How gliders fly

On Thursday, March 19, 2015 at 6:17:03 PM UTC+13, Ramy wrote:
Of course one can climb very high of a ridge in ridge induced thermals and wave. I often climb to 18,000 feet in wave from a 2500 feet ridge. But in pure ridge lift it is uncommon to climb much more than 1 x time ridge height.

You're saying you can't get above the top of the ridge?

That may be true with very shallow slopes and light winds, but it's not the case here.

To the south of our field we have ~800 ft high sea cliffs and in 20+ knot onshore winds we can often run along at zero sink at 80 - 100 knots at 2500 ft (the airspace limit in that area). No thermals or wave involved. Lift at ridge top height is often in excess of 1000 fpm.

To the north we have a ridge 5 km inland about 1700 - 1800 ft high which almost always gets us to 3500 ft and sometimes to 5000 ft in pure ridge lift.