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 :-)