25C3 - 1.4.2.3
25th Chaos Communication Congress
Nothing to hide
| Speakers | |
|---|---|
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Martin Ling |
| Schedule | |
|---|---|
| Day | Day 2 (2008-12-28) |
| Room | Saal 2 |
| Start time | 14:00 |
| Duration | 01:00 |
| Info | |
| ID | 2940 |
| Event type | lecture |
| Track | Science |
| Language used for presentation | en |
| Feedback | |
|---|---|
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Flying for free
Exploiting the weather with unpowered aircraft
Birds, glider pilots, and recently UAVs can exploit a variety of weather effects in order to gain altitude, remain airborne and travel long distances all with no power input – effectively, hacking the atmosphere to fly for free. This talk will explain the aircraft, techniques, meteorology, hardware and software that we use to achieve this. In the process I will show why the sport of gliding may be of interest to hackers, and explain how you too can get involved in this highly rewarding and low-cost form of flying.
Introduction – a brief history and philosophical motivation.
Vulnerabilities – an introduction to the different mechanisms by which we can extract energy from the atmosphere including ridge, thermal and wave lift and dynamic soaring.
Hardware – comparison of the various types of soaring aircraft including sailplanes, hang gliders and paragliders, R/C gliders and recent autonomous soaring UAV projects, along with instruments and other equipment.
Software – a look at the increasing array of both ground-based and in-flight software used to aid soaring, much of it now in the form of open source projects developed by and for pilots.
Results – an overview of modern gliding and its accomplishments, and some tales from my own experience as a pilot and instructor.