The closest thing I have seen for thermal locators is WinPilot's data
base for thermals. you can enter as many thermals for a site that you
want to and have a read out on you PocketPC Winpilot program that
shows where thermals have historically been located given a particular
day, time of day and wind variables. Works pretty good, but if you
have flown many years at one site you know where the thermals are
anyway, if there are any thermals that is.

G. Kemp

DrJack wrote in message ...
Bob Johnson wrote:
Serusly, maybe Dr. Jack can log in with his forecast of when he thinks
real-time moving map cockpit displays of current thermals, or (let's not
be unreasonable here) 1-hr old thermals will be available.
Or does he think there is a physical limit to this problem, beyond which
we cannot go? (Like 7 A-h batteries)

The first thing that needs to be established is data uplink to a glider
so that _presently_ existing observations (eg satellite images) or
predictions (eg updated BLIPMAPs) can be obtained, and I'm not an expert
on when that will occur. (Milt Hare used to solve the updating problem
by calling his glider-rated wife from the air and having her describe
the latest BLIPMAP predictions to him, but I don't think that will be a
common practice!). Observation of individual thermals is difficult
enough for researchers (typically taking two lidar/radars) so I can't
see that being feasible in my lifetime, and in any case thermals have
relatively short lifetimes - what would be more practical would be
observation of the general "convective status" at specific locations,
which is possible using special temperature-profile sounders (not the
sounders used for upper-level wind speeds) - but at present those are
few and far between (an example of such sounder output can be seen at
http://www.weather.nps.navy.mil/profiler/ord_mix.gif )