls number, that's nonsense. In the drag equation, velocity acts as a square, while Re is in a linear relationship to the other terms. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_equation Drogue chute produces additional parasitic drag - therefore increased sink (mostly on higher airspeeds) - therefore not so flat polar when deployed. Just a note: The stall speed is the same. You can just land on shorter, restricted fields.
I use a Drouge a lot. Maybe 50% of landings. I actully have to force myself not to use it so I can keep landing well if there was a problem with it. From my experince. Every drouge is different. The WW drouge and the Aeros are smaller and less efficent, both about the same. Maybe the Aeros is a little bigger but hardly noticable. With the WW Drouge even on a long string (they get more efficent the further out they fly) I could with my U2 Kinpost Glider do a cordinated turn without slipping or stalling. I think ridge soaring with it out would be no problem. The Woodey Valley and the Seedwings are much bigger/efficent. I think there are different sizes for the Seedwings ones, but not sure about the Woodvalley. Manferd from Skypoint (seedwings) Looked at my WW Drouge, then gifted me one of his ones sorta implying "heres a real Drouge". Luckely i pulled it out on Final the first time I used it. Because I basiclly stopped in the air at about 10m and mushed down onto the basebar. Good for landing in a tennis court if you were used to it. I tried tieing nots in it to reduce its size but it was just too savage. Never had a good landing with it. I think there used to be two lines of thought. Small: can do turns get down by pulling bar speed on or come back to trim to extend your glide as per usual. Big: Line up high (20m exiting base onto final) pull it out and dive at the ground round out in 10m and flar comming down at a 60 degree angle. The WW or Aeros makes most things easier landings etc. Down hill etc. I will say though now im on the Combat mostly because it just has a higher trim speed the combat noticably slips sideways under drouge. Enough to need to be careful. I use the slipping to my advantage. If anyone was looking to get a drouge and try one for te first time. Id recomend the willswing one and read their Article on it. Accept I like the drouge behind me not om my side. Because several NZ Pilots myself included feel having it on the side and short induced a turn. Where as when its directly behind it actually feels like it helps you point into wind. My 2 cents good luck.
In any case, you haven't really understood the point of using a drogue parachute. First of all, the rate of descent increases enormously in a turn with a drogue parachute and you should therefore always make the last turn with significantly more altitude than you are used to with a normal landing approach. In my opinion, there are basically two sensible times when you should throw the drogue parachute. Firstly, at the beginning of the base leg, in order to have enough time and altitude in the event of an insufficient opening to reduce this with a figure eight loop or, if the opening was successful, then very effectively destroy the altitude by turning with a drogue chute. The more you accelerate before the curve, the greater the sink in the curve. However, the timely interception in front of the ground takes some getting used to and is not that easy. Or you do without this dangerous maneuver and only throw the drogue parachute on the final approach. However, if it doesn't open properly, you're out of luck, because you're usually already too low to be able to fly figure eight loops. In that case you may have to come up with a few tricks to get the wing close to the ground and up to stall speed in time. If the opening works well as expected, now is the time to accelerate properly, because that's the only way to get the decisive advantage. If you land at the usual slow speed, which is necessary without a drogue parachute so that you don't slide out in the ground effect for a long time, you hardly get the desired enormous glide ratio reducing effect. However, if you fly at high speed, the wing no longer translates this speed horizontally but can be pulled down to the ground very effectively without shooting forward like an arrow over the landing field. In addition, you then have an amazingly short gliding distance above the ground. At the end of the glide, the wing can be stalled at higher speeds without it uncomfortably rising again. The drogue parachute makes it possible, provided you use it as just described, that you can land your wing on very short landing fields without accident or injury and thus significantly increases the number of possible landing places, especially in XC flying. However, I have witnessed quite a few accidents that only happened because the pilot tried to land with the drogue parachute. In most cases, every advantage comes with a disadvantage. You should therefore practice landing with the drogue parachute regularly and often on normal-sized landing sites and then try to come as short as possible. Zero wind landings are also easier with a drogue chute. I myself had Wolfie (the Wolfie who made your Skyline harness) make me an extra large drogue chute and he warned me that the first time I tried it, I had to think about the flare in good time. And that's how it was, despite the warning and corresponding expectations, it went down extremely fast and I had to react very early on to avert an impact. But then I was absolutely thrilled by the extreme destruction of glide ratio.
