I don’t fly my Radian glider as much as I probably should. Honestly, one reason is that I am terrible at finding lift, yet feel compelled to search for lift, so that what should be a relaxing flight with a friendly plane turns into a failure.
I tried the Thermal Scout from Winged Shadow Systems – a vario device that wags the plane’s tail when it hits lift – but, in order to actually notice it happening amid the gusty winds of Kansas, I have to turn it up so far that it actually disrupts the flying.
So I’ve invested in a Spektrum Variometer and TM1000 telemetry module. Combined with my DSM2-capable DX9 transmitter, this should allow me to read lift down at the transmitter. Maybe I can even get it to make sounds like a ‘real world’ variometer. We’ll see.
The first step was to pull the Thermal Scout out, and figure out which wires to plug where. The web tells me to cut/pull the data wire between the TM1000 and my old AR500 receiver to prevent future problems, so I did that.