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Ridge Soaring Suggestions


Lep

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Just watched a wonderful clip on ridge soaring at Logan, Utah.

Does anyone knows of a good, and long, nice ridge to soar along in FSX? For the one at Logan, where is a good starting point?

Lep

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Just watched a wonderful clip on ridge soaring at Logan, Utah.

Does anyone knows of a good, and long, nice ridge to soar along in FSX? For the one at Logan, where is a good starting point?

Lep

The Appalachian Mountains of the NE USA famously form 1000km of ridges conveniently aligned to the prevailing northwesterly wind. There are a variety of good real soaring airports to fly those ridges from, in particular Mifflin, PA (KRVL), and Ridge Soaring Gliderport.

Real gliding championships are held at Mifflin, e.g. see this info here

But if you haven't tried it in FSX you're missing out - either set the wind for 17 knots from the NW and launch from Mifflin and go explore, or try these:

FSX Gliding Missions for Mifflin ( MAKE SURE YOU USE THIS DOWNLOAD LINK FOR THE ACTUAL FILES)

B21

Here's the task overlay on the area map:

mifflin_tasks.jpg

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The Appalachian Mountains of the NE USA famously form 1000km of ridges conveniently aligned to the prevailing northwesterly wind. There are a variety of good real soaring airports to fly those ridges from, in particular Mifflin, PA (KRVL), and Ridge Soaring Gliderport.

Real gliding championships are held at Mifflin, e.g. see this info here

But if you haven't tried it in FSX you're missing out - either set the wind for 17 knots from the NW and launch from Mifflin and go explore, or try these:

FSX Gliding Missions for Mifflin

B21

Here's the task overlay on the area map:

mifflin_tasks.jpg

Thanks for the wonderful links to the details. I've tried Mifflin in FSX and it was a great experience with those long ridges.

I have also been looking for not only long, but also tall ridges for even more dramatic soaring. Found some good ones north of Sky Harbour, US. Some very nice ranges there.

Lep

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not only long, but also tall ridges for even more dramatic soaring

Fair point - really that's distinguishing ridge flying from mountain flying. Ridge flying is about speed and distance and the transition across gaps and from low ridges to high thermals, and mountains is more about height and the dramatic scenery. In R/L I soared the Aosta valley up by Mont Blanc and with ridge lift you could just climb and climb and climb - best bit was passing close to hikers and climbers that had gone up the hard way.

In FSX we've done plenty of flights in the Alps - there are a few flights that have been packaged up into missions - one place to start would be the 'New Missions Forum' on www.flightsimulatorxmissions.com and look for the missions produced by Spud - people put their times in the forum thread and also link back to these forums to post their sim_logger IGC files. These missions all rely on CumulusX for the lift, so the 'mission' isn't much more than a saved flight and Wx. The only mission feature that adds anything is the onscreen flight timer. But it's good having a few of us fly the same task so we can compare how each of us did it.

B21

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Fair point - really that's distinguishing ridge flying from mountain flying. Ridge flying is about speed and distance and the transition across gaps and from low ridges to high thermals, and mountains is more about height and the dramatic scenery. In R/L I soared the Aosta valley up by Mont Blanc and with ridge lift you could just climb and climb and climb - best bit was passing close to hikers and climbers that had gone up the hard way.

In FSX we've done plenty of flights in the Alps - there are a few flights that have been packaged up into missions - one place to start would be the 'New Missions Forum' on www.flightsimulatorxmissions.com and look for the missions produced by Spud - people put their times in the forum thread and also link back to these forums to post their sim_logger IGC files. These missions all rely on CumulusX for the lift, so the 'mission' isn't much more than a saved flight and Wx. The only mission feature that adds anything is the onscreen flight timer. But it's good having a few of us fly the same task so we can compare how each of us did it.

B21

Thanks, B21. Just did a long glide from LOLC to LOIK, simply magnificent, and at times hairy too! Was thinking of doing one at Aosta to explore Mont Blanc, maybe even Matterhorn.

Lep

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Done some soarings this weekend and one memorable one I did was to glide up Mt Baker, all of nearly 11,000 ft!! Felt almost like mountaineer scaling up a mountain, only better (and faster too)!

Took off from Concrete Mun, took a lift by "hiking" up a low wall of range up north (wind set from East), and finally commenced the ascent attack from "base camp". Wasn't as straight forward as it seems, for there were much uneven and undulating terrains up the mountain slope. Needs careful observations and choices on which route to take to go up. At times the summit seems so close, yet so far ... And when I finally reached the top, it was literally that top of the world feeling and sight all-round! After that, it was all a very nice, easy, and very scenic glide down back to Concrete.

A very unforgettable flight, powered by nothing but mother nature. Awesome!!

Lep

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  • 1 month later...
But if you haven't tried it in FSX you're missing out - either set the wind for 17 knots from the NW and launch from Mifflin and go explore, or try these:

FSX Gliding Missions for Mifflin

B21

I could not open this Zip file for some reason (tried 7-zip as well) can you send me a new zip file or individual files.

You can PM me over at the UK VGA

Thanks

Ivan

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  • 4 weeks later...

Apologies I've been very slow to respond - the correct download link for the ridge soaring missions is THIS ONE

edit: and I've corrected the bad link on my Mifflin missions overview page...

B21

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