On Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 7:01:38 PM UTC-4, Craig Funston wrote:
We're getting closer. A fist size LIDAR for $250 thanks to the push for self driving cars.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...s_2&set=602506

Cheers,
7Q

Boggs says " it is too hard to soar"!!!
Come on every ( well nearly)glider pilot can stay up all day,
on normal thermal soaring day, that is a day with enough convective
depth and not ever development.

I digress; In the 70s , I experimented with electric field detection
using nose and tail probes. Other researchers were doing this (eg Markson). I was able to observe a horizontal field across
a weak thermally created airmass boundary, by crossing and recrossing the otherwise invisible division. For XC soaring this is useless,because the problem of subtracting the large vertical atmospheric field from the weak horizontal field was close to impossible with 1970s technology.
These days there is enormous computing power and memory for calculations and 2D displays. Sensors for the vertical and horizontal fields, plus bank angle, could allow data accumulation allowing the wing tip sensors to show a display of horizontal fields( thermals are
usually positively charged). This could be a useful indication
for interthermal path selection.


John Firth an old no longer bold PIK 20E pilot.