Wet Suits for Audi's

[quk@sievers.com (Phil Payne)]

In message <199706102316.RAA19434@teal.csn.net> pacdev@csn.net writes:

> Judging the responses I've gotten on the wet suit it seems that marble sized 
> hail is a local phenomena. Having lost (insurance settlement) two cars to hail 
> in Denver I guess I'm more paranoid than most. 

In the early 1980s there was a storm in Munich with hailstones the size of 
tennis balls.   It hit the centre of town, including our office parking lot, 
and wrote off four cars.  The Munich authorities went as far as to produce an 
officially approved map showing exactly where hailstones of each size had 
landed, and these maps were accepted by the insurance companies.  One car (a 
200) was considered repairable - so it was fitted with new glass and driven to 
Frankfurt.  We all went out for a look - the whole of the top surface looked 
like a golf ball.
 
The repairs consisted of a new roof, bonnet and boot lids.  It didn't have a 
sunroof, and the calculation was so tight that it would have been written off 
if it had.

The impact speed of hail is _not_ given by the simple terminal velocity
calculations.  Hail often travels almost all the way to the surface in a 
downdraught, and you have to add the downward speed of the air mass to the 
nominal terminal velocity.

--
 Phil Payne
 phil@sievers.com
 Committee Member, UK Audi [ur-]quattro Owners Club