Thermaling Basics - Animation and real Flight Example

[@alanford700]

Gliding community needs more educational videos like this. Keep up the good work 💪🏻

[@spitzflight]

More to come!

[@alanford700]

@@spitzflight thank you for the effort

[@renatrex1]

Really a great video, very informative and very helpful. Thanks well done. Go on like this

[@CountCraigula]

Pehaps thermal (flir) binoculars or goggles could be developed to aide pilots in finding their next thermal? Perhaps a heads up display?

[@markuskommenda6264]

So cool! Impressive video recordings, easy-to-understand explanations and great animations! Carry on!

[@spitzflight]

Thanks, will do!

[@manifestgtr]

I’m a single engine pilot but I have a lot of respect for the gliding community, man. It’s a whole other world by comparison. Completely different priorities…when you hit a thermal in a single engine, it’s annoying and it messes with the altitude you’re trying to maintain. It’s *especially* annoying when you’re coming in on approach. There’s a lot of concrete near my home airport, so there are days during the summer when you just get heaved up into the air on downwind and have to cut power to compensate.

[@spitzflight]

Ja, i can imagine. We - @Spitzerberg - have a funny situation: In the area where the gliders reduce their altitude to go for downwind, there is a large green house. And just in the moment when you do your last turn to go to the "position", the pilots often encounters an updraft. So you have to decide, try another run, or stick to your plan and go for landing. Altitude often is about 300m. BTW: For a certain wind direction we share the landing pattern with the engine pilots, and very often we are thankful because the engine guys have to give way for the gliders. Its a very good exercise for traffic observation, for both ...

[@jonsteensen7706]

"The wind will give him a similar offset as the thermal tube, so he will stay in the updraft". Nope, that is not what happens in real life. The reason is that the glider is extracting energy from the air, and hence it won't climb at the same rate of the air. Instead it will climb at the vertical airspeed of the bubble minus the sinkrate of the glider. As both the bubble and the sailplane drift over the ground at the same horizontal speed, the higher vertical speed of the bubble, means that the thermal tube must have a steeper angle than that of the spiralling glider, as the steepness of the angle is basically given by the ratio of the vertical speed to the horizontal speed. The result is that if you as a pilot does nothing to compensate for the wind, you will slowly drift out of the bubble in the downwind direction. Therefore, if you loose a bubble, a good strategy can be to fly a bit upwind, to try and relocate it.

[@spitzflight]

You are 100% correct. I just wanted to make things a little more simple, and "similar offset ... stay in updraft" is not exactly what really happens. BTW: Very good explanation. Would you be available for reviewing my text in my next vid: Thermaling advanced?

[@TamasLaszlo-83]

Awesome video! 😊That thermal animation is very good! I learned to gliding by IS-28b2 sailplane in 2005. My instructor always said me " If you can't find a good thermal and your position below 250 meter, go back and land." And fortunatelly I have never landed on a field or crash the glider plane...

[@MazingTree]

This is really good. Love to see some more like this.

[@nelsonbrandt7847]

Excellent video. Thank you for making it. I will share it with my glider students.

[@spitzflight]

Glad it was helpful!

[@DanielaLenger]

...sehr anschaulich erklärt! Großartig! Bitte mehr davon.

[@ManfredRKUENG]

Well done !!!

[@pompeymonkey3271]

In normal English soaring conditions, if you wait 3-4 seconds before turning, you'd have flown through it. ;)

[@spitzflight]

Yeah, from the beginnig feeling the lift in the bottom or seeing it on the variometer ? It depends on… in this video it was a „broad“ updraft. In rhe alps it will be much more narrow, so turning after 2 seconds …

[@pompeymonkey3271]

@@spitzflight To be honest, I haven't been soaring for about fifteen years, but I still feel the itch. My brother is an glider instructor. I really have no excuses...lol Edit: about ten years

[@EneriGiilaan]

Very good - would be excellent without the totally unnecessary and irritating muzak ...

[@elizabethrogge7908]

Why can’t they put a thermal detection device in the glider so you can see it in real time

[@spitzflight]

well, there is actually one, called Variometer. But it does not show where the upwind is, and - unfortunately - its some seconds behind the actual situation ...

[@alexmark1982]

It would kill all the fun.

[@nkronert]

The air itself doesn't give off infrared radiation so temperature differences in the air cannot be detected from a distance.

[@venturiniandrea]

Great Video and good work. Please contact me, I would like to have this video translated into Italian as well… let me know me know if you would interested. Thanks.

[@spitzflight]

Sure. PM to [e-mail] …