Mike Rapoport wrote:

Downdrafts are always balanced by updrafts over any meaningful distance.. In

Make that "mostly". Mountains sometimes bear some surprizes, if you
don't know the region. Anyway, we were talking about night flying. Not
easy to find the right ridge ad night...

any event, if there were significant downdrafts, it wouldn't make much
difference if the plane could climb 50fpm or sink 50fpm in still air.

My point exactly.

Stefan