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formation ridge soaring (gliders)
Posted: Thu May 23, 2013 10:46 pm
by Keith Smith
One of the coolest things I've ever seen. The northbound run (second half) is the best:
http://youtu.be/aob5JxEFTw0
Adjusting position in formation flying when you don't have a throttle control is non-trivial....these guys do a good job. Stunning visuals.
Re: formation ridge soaring (gliders)
Posted: Thu May 23, 2013 11:27 pm
by Keith Smith
I had no choice but to try to replicate some of this in X-Plane. Hardest part was finding the field

It's 1L8 (Dick Stout airport). hills pretty much matched what I was seeing in the video, including the second ridge further east. I set the wind to the same as they reported in the video, launched off the winch from rwy 36, turned east for the ridge, entered the lift band then followed the ridge south. Good times. We have go to try this on PE as a formation event at some point
This is the view above the airport facing south so you can see the ridges:

- ASK21_2.png (7.01 MiB) Viewed 1949 times
This is the view after turning around and facing north, back towards the airport:

- ASK21_1.png (5.86 MiB) Viewed 1949 times
Re: formation ridge soaring (gliders)
Posted: Sat Jun 01, 2013 11:50 pm
by Greg.M (Scaber)
Very cool. I recently revisited Omarama (NZOA) to replay some of my flights from 30 years ago. Wow, these new gliders are so much better than the ones I used to fly! I'm going to try this out too, thanks for sharing.