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Old 7th Mar 2011, 22:16
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HazelNuts39
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: France - mostly
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Green Guard;

I wasn't referring to gliders, just to glider pilots, because they should be familiar with optimizing their airspeed for vertical and horizontal air movement.

I suggest you make a plot of rate-of-climb on the vertical or y-axis versus airspeed on the horizontal or x-axis for whatever airplane you are interested in. You'll get a curve shaped somewhat similar to one of the curves shown here. Then draw a straight line from the origin and tangent to your curve. The angle of that tangent to the x-axis represents the angle of climb, and the point it shares with your curve is your speed for max angle of climb in still air. Now draw another tangent to your curve from a point at 10 kt on the x-axis. The point where the second tangent touches your curve is the airspeed for max angle of climb in a 10 kt headwind.

Regards,
HN39

Last edited by HazelNuts39; 8th Mar 2011 at 10:54. Reason: graph
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