Re: Campbell's even crazier than a MANIAC? (archeopteryx climbing)

[jrc <jrccea@bellsouth.net>]

That energy can also come from atmospheric shears as well as from delta h. 
As an aside, one of the interesting things about gliding flight is that 
glide angle and glide range are not decreased with increasing weight.  For a 
given planform, increasing the weight increases both the sink rate and the 
airspeed by exactly the same amount, so the glide angle and range remains 
unchanged.
JimC

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Erik Boehm" <erikboehm07@yahoo.com>
To: "DML" <dinosaur@usc.edu>; <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: Campbell's even crazier than a MANIAC? (archeopteryx climbing)


> More generally regarding powered flyers and gliding .... if their minimum 
> energy output to maintain level powered flight is X watts, then when it is 
> not powering its flight(flapping, a propellor, etc), those X watts are 
> coming from a change in potential energy, ie delta h (height in: PE = 
> mgh).
> The more energy intensive the flying must be, the faster it will sink 
> while gliding, but it can still glide.