I agree with you here: You should therefore practice landing with the drogue parachute regularly and often on normal-sized landing sites and then try to come as short as possible.
These two approaches/landings were at different speeds with the HG using the Drogue flying slower. If this HG had sped up the increased decent rate/slope would have been even more pronounced compared to the HG without the drogue.
Awesome video. Limited experience with a drogue in my HG times, but this all fits the picture. I do wonder, when you were discussing the vhor/vvert polar, you did not mention that using a drogue does anything to your stall speed. I can imagine it increases that right? You have way more parasitic drag after all. If so, does it change anything for your flare timing/amplitude? PS just started working on my review of your 9 mins of hell video, busy buying a new house and just delivered our first commercial sim, so quite busy... but it will come. Just watched that video again, it's really super.
Hello, Bas. The drogue chute does nothing to the stall speed (if it does, it's so minuscule that it's disregarded). This common misconception leads to accidents because people think "ah, with the drogue chute the stall speed is way lower, so I can take it really easy". Not true. Your stall speed stays the same. The main performance hit is taken on the glide ratio.
I agree with Erico and Massmimo. Like to add: do NOT use a drogue chute in any up-hill landing. also some people think it might be better to draw the chute out only when on final approach and while flying straight. If drawn in a turn the glider might get too slow and stall or sink too much into the curve. Happened to me, followed by a bad landing in a corn field.
I support this: only when on final approach and while flying straight. I have seen older TH-cam videos in the US where the the chute was deployed on the downward leg and the glider lost lots and lots of height turning into wind. If you are going to try using it as in this video, with lots of height, then don't be surprised how much height you lose. If you have so much height, then why not fly 360s and check out the proposed landing area, and make the final to just skim the last obstacle, after all you know from experience what your normal glide angle is, then deploy the chute.
I just feel like if you can’t put a hg down in a soccer field w/o a drogue you’re prob better off with a pg. that or you’re flying xc in a place where it’s likely too restricted. One strategy I employ is opening up my harness by spreading my legs and using that drag to kill the glide.
To anyone out there. I've given some thought to the use of a drogue chute since I traded up in glider performance. Currently I'm flying a wills wing sport 3 race 155 (bautek fizz se sitting in the garage as well). I've discussed drogue use with flying cohorts. The general idea was to have it and not need it rather than to need it and not have it. I usually pick sites with big lz's anyways. My problem is since I switched to a higher performance glider from a Seedwings Funky 17 I seem to have a problem of putting it down almost too short, seems pretty backwards in my opinion though I have overshot on a couple occasions. Anyway my main question is do I get a drogue chute and stow it away for emergency use, or use it for a couple practice landings then stow it away for emergency use, or try and use it as much as possible even when not needed?
Stefan, point taken. However, remember what I said: this was hand-drawn (with a mouse, rather than a pen/tablet) and I made it clear that the most important point was to convey a message about the nature of the polar "deformation". Of course, concrete values matter very much, and I may attempt to construct a "flaps at 100%" polar with my VQ and then post another video. So: you're most probably right, but I would say - for this video, I didn't have enough data points to come up with a real polar, and a guesstimated polar was good enough to get the point across. Thanks for your comment !
I would like to make a comment about the nature of turning aircraft mathematics and glide ratio. When you are flying through the air on anything and it's rated for 100 kilograms it will fly straight with probably 200 kilo grams. Perfectly straight with a perfect pilot. The second you turn you have a bank angle it reduces your vertical. The bank angle also loads up the wing and as it loads up the wing that makes it want to dive into a spiral because that's the easiest path for the wait to get to the ground besides the straight dive. I studied a lot of paraglider crashes and this lack of speed combined with a loss of glide angle when you turn adds up to be a spiral. When you had that drag shoot behind you, you increase the drag without increasing the lift and when you turn the asymmetrical effects cause a loading of the yaw axis. Your airfoil is not as perfect with the flow going over it less than parallel to the yaw axis. I am not sure where the limit would be as far as the minimum radius of curvature you can fly and still have enough steering authority to come back out of the spiral dive. I'm learning to fly in epsilon 9 paraglider and I wanted to get a drag chute to put behind me to make my landing speeds lower. I don't want to get that dreaded swing motion going when I'm close to the ground and I thought if I had a drag shoot to throw out behind me it would cause parasitic drag on the payload and the wing would take down and die of a little bit so it would be flying without wanting to stall and the way would be lifted up off the wing a little.
