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  #11  
Old November 30th 09, 12:26 AM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
george
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Posts: 803
Default High flight

On Nov 30, 11:40*am, Mike Ash wrote:
In article
,

*george wrote:
On Nov 29, 10:40*pm, a wrote:


I would have expected the burble that causes the waves had to be
within a couple of thousand feet of the ridge altitude, but you got
rides to much higher than the mountains in WV -- ridge altitude plus
what -- 5 or 6000 feet? Neat stuff. You get to play in what we could
call 'fly through/over' conditions. *I guess wave height has also a
lot to do with the ridge to valley distance on the upwind side.


The best wave is what we call 'Secondary wave' which is downwind from
the 'primary' wave.
Its more powerful and a lot smoother and can be quite a distance from
the 'primary' wave.
The bit in between is where you don't want to be :-)..


I may just be revealing my ignorance here (and if so, would be glad to
have it corrected) but I thought the primary was generally the
strongest. Wave tails off as it gets farther from the source, so each
jump in tends to get you into stronger lift, with the best one being the
very first one after the generator.

Is it actually the case that the second one is stronger than the first,
and THEN it begins to fall off? It's possible, I'm certainly no expert,
but it doesn't match my fairly limited experience of wave flying.


I can only relate my experience of wave, which, like yours, is limited
to my own experiences.

When I flew at Masterton the Hood wave could have up to 4 or 5
secondaries.
A mate captaining a loaded Bristol Freighter actually managed to gain
height just traversing the secondaries.
The very interesting American pilot who died a few years back in the
desert (Steve Fossett) was attempting to use secondaries in the South
Island to do the ultimate Height gain. He even wore a pressurised
suit.
Always wondered what comes after a diamond height gain :-)
  #12  
Old November 30th 09, 03:34 AM posted to rec.aviation.student,rec.aviation.piloting
[email protected]
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Posts: 838
Default High flight

Nice ride report Mike!

Soaring a different world of aviation in the full scheme of things,
yet all really is the same when it comes to enthusiasm..
  #13  
Old November 30th 09, 04:43 AM posted to rec.aviation.student,rec.aviation.piloting
george
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Posts: 803
Default High flight

On Nov 30, 3:34*pm, " wrote:
Nice ride report Mike!

Soaring a different world of aviation in the full scheme of things,
yet all really is the same when it comes to enthusiasm..


And the photos :-)
Just do a search for Mike in the group.
He posted a link to some photos a while back
  #14  
Old November 30th 09, 06:57 AM posted to rec.aviation.student,rec.aviation.piloting
Mike Ash
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Posts: 299
Default High flight

In article
,
george wrote:

On Nov 30, 3:34*pm, " wrote:
Nice ride report Mike!

Soaring a different world of aviation in the full scheme of things,
yet all really is the same when it comes to enthusiasm..


And the photos :-)
Just do a search for Mike in the group.
He posted a link to some photos a while back


I have a huge pile of glider-related photos:

http://pix.mikeash.com/main.php?g2_v...um&g2_keyword=
glider

Short version:

http://tinyurl.com/yklehor

Some videos too, of which this is my favorite, showing all the good
parts of an entire flight, including takeoff, tow, and landing:

http://www.mikeash.com/?page=glider_first_hd_video.html

Regarding enthusiasm, you bet. It may be a little different from what
you guys do with those big fans up an the front of the plane, but the
essentials are all there.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
  #15  
Old November 30th 09, 07:21 AM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Mike Ash
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Posts: 299
Default High flight

In article
,
george wrote:

On Nov 30, 11:40*am, Mike Ash wrote:
In article
,

*george wrote:
On Nov 29, 10:40*pm, a wrote:


I would have expected the burble that causes the waves had to be
within a couple of thousand feet of the ridge altitude, but you got
rides to much higher than the mountains in WV -- ridge altitude plus
what -- 5 or 6000 feet? Neat stuff. You get to play in what we could
call 'fly through/over' conditions. *I guess wave height has also a
lot to do with the ridge to valley distance on the upwind side.


The best wave is what we call 'Secondary wave' which is downwind from
the 'primary' wave.
Its more powerful and a lot smoother and can be quite a distance from
the 'primary' wave.
The bit in between is where you don't want to be :-)..


I may just be revealing my ignorance here (and if so, would be glad to
have it corrected) but I thought the primary was generally the
strongest. Wave tails off as it gets farther from the source, so each
jump in tends to get you into stronger lift, with the best one being the
very first one after the generator.

