Talk:Gliding
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 | Gliding has been listed as one of the good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. Review: No date specified. To provide a date use: {{GA|insert date in any format here}}. (Reviewed version). |
 | Gliding received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article. |
Please see Talk:Glider GrahamN
Ray Van De Walker: I have moved the text you added about about "rotor" in the "Glider" article to here. But I'm not sure about your statement that most sailplane altitude records were set by riding rotors. I could be wrong, but I thought most record-breaking flights were done in wave. GrahamN
Amos Shapira: You use "Recently" about powerfull powered gliders being authorized to tow. I'd like to suggest that if you want to make this text relevant for a long period then you change that to some year estimate (e.g. "as of 1995" or somesuch, I don't know the exact year).
- Hi, Amos, thanks for the comment. You are right, of course. I'm afraid I don't know the year either. I didn't even know about this business of motor gliders towing other gliders until somebody added that sentence to the article. One excellent thing about Wikipedia is that there is no hierarchy of contributors. We are all equal here. So, if you see some error or failing in any article, please don't feel you have to consult or ask permission - just plunge in and edit the article to fix the problem. By the way, you can automatically sign your name with the date by typing four tildes (~) in a row. Like I'm about to do now: GrahamN 23:56 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
André Somers:
Hi, I have extended the text on launch methods a bit. Not only diesel engines are used in winches, also plain petrol or even LPG or natural gas. I have also added a subsection on the rubber band start method.
- And recently electro motors have come into use because of their superior handling compared to combustion engines. Actually the sailplane winch warrants its own article by now, I think. -- Andreas B. 22:12, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The frequent mutation of "evinced" into "evidenced" amuses me. --Ghewgill 14:40, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree that there is nothing wrong with "evinced" as a word. However the sentence is rather inelegant. --Jmcc150 08:20 1 June 2005 (UTC)
Animal Flight & Gliding vs Soaring
Gliding and soaring are not the same thing (this artical says as much), so I really don't think "soar" or "soaring" should redirect here as if the two were synonymous. This is an important distinction in animal flight, and conflating the two doesn't make things more clear.
On the subject of animal flight, directing people to bird flight is not good enough, because many more animals than birds fly by gliding and soaring. This article should either discuss animals and other natural gliders and soarers (heck, some seed pods can glide), or be reworded to reflect that fact that many things may glide or soar, whether they are man-made or not .
I don't want to hack into this page myself, as I am no expert on aerodynamics, but I may well do it if you don't pay me ONE MILLION DOLLARS, or do something to correct this page's shortcomings, whichever is easiest. John.Conway 02:42, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
OK I have set up Soaring as a disambiguation page. No knowledge of aerodynamics required. Please send me the million dollars, if it arrives. JMcC 16:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Proposed Move to Gliding (Aviation)
I think this page should be moved to Gliding (Aviation), and be linked to from a more generalised page on gliding. Any objections? John.Conway 17:18, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
- Not from me, though the page should be Gliding (aviation) with a lower case "a". Martin 17:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
- but very strong objections from me. In my opinion the sport of gliding is the main use of the word. To give you an idea of the popularity of an under-publicised activity, there are well over 100,000 active glider pilots in the world. There are hundreds of articles that link to Gliding and Gliders in the English Wikipedia alone. The vast majority are about the sport and only a few about bird and bat flight. It is a little like an article on London being moved to London (England). I have set up a disambiguation page instead. If the subject of animal flight needs a page called gliding, I suggest a page is created called Gliding (birds and bats). Incidentally I do recognise that the birds started gliding before the human race, which explains why they are still better at it. JMcC 10:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
- There may be a different reason many more sport articles link to this page other than it being the main use - in that it doesn't do the job of describing gliding outside of aviation, so people have refrained from linking (I know I have). I just want to be able to link to something that describes the general aerodynamics of gliding. Gliding (birds and bats) is a poor compromise because may other things glide (pterosaurs, squirrels, frogs, lizards, seed pods, etc.) If the move was to happen, it main gliding article would maintain a section on the sport. We need some more input on this. John.Conway 10:42, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
- I agree with JMcC. --Guinnog 10:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
No - it seems pretty clear to me that the aviation use of Gliding is the primary meaning. 'What links here' should always be your first port of call when considering a page move and is the fundamental basis of Wikipedia's article naming guidlines - ie. most editors should just be able to guess a link to an article without checking it. There are some incoming links (e.g. in bat and Hero System) where the process of gliding is intended but they are in the minority.
However, I agree that we need a more general page on the lift/drag aspects of the process of gliding, although much of this is infact covered in Bird flight. That could perhaps be at gliding (aeronautics) or possibly glide, which needs some work in any case. Note however that there is a completely different type of gliding that is a property of liquids, boats, skaters, dancers and snakes (according to my dictionary - your millage may vary), but that is probably best handled with a link to Wiktionary.
