Jose wrote:
You fly a Dakota, cross-country, at 500 feet?


I like to. But it's usually more like 1000. There are many more towers
now than there used to be, and the East coast is more dense than the
Mojave desert. (I used to fly up and down the desert like that twenty
years ago before there =were= cell phones - I probably picked up an
extra ten or twenty knots just from pitching down into the rising heated
air.)

And where did that rising heated air come from? If you were flying in a
straight line, then you likely aren't netting any gain from thermals as
you also are flying through the corresponding downdrafts.

Matt