Very interesting ! I watched that in slow motion, and the slow motion confirmed my initial impression: you (I'm assuming it was you flying) bled the most altitude during the turns - not when you were going fastest. Very interesting ! I must watch it again to confirm...
One common misconception about drogue chutes is that they will make you 'land slower'. They don't change the wing's stall speed at all, wing doesn't know what is hanging below it. This causes a bunch of accidents.
They only create drag, and to keep the same airspeed the pilot must then pull in, steepening the descent. The advantage I see on them is a shorter ground effect and for landing zones with tall trees around you can dive steeply right after. Effectively making a topless land in a space comparable to a single surface, but NOT slower at all, and not even more safely if you don't know how to deal with it.
They are a good "nice to have" for restricted LZ, of course must learn first on big ones.
All right, I'd also add that it must be deployed at a good altitude, to get used to the new HG behaviour and to have time for plan B in case of malfunctions. Speed remains a key ingredient, the more you have the narrow you land and the safer are the turns. A good designed drogue stop working around 30-40 kph to avoid affecting the stall phase. I personally use a woody valley one.
Hmmm I would argue about "pulling in" to keep same airspeed. The added drag doesnt change the airspeed or trim seeting. We pull in to increase our speed, to have enought kynetic energy to be able making a nice flare before pushing out (stalling the wing).
I'd like to add:
Drogue chute is a very valuable help during out-landings, such as while cross flying or during comps. By pulling very hard on the speedbar is possible to kill the glide-ratio a great deal and therefore being able to land in a very short and unknown field with high obstacles at the field's entrance. Cheers.
Fratello !!!! Thanks for commenting - hopefully, see you very soon down at Mt.Cucco ! Dudu is still recovering, but maybe he'll join us as well. Stay safe, see you soon brother. Abraci
@@Theworldofhanggliding See you during good season mate! 🤙👋👋
As to the losing the most altitude in turns issue. Because turning in itself increases sinkrate the same airspeed turning compared to straight ahead will produce a higher sinkrate. Also, pilots tend to fly slower straight so the difference can be quite large. (sorry if this has been addressed, but I had to turn off the sound due to the background music)
Haha, fair enough 😉 I think you're right, we tend to fly faster in the turns, and then that explains the physics behind it.
@@Theworldofhanggliding We must fly faster to avoid a stall in a turn because of the increased G,s increasing the stall speed. 60 deg bank is 2G.
The end of the video where you talk about aerodynamics and polar contains quite a few inaccuracies. Parasitic drag increases with the square of the speed. This is not due to Reynodls number, that's nonsense. In the drag equation, velocity acts as a square, while Re is in a linear relationship to the other terms. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_equation
Drogue chute produces additional parasitic drag - therefore increased sink (mostly on higher airspeeds) - therefore not so flat polar when deployed.
Just a note: The stall speed is the same. You can just land on shorter, restricted fields.
Great video!
I use a Drouge a lot. Maybe 50% of landings. I actully have to force myself not to use it so I can keep landing well if there was a problem with it. From my experince. Every drouge is different. The WW drouge and the Aeros are smaller and less efficent, both about the same. Maybe the Aeros is a little bigger but hardly noticable. With the WW Drouge even on a long string (they get more efficent the further out they fly) I could with my U2 Kinpost Glider do a cordinated turn without slipping or stalling. I think ridge soaring with it out would be no problem. The Woodey Valley and the Seedwings are much bigger/efficent. I think there are different sizes for the Seedwings ones, but not sure about the Woodvalley. Manferd from Skypoint (seedwings) Looked at my WW Drouge, then gifted me one of his ones sorta implying "heres a real Drouge". Luckely i pulled it out on Final the first time I used it. Because I basiclly stopped in the air at about 10m and mushed down onto the basebar. Good for landing in a tennis court if you were used to it. I tried tieing nots in it to reduce its size but it was just too savage. Never had a good landing with it. I think there used to be two lines of thought. Small: can do turns get down by pulling bar speed on or come back to trim to extend your glide as per usual. Big: Line up high (20m exiting base onto final) pull it out and dive at the ground round out in 10m and flar comming down at a 60 degree angle. The WW or Aeros makes most things easier landings etc. Down hill etc. I will say though now im on the Combat mostly because it just has a higher trim speed the combat noticably slips sideways under drouge. Enough to need to be careful. I use the slipping to my advantage. If anyone was looking to get a drouge and try one for te first time. Id recomend the willswing one and read their Article on it. Accept I like the drouge behind me not om my side. Because several NZ Pilots myself included feel having it on the side and short induced a turn. Where as when its directly behind it actually feels like it helps you point into wind. My 2 cents good luck.
