For the last week, Tyson and I have been off in Springfield Vermont at a cross country gliding class. Here’s my notes from the class and the flights.

June 29, Sunday

Emilie flew the club towplane up from Sterling. Tyson drove our glider out. Tyson did one flight in the glider to get familiar with the area. There wasn’t much lift, so he stayed right over the airport.

Photos

Tyson’s GPS track

WeGlide analysis.

June 30, Monday

Some disorganization getting the event going. Lots of people new to airport, new to event procedures. Sent 2 sniffers up. No real lift. 90F+ waiting in the sun. Canceled cross country tasks. Some people flew anyways. Given limited lift, I stayed on Hawks ridge. Shared gaggles with other pilots trying to circle in the same lift.

Learnings:

• you can tell which side of the thermal has better lift by seeing where one glider is going up relative to others
• the glider pilots are each gently nudging the gaggle in the direction of better lift. It works if everyone cooperates, and doesn’t work if someone gets stubborn on their idea of where the lift is.
• yet another reminder that small adjustments work better in a thermal (even without a gaggle), rather than major corrections. Taylor, who outperformed me all day, said he will even keep his circle pretty much unchanged for 360 in sink, if previously that spot had been generating lift.

Photos

Emilie’s GPS track

WeGlide analysis

July 1, Tuesday

Reviewed weather and task planning. Explanation of how an area turn point task works — you have to tag all the circles. The person with the fastest speed wins. So going farther into the circle can be better or worse. Decided nothing worth flying. Afternoon presentation on cross country wave flying.

July 2, Wednesday

Emilie got P2. Tyson flew dual with John B in an HpH Twin Shark. Both picked the harder “B” task. The turn point circles were:

1. 2 mile radius from Springfield
2. 12 mile radius from Woodstock VT
3. 25 mile radius from Dean Memorial, NH
4. 2 mile radius from Springfield

Flew with LT (John) in a bunch of gaggles. Small corrections to move to where the other glider was gaining more worked. Caught up with mentors 2R and B9 over Mt Ascutney, and then flew as a group of four searching out thermals under a band of clouds. US, nominally in our group, was usually farther east and not directly flying with us. Also intermixed with 33 and RB from the advanced group. Based on advice from the mentors, we tagged the second circle and then transitioned to the east side of the Connecticut river valley to follow a long ridge north. That worked until just north of Lebanon. A band of high cirrus blocked the sun and shut down new cloud formation. Some folks went north east to follow the better looking clouds — RB, B9, 33, US, MK. John in LT and I paused for an extra couple circles with PL, a two place Duo Discuss with 20m wings, under the last of the ok looking clouds. We lost the rest of the group. I decided to keep heading north on the ridge because there weren’t any landable airports within range if I headed towards Cardigan with the folks going east. They found a 6kt thermal to 5,500’. I found nothing going north. John followed me, also trying to keep the Connecticut river valley and its many farm fields in range. 2R also ended up going north, hoping for a better score. I hit my minimum altitude go/no go slope, and had to turn around and head back to the closest airport — Lebanon NH. John tried to go west to Post Mills, but instead got forced down over the valley. He made his first ever land out in a corn field. 2R crossed the valley and then landed out at Post Mills. I switched to Lebanon tower frequency to hear Q2 landing, and PL struggling to get their engine started and maybe land. I tried one thermal in Lebanon’s airspace, but then just accepted I needed to land. The tower was easy to work with. Of the folks who went east, MK landed out in a hay field. The rest made it home.

From Taylor (RB) and Eric (33)’s reports the next day, the main things they did differently to succeed at the task were

• judged the day to be overall weaker than most people. Watched clouds from the ground before launch.
• flew more conservatively, staying high and taking smaller climbs
• thermalled very efficiently
• knew their flight computers much better to analyze different flight paths and margins
• had an extra airstrip half way to Cardigan in their database, giving them the safety margin to fly east (Moore Field)

Photos

Tyson’s GPS Track

WeGlide flight

Emilie’s GPS Tracks

WeGlide analysis for first flight

WeGlide analysis for second flight

July 3, Thursday

Thunderstorms in the morning. Reviewed flights. Some disagreement between the event organizers over whether to focus on racing performance or cross country techniques. Lots of discussions of the land outs. Some people even drove around after the rain to go check out fields.

• picking a farm field from the air to land in, seems to be more doable than I expected
• the gliders stop really short in a soft field
• many of the local airstrips may be less usable by a glider than a farm field. Moore and Plymouth both turned out to be too narrow for a glider’s long wing span.

Photos

July 4, Friday

Official SSA organizer arrived. Wanted everyone to complete task, and no land outs. Tyson got P2 for the day. Best lift so far, but windy and some wave suppression. Also, high humidity meant the clouds might hang in the sky even after the lift was gone — “lying” clouds.

I flew with John Banarhall in his HPH Twin Shark. He has fancy flight computers set up with all sorts of assists for racing and optimal thermalling, gliding, etc. Most of that went over my head. We went up first as the “sniffer” to see if there was lift. I flew the last part of the tow, and we swapped back and forth throughout the flight. John did have to save it a couple times for me. Things I learned

• Use the rudder more than the ailerons to steepen/shallow the turn (or maybe this is just lead with the rudder?)
• Look down the wing while thermalling to see the bank angle, the shape of the turn, and get ground references.

I had a heck of a time centering the thermals and staying in them, I kept losing them. Also, some of the clouds had quite a bit of sink under them. One good thing we did, was spent more time thermalling on the downwind legs when the wind is pushing you in the right direction.

