Why I love gliders…
If you ever get into gliders, and your serious about it, you’ve just opened up a Pandora’s Box: Thermals, what are they? How do they form? What is a thermal bubble? How do
Clouds form? Dew point! ? Should I fly under that cloud?
The common knowledge is “get your glider up and start doing circles, if a wing tips up, then turn into that direction”… Well, that’s partly true, when you FIND a thermal… But, first…
You need to find it!
The best way to find a thermal is to follow the hawks and birds. I did that today, and my glider was flying so strongly that I had to BRING it down, on purpose!
No power, throttle at zero… and yet…
Up , up, up! It was a classic Thermal Bubble…. moving left to right, it came off the housing community off at the south of the field! I just followed the hawks… circles… moving left to right. This is what a thermal bubble is.
Everybody has in some point in their life made a bubble. Think about it… a big bubble ring, when the bubble comes out of the ring, it looks like a tear drop. That’s, what a thermal bubble looks like: it’s a big tear drop of warm air, that comes off of, in this case, the big housing community, just south of the airport. If the wind is blowing, south to north down the runway, you may find that thermal bubble! That’s why the hawks kept moving north; they were in the bubble of warm air that the wind sheared from the housing complex. The hawks were doing circles, in the bubble, and I was up there with them!… doing the same thing. No power… up, up, up!
If you want to find thermals , keep an eye-out for the birds. Then get up high, fly into the wind… don’t just get up high, and do circles; save that for when you Find a thermal. Go back and forth, one mile left, and one mile right… and if you get lucky, and the wing goes up, right side, turn into it and then “start your circle”.
ANYway, don’t let any one tell you you can’t fly a glider in high winds, as I’ve heard so many times… You will lose the thermal bubble! I think I proved my point on that!
Out!
Fantastic article dearly-loved gliders myself I’m not that good yet but I’ll keep trying.