Heath, BRILLIANT comment mate !! Perhaps there is scope for a more in-depth look at this topic after all ! Thanks again and see you very soon 🐲🐲
In any case, you haven't really understood the point of using a drogue parachute. First of all, the rate of descent increases enormously in a turn with a drogue parachute and you should therefore always make the last turn with significantly more altitude than you are used to with a normal landing approach.
In my opinion, there are basically two sensible times when you should throw the drogue parachute.
Firstly, at the beginning of the base leg, in order to have enough time and altitude in the event of an insufficient opening to reduce this with a figure eight loop or, if the opening was successful, then very effectively destroy the altitude by turning with a drogue chute. The more you accelerate before the curve, the greater the sink in the curve. However, the timely interception in front of the ground takes some getting used to and is not that easy.
Or you do without this dangerous maneuver and only throw the drogue parachute on the final approach. However, if it doesn't open properly, you're out of luck, because you're usually already too low to be able to fly figure eight loops. In that case you may have to come up with a few tricks to get the wing close to the ground and up to stall speed in time.
If the opening works well as expected, now is the time to accelerate properly, because that's the only way to get the decisive advantage.
If you land at the usual slow speed, which is necessary without a drogue parachute so that you don't slide out in the ground effect for a long time, you hardly get the desired enormous glide ratio reducing effect.
However, if you fly at high speed, the wing no longer translates this speed horizontally but can be pulled down to the ground very effectively without shooting forward like an arrow over the landing field. In addition, you then have an amazingly short gliding distance above the ground. At the end of the glide, the wing can be stalled at higher speeds without it uncomfortably rising again.
The drogue parachute makes it possible, provided you use it as just described, that you can land your wing on very short landing fields without accident or injury and thus significantly increases the number of possible landing places, especially in XC flying.
However, I have witnessed quite a few accidents that only happened because the pilot tried to land with the drogue parachute. In most cases, every advantage comes with a disadvantage. You should therefore practice landing with the drogue parachute regularly and often on normal-sized landing sites and then try to come as short as possible. Zero wind landings are also easier with a drogue chute.
I myself had Wolfie (the Wolfie who made your Skyline harness) make me an extra large drogue chute and he warned me that the first time I tried it, I had to think about the flare in good time. And that's how it was, despite the warning and corresponding expectations, it went down extremely fast and I had to react very early on to avert an impact. But then I was absolutely thrilled by the extreme destruction of glide ratio.
I agree with you here: You should therefore practice landing with the drogue parachute regularly and often on normal-sized landing sites and then try to come as short as possible.
These two approaches/landings were at different speeds with the HG using the Drogue flying slower. If this HG had sped up the increased decent rate/slope would have been even more pronounced compared to the HG without the drogue.
Awesome video. Limited experience with a drogue in my HG times, but this all fits the picture. I do wonder, when you were discussing the vhor/vvert polar, you did not mention that using a drogue does anything to your stall speed. I can imagine it increases that right? You have way more parasitic drag after all. If so, does it change anything for your flare timing/amplitude? PS just started working on my review of your 9 mins of hell video, busy buying a new house and just delivered our first commercial sim, so quite busy... but it will come. Just watched that video again, it's really super.
Hello, Bas. The drogue chute does nothing to the stall speed (if it does, it's so minuscule that it's disregarded). This common misconception leads to accidents because people think "ah, with the drogue chute the stall speed is way lower, so I can take it really easy". Not true. Your stall speed stays the same.
The main performance hit is taken on the glide ratio.
