Altitude (or L/D) safety factor

We all use some safety factor when soaring, for example 1/2 best L/D is a typical conservative factor for XC pilots. It would be nice to implement this in the altitude needed and final glide portions.

I implemented this crudely in glider GPS by editing the polar to have 2x the drag at every speed. This doubled the altitude above glidepath needed, and I could easily tell if I was within my safety factor. But this throws off the speed to fly calculation.

So what we need is a safety factor that modifies only the R = d/h ratio, not the polar itself.

If a safety factor F is chosen (for example 1/2 best L/D becomes F = 2), we would take the h = F*d/R.