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# Analytical form of the glide polar.
# Implications of the polar: minimum sink speed, and best glide.
# Implications of the polar: water ballast
# Adjustments to the polar: headwind and sinking air.
# Adjustments to the The non-dimensional polar: change of glider weight, first purpose of water ballast.# More effects of water ballast and recommended readings. This article is a major project which will take me at least a month to complete. I cannot save a draft on WiKi, so if you accidentally come here and see this page in its very much incomplete form, please bear with me and come back after some time.
== Glider in Unaccelerated Flight in Still Air ==
# Increasing the aspect ratio of the wing is an effective (and, in fact, easiest) way to improve the best performance, as the best glide ratio scales with \( \sqrt{A} \). This is the reason why high performance gliders have slender wings.
# Improving aerodynamic design, such that \( C_{D0} \) or \( k \) is reduced, can improve the best glide ratio as we would intuitively expect. However, modern advancement in aerodynamics has been agonisingly slow and you realise that there is not much potential to be released by comparing a fibre glass glider built in the 1980s with a modern one. What differences do you spot?
Water ballast has no effect on the glider best performance, but it makes the best glide speed faster, so the pilot can cover a certain amount of cross-country distance faster. This is the first reason for using water ballast.
From a geometric point of view, the above solution process is equivalent to finding a ray from the origin that is tangent to the polar curve. You should ask an instructor to demonstrate this to you to reinforce the understanding. This geometric method is useful when more factors are taken into account, such that an analytical solution cannot be obtained easily.