I agree with Erico and Massmimo. Like to add: do NOT use a drogue chute in any up-hill landing.
also some people think it might be better to draw the chute out only when on final approach and while flying straight.
If drawn in a turn the glider might get too slow and stall or sink too much into the curve. Happened to me, followed by a bad landing in a corn field.
I support this: only when on final approach and while flying straight. I have seen older TH-cam videos in the US where the the chute was deployed on the downward leg and the glider lost lots and lots of height turning into wind. If you are going to try using it as in this video, with lots of height, then don't be surprised how much height you lose. If you have so much height, then why not fly 360s and check out the proposed landing area, and make the final to just skim the last obstacle, after all you know from experience what your normal glide angle is, then deploy the chute.
I just feel like if you can’t put a hg down in a soccer field w/o a drogue you’re prob better off with a pg. that or you’re flying xc in a place where it’s likely too restricted.
One strategy I employ is opening up my harness by spreading my legs and using that drag to kill the glide.
To anyone out there. I've given some thought to the use of a drogue chute since I traded up in glider performance. Currently I'm flying a wills wing sport 3 race 155 (bautek fizz se sitting in the garage as well). I've discussed drogue use with flying cohorts. The general idea was to have it and not need it rather than to need it and not have it. I usually pick sites with big lz's anyways. My problem is since I switched to a higher performance glider from a Seedwings Funky 17 I seem to have a problem of putting it down almost too short, seems pretty backwards in my opinion though I have overshot on a couple occasions. Anyway my main question is do I get a drogue chute and stow it away for emergency use, or use it for a couple practice landings then stow it away for emergency use, or try and use it as much as possible even when not needed?
Think I answered my own questions by reading a little
@@paulyoe6624 And what answer did you find?
I would disagree to the polar diagram. The "sinkgeschwindigkeit" at 40-50km/h should be around -2-3m/s.
Stefan, point taken. However, remember what I said: this was hand-drawn (with a mouse, rather than a pen/tablet) and I made it clear that the most important point was to convey a message about the nature of the polar "deformation". Of course, concrete values matter very much, and I may attempt to construct a "flaps at 100%" polar with my VQ and then post another video. So: you're most probably right, but I would say - for this video, I didn't have enough data points to come up with a real polar, and a guesstimated polar was good enough to get the point across. Thanks for your comment !
Lift/drag. That’s all there is to it. More drag steeper approach.
I would like to make a comment about the nature of turning aircraft mathematics and glide ratio. When you are flying through the air on anything and it's rated for 100 kilograms it will fly straight with probably 200 kilo grams. Perfectly straight with a perfect pilot. The second you turn you have a bank angle it reduces your vertical. The bank angle also loads up the wing and as it loads up the wing that makes it want to dive into a spiral because that's the easiest path for the wait to get to the ground besides the straight dive. I studied a lot of paraglider crashes and this lack of speed combined with a loss of glide angle when you turn adds up to be a spiral. When you had that drag shoot behind you, you increase the drag without increasing the lift and when you turn the asymmetrical effects cause a loading of the yaw axis. Your airfoil is not as perfect with the flow going over it less than parallel to the yaw axis. I am not sure where the limit would be as far as the minimum radius of curvature you can fly and still have enough steering authority to come back out of the spiral dive. I'm learning to fly in epsilon 9 paraglider and I wanted to get a drag chute to put behind me to make my landing speeds lower. I don't want to get that dreaded swing motion going when I'm close to the ground and I thought if I had a drag shoot to throw out behind me it would cause parasitic drag on the payload and the wing would take down and die of a little bit so it would be flying without wanting to stall and the way would be lifted up off the wing a little.
Nicht mehr in der Luft?
the comparison must be to the same speed !! pull ,the other time, to have right comarison..
Here's a truly steep and tight drogue landing for your interest: th-cam.com/video/ih6PUKYyERU/w-d-xo.html
Very interesting ! I watched that in slow motion, and the slow motion confirmed my initial impression: you (I'm assuming it was you flying) bled the most altitude during the turns - not when you were going fastest. Very interesting ! I must watch it again to confirm...
@@Theworldofhanggliding if you provide an email address I will send you the track log. You can always delete the email address later.
The background music is not really a plus.
Please remove the upper apex pads.......