Is it actually the case that the second one is stronger than the first,
and THEN it begins to fall off? It's possible, I'm certainly no expert,
but it doesn't match my fairly limited experience of wave flying.


I can only relate my experience of wave, which, like yours, is limited
to my own experiences.

When I flew at Masterton the Hood wave could have up to 4 or 5
secondaries.
A mate captaining a loaded Bristol Freighter actually managed to gain
height just traversing the secondaries.


Yesterday I jumped forward four times, I think, and there were still
several more to go before reaching the source. I would estimate that
there were 10-15 in total, stretching back into West Virginia. Each time
I jumped forward, though, it got stronger, and I thought that trend
would continue all the way to the first one.

I wish I could find a good archive of the satellite imagery. The wave
was clearly visible, and pulling up the satellite picture on my phone
just before takeoff was a huge help during the flight.

The very interesting American pilot who died a few years back in the
desert (Steve Fossett) was attempting to use secondaries in the South
Island to do the ultimate Height gain. He even wore a pressurised
suit.
Always wondered what comes after a diamond height gain :-)


Do you know of any articles that talk about him flying in the secondary
wave there? Or, for that matter, any articles that talk about those
flights at all... they're bound to be an interesting read.

Fossett, along with Einar Enevoldson, also holds the current glider
altitude record of 50,727ft, set in South America.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
  #16  
Old November 30th 09, 09:33 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
george
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Posts: 803
Default High flight

On Nov 30, 7:21*pm, Mike Ash wrote:

Fossett, along with Einar Enevoldson, also holds the current glider
altitude record of 50,727ft, set in South America.


Yup. I knew that. :-)
He saw some sort of interaction between the wave at Omarama and the
jet stream producing cloud at a great height.
It occured to him that there might be lift being produced.
That's about all I can remember about it.
Thanks for reposting your photo link
  #17  
Old November 30th 09, 09:36 PM posted to rec.aviation.student,rec.aviation.piloting
george
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Posts: 803
Default High flight

On Nov 30, 6:57*pm, Mike Ash wrote:

Regarding enthusiasm, you bet. It may be a little different from what
you guys do with those big fans up an the front of the plane, but the
essentials are all there.



My 'big' fan photo.
http://www.koekejunction.hnpl.net/Ph...e%20flying.jpg
  #18  
Old December 2nd 09, 02:44 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Ross
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Posts: 463
Default High flight

Mike Ash wrote:
In article
,
a wrote:

So help a non-glider pilot here. I take it the lennies simply mark the
altitude where the RH goes to 100% but the updraft continues well
above that?


Right. The structure of the wave is a wavelength a couple of miles long,
and an amplitude of, I'm not even sure, a couple thousand feet? There's
sometimes a certain altitude where the RH is near enough to 100% that
the lifting part of the wave is enough to cause the moisture to condense
out and form a cloud, but that's not a requirement for lift. You can
generally find lift above and below the lennies, as well as in places
where the wind and temperature profile is correct for wave but the RH is
never high enough for cloud formation.

It looks like the distance between the lines is not that
great, so I expect it would be a bumpy ride for us guys who buy lift
by the gallon if we were flyong toward the mountain.


Actually, that's the great thing about wave: the air is absolutely
perfectly 100% smooth. There were many times today where both of us had
our hands off the controls and the glider would just keep on doing its
thing with no real disturbances. A power pilot might notice the
transitions from up to down if he's watching his rate of climb
indicator, or seeing that he's making periodic alterations to maintain
altitude, but the transition from up to down is completely smooth and
there's no turbulence.

Underneath the wave, below the laminar layer, you get a turbulent layer
of rotor which can be incredibly violent, like frequent negative gees
causing various loose items to get all floaty in the cockpit violent.
The really fun thing about wave flying in a glider is that you often get
to TOW through that region, so you're experiencing this crazy turbulence
while tied to another airplane with 200ft of rope. It gets exciting, to
say the least. Today was pretty mild, just took some work to stay in
roughly the right position.

Maybe the no
'marker clouds' you mentioned may simply mean the air lost its
moisture on the up windward side of the mountain, there was nothing
left to condense out. The 'initial gust' from a thunderstorm is often
pretty dry, it left its water up there to turn into hail and a
downpour.


Yes, that certainly could be (it's common for there to be a solid cloud
deck on the upwind side of the mountains on these days, and broken
lennies downwind) or it could simply be that the air in that location
doesn't have enough moisture in the first place. Or, the third
possibility is that there's just no more wave over there. I was trying
to figure out whether it was no wave or just no moisture today, and from
what we found it seemed that it might have been a mixture of both.

