Thermal mapping

This is not my idea but it sounds pretty good to me. "Doug" at Texas Soaring
Association (TSA) folds up TSA tow tickets so that they have two helicopter
blades and a body. As kids, we used to do this and throw them in the air and
watch them rotate and disappear in a thermal or rotate to the ground. When
"Doug" finds a thermal he throws a few of these folded helicopter tow
tickets out the vent window. They tend to go to the core of the thermal and
he follows them up. Don't anyone report "Doug" for excessive use of TSA tow
tickets or I will be in big trouble.

Hoping to center the thermal,
Bob Kibby "2BK"


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"John" wrote in message
om...
Here is a thought:

Was in the back yard making thousands of soap bubbles (Mr. Bubbles)
for the baby. Slight breeze. Clearly could tell the entire airflow
pattern in the back yard....even a little ridge lift over the glider
trailer!

Wonder if you could add a soap bubble machine to a sailplane? Turn it
on when you first hit a thermal and a trail of bubbles is created.
After one circle, just fly toward the highest bubbles and that is
where the thermal's core is.

I could see the bubbles about 200 feet away, but might could add a
color die to enhance visibility further.

Any thoughts on this?

"Bubbles, toliet paper, and bent tow tickets seem to center thermals by
themselfs. Free flight model airplanes do a good job of centering thermals
by themself. Ever consider what might happen if we just trimed out our
sailplanes and kept our hands off of the controls?

Duane

Duane Eisenbeiss wrote:

"Bubbles, toliet paper, and bent tow tickets seem to center thermals by
themselfs. Free flight model airplanes do a good job of centering thermals
by themself. Ever consider what might happen if we just trimed out our
sailplanes and kept our hands off of the controls?

How do we know they are centered? All I knew is the model was going up,
but I didn't know if it would do better in a different location.

I know just flying steady circles with the least amount of adjustment
needed to maintain attitude doesn't work well for me!

--
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change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

"Duane Eisenbeiss" wrote in message news:3Q1hc.31080$yD1.92394@attbi_s54...
"Bubbles, toliet paper, and bent tow tickets seem to center thermals by
themselfs. Free flight model airplanes do a good job of centering thermals
by themself. Ever consider what might happen if we just trimed out our
sailplanes and kept our hands off of the controls?

Duane

Dick Schreder also suggested the idea back in the 60's. He used
Kleenex and I have tried it myself several times. The mechanics are
easy. Open the side window and with your free hand pull out a Kleenex
from the box (pop-up type), hold the sheet near the window and let go.
Out it goes and do another. In one circle in a thermal you can drop
ten or more. The sheets are fairly visible. You then continue flying
the circle and observe any sheets that are higher than you are. steer
toward them. In normal soaring it isn't much better than using the
vario but I used to think that when desparately low it might be a
useful last chance.

Rudy Allemann

i´ve an old (70+) friend that used to launch small pieces of toilet paper or
even yellow pages from phone books, cut to pieces. It seems pretty effective
to him. Perhaps a good old habit from the 50's...

norbas
(lak12)

Norbas wrote:
i´ve an old (70+) friend that used to launch small pieces of toilet paper or
even yellow pages from phone books, cut to pieces. It seems pretty effective
to him. Perhaps a good old habit from the 50's...

I'm thinking it's not useful to have markers showing the lift where
you've already been - you know what's there, so why mark it? How about
something that disperses the markers over an area about two or three
times the size of a circle, so you can see what the lift is in places
you haven't flown through?

A toilet paper roll with a large firecracker in it, and a spring loaded
ejector would do the trick, but I sure wouldn't want to be in the
cockpit if the firecracker exploded before the roll was ejected!

I know! A trained flock of small soaring birds that you release when
desperate. They spread out over the area, circling when they find lift.
Once you start climbing, they return to the glider and crawl back
inside, ready for the next time you need their assistance.

Or, always team fly with 5 or 6 friends (buy them identical gliders if
you have to). Someone will find lift.

Or, do what I do: carry lift in the glider, and when you need some, turn
it on. It's a mature technology, available today from your glider
dealer. OK, maybe not available TODAY, but he'll be glad to order it for
you, and within a year, you'll have it. Or, buy a used one, and get it a
lot sooner.
--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 08:00:04 -0700, Eric Greenwell
wrote:

I know! A trained flock of small soaring birds that you release when
desperate. They spread out over the area, circling when they find lift.
Once you start climbing, they return to the glider and crawl back
inside, ready for the next time you need their assistance.

A month or so ago there was a nice piece on BBC Radio 4 about a hang
glider pilot who had a hen harrier that was trained to fly with him
and even to sit on a perch on his glider. He said that when lift was
strong he'd launch and gain height before letting his raptor fly with
him, but in weak, dodgy conditions the bird was flown first. He'd
launch and join her once she'd found a thermal.


--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :

(John) wrote in message . com...
Here is a thought:

Was in the back yard making thousands of soap bubbles (Mr. Bubbles)
for the baby. Slight breeze. Clearly could tell the entire airflow
pattern in the back yard....even a little ridge lift over the glider
trailer!

Wonder if you could add a soap bubble machine to a sailplane? Turn it
on when you first hit a thermal and a trail of bubbles is created.
After one circle, just fly toward the highest bubbles and that is
where the thermal's core is.

I could see the bubbles about 200 feet away, but might could add a
color die to enhance visibility further.

Any thoughts on this?


This has been tried on and off for more than 50 years.
Popular markers were baloons, toilet paper, and most recently
published a bunch of years ago, newspaper.
Harry Senn found that newspaper was about what it took to be able to
see. Soaring had a very funny article on this experiment with classic
cartoon with it.
Reality- it doesn't work in the real world.
UH

How about throwing dollar bills out the canopy sliding window? That would
be a more direct way of wasting money on soaring and would also attract non
fliers to the sport.


"John" wrote in message
om...
Here is a thought:

Was in the back yard making thousands of soap bubbles (Mr. Bubbles)
for the baby. Slight breeze. Clearly could tell the entire airflow
pattern in the back yard....even a little ridge lift over the glider
trailer!

Wonder if you could add a soap bubble machine to a sailplane? Turn it
on when you first hit a thermal and a trail of bubbles is created.
After one circle, just fly toward the highest bubbles and that is
where the thermal's core is.

I could see the bubbles about 200 feet away, but might could add a
color die to enhance visibility further.

Any thoughts on this?

were several studies that used smoke, but that can't
be analyzed

I was wondering about orange smoke flares but I can
see that one might either fill the cockpit with an
impenetrable haze or knock chucks off the horizontal
stabiliser. Both would cause a greater degradation of
performance than a need to pee.

I can also see that flares attached to balloons are
difficult to push through the clear view panel. But
maybe the T21 will come in handy!

I wonder how "skywriters" make their smoke and what
the effect of thermalling with a smoke dispenser would
be like, maybe personal IMC conditions.

Thermals could be colour coded according to strength.

If the dispenser was attached to the vario, then the
smoke could be varied by colour according to lift,
making it easier to move towards the green smoke and
away from the red smoke. - with the potential to
reverse the colours if needed to confuse the unwanted.

Today, most work of this kind is done with LIDAR
(Laser Radar) which can track naturally occurring
tiny aerosols of pollen and dust revealing the 3D
structure of airflow with great precision over a
large area in real time.

Has anyone any leads to accessible output on the
results of LIDAR?

Rory