Tufting Results
Well, after a little more sailing I gathered quite some footage to be evaluated. I tested different courses to the wind, and always sheeted to have all leech telltales flying. Conditions were from F3-6, beam reach to close hauled, gentle seas (more or less).
Today I went through all of the recordings, only to find that they all show the same: regardless of wind speed and course, all tufted telltales fly horizontally - at least with the sensors at hand: my eyes. It also didn't matter if on port- or starboard tack (only the two most forward measurement points were indicating the detached airflow on port tack, not shown in the sketch). The following sketch sums it up, with heeling corrected.
Not that much learnt from this experiment, except that the air is flowing horizontally. Great, finally we got that secured...
However, what I could observe clearly is that the telltales do not point more upwards on windward than on leeward - which would be my expectation when a tip vortex is formed. However, as my measurement method (eyesight) is rather rough, and the upwash and downwash due to the tip vortex forming is rather small, this tells us nothing.
Hm. I do not trust this little experiment of mine. Too much noise, too rough. A lot of wrong indications could be drawn.
It was, however, nice to watch this woolen horde stream happily while sailing :-)
Paul
PS: Do you wear a smoking when smoking?