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Cx in Mountain Region


Lep

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Have been putting in some good hours soaring in mountain areas such as Austria, etc, and am getting nice experience out of gliding. This is a new and exciting encounter after so many years of flying powered add-ons.

One issue I need help in, however. When gliding with no wind in mountain regions with Cu clouds, I encounter strong downdrafts (sinking by 1,000 ft or so) whenever I'm in between mountains, even though there is a massive Cu cloud overhead. Why is this so? Wind has been set to zero, so there shouldn't be any lee-side sink, right?

In the real world, how does one safely cross mountain areas, with or without wind?

I've seen youtube of gliders flying very high, way higher than all the mountains and clouds below, how did they get to so high up? Can one climb above Cu clouds, given lift is available only up to the clouds?

Another question -- Using real weather download I encountered lots of changing winds-aloft, and each time it jerked the plane violently changing direction to the new wind. I ahve Active Sky which solves this, but I don't use it to avoid conflict with CX. Is there any other utility that get rid of this problem?

Hope to hear some helpful advice. Never knew that soaring can be so much fun and challenge.

Lep

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One issue I need help in, however. When gliding with no wind in mountain regions with Cu clouds, I encounter strong downdrafts (sinking by 1,000 ft or so) whenever I'm in between mountains, even though there is a massive Cu cloud overhead. Why is this so? Wind has been set to zero, so there shouldn't be any lee-side sink, right?

I've seen youtube of gliders flying very high, way higher than all the mountains and clouds below, how did they get to so high up? Can one climb above Cu clouds, given lift is available only up to the clouds?

Another question -- Using real weather download I encountered lots of changing winds-aloft, and each time it jerked the plane violently changing direction to the new wind. I ahve Active Sky which solves this, but I don't use it to avoid conflict with CX. Is there any other utility that get rid of this problem?

CumulusX! produces some wide area lift and sink mostly depending on wind at altitude. These organize in strings at higher windspeed. Wind at altitude can also deflect position of the the cumulus clouds, even when at the glider's altitude air is calm. If you set wind to zero with the simple weather settings dialog you only change ground winds but not winds aloft. If you discover being prolonged in a sink area (other than lee side) you are advised to change your heading by 30° or so to leave the downdraft string.

Flying very high (higher than cumulus clouds and even higher than ridge lift) is possible in mountain waves, a special kind of lift occuring when the air starts oscillating by wind crossing a series of ridges in a certain spacing. In CumulusX! currently you can have only ridge lift and thermals. Mountain waves are under consideration, though.

The sudden change of windspeed and direction is a bug in FSX' weather engine and can be cured e.g. by a licensed version of FSUIPC. It is a side effect of how FSX interpolates the information of nearby weather stations, in particular in mountain areas. You may well use AS in conjunction with CumulusX!, afaik there is little/no interference. Though I would recommend not using AS thermals and ridge lift features.

best regards,

Peter

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CumulusX! produces some wide area lift and sink mostly depending on wind at altitude. These organize in strings at higher windspeed. Wind at altitude can also deflect position of the the cumulus clouds, even when at the glider's altitude air is calm. If you set wind to zero with the simple weather settings dialog you only change ground winds but not winds aloft. If you discover being prolonged in a sink area (other than lee side) you are advised to change your heading by 30° or so to leave the downdraft string.

Flying very high (higher than cumulus clouds and even higher than ridge lift) is possible in mountain waves, a special kind of lift occuring when the air starts oscillating by wind crossing a series of ridges in a certain spacing. In CumulusX! currently you can have only ridge lift and thermals. Mountain waves are under consideration, though.

The sudden change of windspeed and direction is a bug in FSX' weather engine and can be cured e.g. by a licensed version of FSUIPC. It is a side effect of how FSX interpolates the information of nearby weather stations, in particular in mountain areas. You may well use AS in conjunction with CumulusX!, afaik there is little/no interference. Though I would recommend not using AS thermals and ridge lift features.

best regards,

Peter

Thanks for the detailed advice ... still learning the ropes of gliding and these help.

For the weather I used, I set it to user-defined and I thought I had removed all winds, ground and aloft. Will try again.

Edit : I opened ASX but was not able to find inside the setting page any option for disabling the AS thermals and ridge lift features. Any way I can do this? Thanks.

Lep

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