Sunday, May 2, 2010

What altitude did James reach in the Superlite???

Today was an extraordinarily beautiful day in Wichita. Light winds; blue sky; puffy cumulus. The airport was buzzing: two helicopters, a tow plane, at least two gliders, a C182, a Aeronca, and the Belite Superlite Sun N Fun winner.

I wanted to test some instrumentation; buzz a friend's house (with his permission); and test fuel consumption in the Superlite. Also, I wanted to climb a long ways up and see what the world liked like.

All successful. The icing on the cake was throwing a roll of toilet paper at my friend Kevin. (A couple of hours later: somehow it reappeared on my front lawn.)

Even though it was a T-shirt day on the ground, I wore my leather coat in preparation for much colder weather up high. When I got up there, I loitered over the gliderport for a long time. I shot video of KAAO (Jabara airport) off in the distance; and although I did not have a true altimeter with me, the video says it all. Very chilly.!

If the blog video won't open, it is also posted on youtube:

How high was I?? I'd appreciate your guess.... The Jabara runway is 6101 feet long!

Please place a guess in the comments. Thanks!!


jeffkinni said...

High enough that you should have filed a fly plan. I'm guessing 10,000 feet

J said...

I'm assuming your configuration is the same as the one laid out here:

So the altimeter on your dash is no help, as it's pegged at 1200.

I did some quick math, attempting to find a ratio with some measurements taken with a ruler on the screen, and ended up at 9500ft if I assume a 10" wide LED panel, or 10,500 if I use 9". But that's some loose calculations.

robert said...

I got 10031 feet off google earth eye level.

robert said...

Google earth had you at 10031 feet.
I matched your video and set google earth to match what could be seen in the pictures at the estimated same angles.

J said...

jeff's guess was great then! My ruler method was to literally measure the instrument panel (43mm vs width of LED panel) and the runway before the camera zoom (33mm vs known runway width) and then find the relationship between them.

robert, Does google video have a feature to match to a source, or did you fly the camera up to a spot until you matched a frame with some landmarks? Really good idea, btw.

robert said...

I just adjusted the camera to where the angle and view looked similar then looked at what it said the eye view was

James Wiebe said...

I'm guessing 8K feet.