"Jim Vincent" wrote in message
...
some pilots are not "in the zone" with their gliders, and could not
determine a "lifted wing" if they had rely on it to find a therma

I was recently enlightened by Tom Knauff that the lifted wing approach
only
works about half the time.

Consider three sections of air: calm air, sink before a thermal, and the
lift
of the thermal itself. Imagine that you're flying along and you happen to
run
into the sink on the left wing and lift on the right wing (hand flying
really
helps here). In this case, the lifted wing approach would work; turning
into
the lifted wing would take you into the lift.

Now consider if you're flying along and run into the calm air on the left
wing
and the sink on the right wing. If you use the lifted wing approach, you
woud
turn into the calm air and away from the lift! The best course would be
to
turn into the lowered wing, drive through the sink and on into the
thermal.

So, it really makes do difference which way you turn. It matters more how
you
respond to the conditions you experince when you make the turn.

IIRC, Tom also mentions that if you turn the wrong way, you complete a 270
to fly directly back into the lift as the quickest correction.

Jim, you need to jump into the PW-2 Gapa thread.

Jim Vincent
CFIG
N483SZ


Actually posted from TOPSPAM which is a proper munging.

Frank Whiteley