Thermal Q's
#26
Senior Member
RE: Thermal Q's
ORIGINAL: spiral_72
I actually found a thermal! A poster above stated "it's not as hard as you think". I'm not sure about that but it's definitely not as hard as I thought to find a thermal. Maybe I got lucky, but there was an area in the sky she just refused to fly. It "bumped" my plane off. I was able to circle around the perimeter of where I was supposed to be. I did extend my flight using it's lift, but I never did get hooked onto the thermal.
I actually found a thermal! A poster above stated "it's not as hard as you think". I'm not sure about that but it's definitely not as hard as I thought to find a thermal. Maybe I got lucky, but there was an area in the sky she just refused to fly. It "bumped" my plane off. I was able to circle around the perimeter of where I was supposed to be. I did extend my flight using it's lift, but I never did get hooked onto the thermal.
Is it easier to find a thermal with no wind? Or does it matter?
Don't try to work out too simple a theory of thermals. Some are columns. Some are single bubbles. Some are bubble trains. Depends on what's cooking (the topography that's generating the heat), and how fast it's cooking, and whether or not the wind is gusty or steady, and how strong the wind is.
Is there still Thermal activity at 6pm when I get to the field and unload my stuff, or is it useless by this point?
Do you suppose a 2-lane road could generate enough rising air to lift a 2m glider? or maybe just to extend the flight time? The reason I ask is, as a kid I caught lift that extended my flight off a road, but Saturday there didn't seem to be any available over the road. I just wondered if it's a waste of altitude to try.
One thing to watch..... Clouds. If there are lots of cumulus (the round puffy clouds) you have two things going on. They create shadows that move along the ground. And let sunlight sweep all the rest. And what happens is the sunlight heats up say that hunk of road you want to try, and it starts building up heated air directly above it. Then a cloud shadow comes along and very often there is some cooler air in that shadow. Colder air next to warmer air gets things moving.
The clouds also tell you that the day is working making thermals. They're visible results of rising warm air.
Watch the wind and the clouds and the sun and the temperature of the day.