I used to soar quite a bit. You can definitely get some help from thermals
if you pay attention to the VSI and your sense of acceleration (i.e. your
butt). In fact, learning to correlate the VSI with the 'seat of your pants'
is key. The VSI is showing you what happened seconds ago. You feel the
acceleration long before. Reacting to the acceleration and then calibrating
what you feel with the VSI is how it's done.

I wouldn't advocate trying to circle much. It can be done but unless you
are trying to clear some mountains, I wouldn't bother trading forward
progress for height. Many thermals in most places are going to be too small
to do it effectively.

In a long cross country climb, you can do several things:
1) When encountering lift, pull up and slow down to the slowest speed you
feel comfortable at or above Vy (engine cooling and visibility may be 2
limiting factors). Conversely, when encountering sink, let the plane speed
up and get thru it as fast as possible.
2) When encountering lift, note which wing rises. Immediately put that wing
down a few degrees and turn slightly in that direction. It is most likely
where stronger lift may be.

The ground is of little use at normal cruise/climb altitudes but pay
attention to the clouds. Puffy, fresh growing cumulus clouds have thermals
under them. Often, slight route changes based on the clouds will put you in
more lift than sink. If the clouds are lined up, it's a cloud street and if
it's aligned with your direction of flight, the gods are smiling at you. If
you hit it right, you'll be at cloud base before you know it.

In cruise, instead of maintaining altitude exactly, allowing the lift to
lift you while slowing a bit, and diving thru the sink is more efficient.

The interesting part is that if you fly accurate altitudes and correct your
direction with a little sloppiness, you will tend to fly in the worst air in
the most inefficient manner. That is, you'll tend to find and fly in
sinking air. What you want to do is turn towards the areas that are pushing
you away and pull up when a thermal kicks you up and push forward when you
are sinking.

Reichmann's book is one of the definitive works but way too much for what
we're talking about here. A soaring pilot with someone with some glider
x-country experience would be more instructive.


"Kees Mies" wrote in message
om...
Hi All,

I need some advise.
The summer is starting and my plane is a rotten climber, certainly on
hot days at MTOW.
The best it can do in these conditions is about 300fpm.

My idea is to use thermals to climb (much)faster like gliders do.
Is this a stupid idea?
If my idea is not that stupid how do I find thermals and how to use
them properly?

Maybe I should have asked this on a soaring site but I think there are
a lot of pilots flying both kinds of planes.

BTW, my plane is a MS880 Rallye.

Thanks,
Kees.
D-EDMB.