Hypothetical question, because you of course would never do this, but
how often do sailplane pilots mess around closer to the clouds than
someone who treated the FARs as something never to be violated?


Yes, of course we would never do this....

One incident that I will talk about freely because it was an honest
emergency was about a week ago when I was trying to connect with wave,
and I did, in a cloudy patch. As I was climbing up through the clouds I
discovered that they were growing in that area, and soon found myself
cut off from being able to fly in any location free of the clouds.
(Imagine the classic box canyon scenario, but with soft fluffy clouds
instead of hard rock.) Once I realized the situation I immediately
pulled the spoilers and initiated a steep spiral descent through a milky
hole below me. I wasn't in serious danger because I only had to lose
about 1000ft to get under them, and I couldn't have exceeded my redline
or gee limits before breaking into clear air again, but it was nearly an
accidental VFR-into-IMC and definitely violated the cloud clearance regs
when the stuff started to grow all of a sudden.

Hypothetically speaking, a glider pilot on a good thermal day might ride
the thermal up to cloud base, and call whatever distance he can see
between him and the cloud "500ft", since it's very difficult to judge
the exact distance.

Great set of photos, but the panel isn't showing tach, fuel gauge, nav
1 and 2, comm 1 and 2, AH, etc etc. Waddaya doing, flying by outside
reference?


I noted with some amusement at one point in the flight that the most
powerful navigational instrument in the plane, by a huge margin, was my
phone. Other than that, all we had was a compass and a pair of sectional
charts. Of course, with unlimited visibility and a horizon distance of
over 100 miles, it would have been incredibly difficult to get lost.

I also did not notice the traditional piece of yarn taped to the
windscreen.


You can see a bit of it here, at the top:

http://pix.mikeash.com/v/wave1109/IMG_0227.JPG.html

There is also one taped to the front canopy, but it is blocked by my
brother's head, which of course is why the back-seater gets his own.
Flying from the back is interesting at times. For example, with a
reasonably tall passenger in the front seat, the ideal position while on
tow is when the tow plane's wings are coming out of the passenger's ears.

Nice post.


Thank you! I hope it might serve as an inspiration to others as well.
I'm happy to talk about gliders all day long, but I'm here to read some
interesting stuff about how the "other side" lives too.


I had a boss that was an accomplished glider pilot, but never had the
chance to get a ride. Something I want to do. I did do a balloon ride
and that was fun. I got to "fly" the balloon when the pilot learned that
I was a fixed wing pilot. Boy are they slow to respond to commands.
About 20 to 30 seconds after hitting the burner.

--

Regards, Ross
C-172F 180HP
Sold
KSWI
  #19  
Old December 2nd 09, 03:13 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Stefan[_3_]
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Posts: 10
Default High flight

Ross schrieb:
Underneath the wave, below the laminar layer, you get a turbulent
layer of rotor which can be incredibly violent, like frequent negative
gees causing various loose items to get all floaty in the cockpit
violent. The really fun thing about wave flying in a glider is that
you often get to TOW through that region,


Why don't you release there? In the Alps, the upward side of the rotor
is usually used as the staircase into the wave. Saves a lot of money, as
towing directly to wave altitude tends to be expensive.

  #20  
Old December 2nd 09, 06:06 PM posted to rec.aviation.piloting
Mike Ash
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Posts: 299
Default High flight

In article ,
Stefan wrote:

Ross schrieb:
Underneath the wave, below the laminar layer, you get a turbulent
layer of rotor which can be incredibly violent, like frequent negative
gees causing various loose items to get all floaty in the cockpit
violent. The really fun thing about wave flying in a glider is that
you often get to TOW through that region,


Why don't you release there? In the Alps, the upward side of the rotor
is usually used as the staircase into the wave. Saves a lot of money, as
towing directly to wave altitude tends to be expensive.


Depends a lot on conditions. If the wave is low, then you might as well
tow into it. (I released at only 3,300ft above the airport in wave,
wouldn't have released below 3,000ft to climb in rotor probably, and
passed through another region of wave that I was too chicken to try out
at only about 2,000ft or so.) Climbing in rotor can also be unreliable
in my experience. We had several flights which attempted to climb in the
rotor on Saturday and who couldn't make it work out. Lastly, being in
rotor is unpleasant, so I figure if you can get out of it quickly by
towing to the wave then that's a good thing to do.

It really all depends on the wave altitude. If it starts at 2,500ft, tow
right into it. If it starts at 7,000ft, you're probably better off
releasing lower and making your own way up to that altitude.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
 




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