Similarly a page on hovering would be useful. AFIK only a handful of birds and insects. And you would also need to look at soaring. -- Solipsist 13:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
- "Gliding" is such a general term that it's silly to limit it to one use of the word. A similar situation, off the top of my head, would be Cycle. Take a look at that page, and then imagine if it were dedicated only to the sport of riding a bicycle (which has it's own page, Cycling. Using this example, a comprimise might be to create an entry for Glide (rather than Gliding) which discusses all of that word's various uses, with links to more specific articles.Dinoguy2 16:38, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
- I have no problem with a page called "Glide", provided there is a link at the beginning to Gliding. JMcC 22:57, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Peer Review/FAC Notes
History
I think the history section probably ought to make some mention of the use of gliders in several combat missions in the Second World War. The best way is probably to just point over to Military glider for the main details, since it isn't that closely related to gliding as a sport. -- Solipsist 10:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Aerobatics
I'm not especially familiar with aerobatic competitions, but isn't one of the features of gliding aerobatics in contrast to muscle aerobatics that the pilot has to be especially careful to perform maneuvers with the minimum loss of energy. I recall seeing one demonstration of aerobatics that principally involved beating back and forth above the runway climbing to perform a maneuver at each end. In effect carefully balancing the interplay of potential and kinetic energy. Excess drag in any maneuver would drain kinetic energy and limit the number of maneuvers that could be performed before landing. However, I don't know whether this is typical of aerobatic competitions. -- Solipsist 17:28, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Good Article
I have passed this article. It is comprehensive, fairly well-referenced, well-illustrated (I actually sort of like that picture of the cumulus clouds with its psychedelic combination of slightly blown highlights, almost impossibly cobalt blue and just a bit too much sharpening ... makes me think of this this song and well-organized. I couldn't find anything that was too egregious for me. Ultimate compliment: I learned a few things I didn't know that made me go "Hmm ..."
One thing to fix, though, if the editors involved want to seek FA status: make sure to include English equivalents for the metric units used when discussing speed records et al. Also, you might want to consider having the pictures alternate sides. This has been shown to improve readability as it mirrors the sweep of our eyes across the page.
Congratulations! Daniel Case 18:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Questionable material moved over from the article page
Ballast
Moved from article page:
- The idea of using ballast came from a pilot named George Tabery.
I'll concur with User:Jmcc150: this seems plausible, but needs a citable reference for inclusion. -- Solipsist 20:03, 6 October 2006 (UTC) Further research on rec.aviation.soaring produced a quote from the definitive three volume book on gliders since Daedalus by Martin Simons that ballast was first proposed in Germany in 1934. A Minimoa (pre-war type of glder) had tanks fitted though no year is given. A Schweizer 1-21 had ballast tanks in 1947, the year that George got his Siver C so it is possible he was the first in the USA. I have omitted first users from the article. JMcC 16:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Hazards
- Collisions with commercial aircraft are unlikely because glider access to the controlled airspace used by airliners is tightly restricted.
First, this is unsourced. Second, gliders w/o any radios/electrical equipment are perfectly legal and frequent along low-level arrival routes, at least at the East-coast U.S. where I flew them, which makes me feel this is a wrong piece of original research. --BACbKA 15:05, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I admit finding a source for a negative statement is trickier than a positive. A recent debate with the UK's Civil Aviation Authority over the universal fitting of transponders has only revealed one collision with an civil airliner (in France in 1999). This occurred in uncontrolled airspace and resulted in no injuries.[1] If there had been more, I have no doubt that the CAA's consultation paper [2] would have listed them. As it was, the CAA's case for transponders was embarrassingly flimsy, despite having the last sixty years of aviation accidents from throughout the world to choose from. The recent Minden incident with a bizjet also occurred in uncontrolled airspace. On that basis I felt that the statement 'collisions with commercial aircraft are unlikely' could be justified, though hard to reference. Secondly, I did not say that gliders could not penetrate controlled airspace. I said it was tightly restricted. There are many areas with low traffic volumes which can gliders can penetrate (Class E & F) without radio contact. Class E only requires VFR and F only requires you to exercise caution. To my mind this is not really 'controlled' since since there is no need to contact a controller. Class D is another matter and I hope that your experience in the USA is similar and it really is controlled tightly. Radio contact is mandatory for me, and under ICAO rules it should be in the USA also. There are places where higher categories of airspace can be penetrated but the rules get even tougher. I think a non-aviating reader would like to be reassured that the chances of an airliner, especially in controlled airspace, hitting a glider are vanishingly small. Do you have any suggestions how this could be phrased? JMcC 16:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)