Ridge Soaring Revisited

[VulcanB2 5]

Gah! Anyone willing to fire up an MP session of FSX sometime and talk me through the elusive art of ridge soaring?

I started out at Aspen, and maybe made a bad decision to use real-world static weather.

The cloud base was approximately 14,000 ft, with a 4 kts wind from the SW, but I found as I soared that the wind was reversing 180 degrees as I flew.

I used the BM, and did a self-launch up to 1000 ft AGL. I thought I might catch some thermals so climbed and headed in the general direction of Eagle (KEGE).

No thermals were apparent and possibly over-powered by the sink, so I climbed to 8500 ft (nearly 2000 ft AGL at this point). The engine seemed like it was reaching its limit, but still nothing. By this time I'd soared maybe 12 nm, nearly all of it using the engine.

I kept my speed up, and found the "speed to fly" function of the C4 rather useful.

Just in case I'm not trying to do something I can't do - the Discus is happy to soar at these altitudes (and higher) isn't it? What is its ceiling?

Best regards,

Robin.

[VulcanB2 5]

Hmm - not sure if I'm making it too easy.

Using the B after a 2000 ft launch I made Eagle County (KEGE) from Aspen (KASE) in 44 minutes.

I set the wind as 15 kts gusting 18 increasing in strength slightly with altitude.

Best regards,

Robin.

[Peter Lürkens 30]

I think you got it. Discus ceiling is around 50.000 ft (as long as you can find enough lift).

regards,

Peter

[James A 39]

Hi Robin,

We must have been trying real world weather at different times as I was getting upto 34kn winds from under 12,000ft. Wind at 7-11kn at airport altitude upto just under 10,000ft.