Various discussion from reviewing flights the next day:

• half the people said farther south was better, half said the north side was better
• half said they found great streets, half said they found terrible sink between clouds
• everyone agreed the lift was all broken up by the wind and behaved more like bubbles than a nice column
• various people saw rotor clouds indicating wave, and plenty of wave suppression of cumulus

Several pairs did well team flying. LT and 2R. And P2 (Tyson) and Q2.

Largely, it seemed to have been highly variable and if you were just a little bit farther left or right, or just a little bit earlier or later, you found very different conditions. One suggestion was to never flying straight under the clouds, but always do a bit of a wiggle looking for the best lift.

Photos

Tyson’s GPS Track

WeGlide flight analysis.

Emilie’s GPS Track

WeGlide flight analysis

July 5, 2025

Morning review of flights. The key things to look at for cross country speed are

• Total distance flown vs distance on task. Lots of wandering around looking for lift slows you down. The fast people had only ~2 miles extra. The slow people – up to 50 miles.
• Altitude loss in the thermal. Even if you aren’t going up fast, it’s better than losing altitude on half the thermal. This was my issue yesterday.
• Glide ratio in cruise. A low glide ratio could be caused by either flying too fast (and thus more drag) or flying in sinking air instead of rising air.

More thoughts on thermalling

• make small control changes. The glider should be smooth.
• never fly through the same sink twice.
• increase bank angle as lift decreases
• decrease bank angle as lift increases

This day was another day like Tuesday with high clouds dimming the sun. We sent Eric (33) up as a “sniffer” to test the clouds. He scratched for 30 minutes, and then we sent two other sniffers up to check other parts of the sky. Taylor (RB) found lift. Lew (A) did not, and landed. That was all the students in the advanced group. The organizers decided RB’s report was good enough to launch everyone.

I again tried to follow John in LT, but he found a worse thermal than I did (100fpm vs 200fpm). Once I got some altitude, I tried heading in the direction of the first waypoint, but found dismal lift after that, and landed. The tow plane was available, so I took a second tow. This time I stuck with a 200fpm climb all the way to 5,000’ under a cloud street. I looped back to the airport to get the start, then regained the cloud street and headed to the first waypoint. I met John, 2R (our mentor), and 1B coming back from the outer radius of the first waypoint, so I quickly flew to the end of the street, tagged the circle, and turned around to follow. The street worked great to the edge of the Ascutney circle. To make up for barely tagging the first circle, I decided to get more distance by flying all the way north to Ascutney, and then come back. When I got back, the cloud street was dissipating. A high overcast came in. I couldn’t find any lift, and I ended up giving up and landing. The other three all completed the task. If only I had turned around when John did… grrrrr

Looking at flight logs afterwards

• I was wrong in my assumption that they were coming back from the first waypoint. In fact, they all got to ~5,000’ over the airport at about the same time I did (despite my extra tow) and were just getting tagging the first waypoint at the same time I did.
• John said he didn’t go farther into the Ascutney circle because it looked shaded over there, and unlikely to make lift.

Lesson learned. Until I get better at reading the sky and ground features – follow LT and don’t let him out of sight.

Photos

Emilie’s GPS Track

WeGlide analysis for first flight

WeGlide analysis for second flight

July 6, 2025

Morning lectures on thermalling, parachute use, height bands, and block speeds. A few things of note

“Advanced Soaring Made Easy” https://www.cumulus-soaring.com/store/advanced-soaring-made-easy has lots of really good thermal diagrams.

Thermals are generally easy to center and circle in higher up. There is one strong core. Lower down there may be many weaker cores, some of which peter out. You may need to hunt around a bit to find the best area when low.

When picking what thermals to circle in, there are ~3 strategies

• selective: only take thermals with better than average climb rate, and less than 15 degrees off desired track
• middle: average lift, up to 30 degrees off course
• survival: take anything

Conditions ahead can dictate the strategy to use

• nice street and obvious good clouds: selective
• blue, or high clouds interfering with lift: middle
• unlandable terrain ahead: survival

Altitude can also dictate the strategy. Break the thermal band into 3rds.

• top 3rd: selective. “cruise band”
• middle 3rd: middle strategy. “climb band”
• bottom 3rd: survival

In general, 500’ to 1,000’ feet below the clouds is a good range to stay in. You can see clouds ahead, and the lift is generally good.

Some advice compiled from several mentors. I tend to get tunnel vision and fixate on one thing — typical of a beginner where each skill is challenging. I need to get to where I can pay attention to the top ~3 most important things. What is important depends on the phase of the flight, my altitude, etc.

Debrief from all the pilots on what they learned

• how to read the sky
• how to use the glide computers effectively
• how tasks work
• team flying

This was the last day of the course. Tyson decided to be nice and let me try again to complete a task, even though it was his turn. We were assigned the same task as Saturday. I decided I was sticking with LT no matter what. He was towed up right after me, but in trying to gain lift off tow, I lost track of him and ended up in gaggles with other people. Eventually I had enough altitude that I headed out on my own. Tagged the Drewsville circle, then headed back to Hawks Mountain, which had reliable good lift. I found John there and stuck to him like a burr. Ascutney was working, so we flew deep into that circle. There were lots of cumulus clouds. Some were obviously dying. Some were headed towards towering. John wove a track that kept us mostly in lift. 2R joined for a while. We tagged the edge of the Chester waypoint. Continuing that way would put us in blue sky and probably sink. We had enough altitude and John found a good enough route under the clouds that we glided without circling all the way to Claremont, and then raced back to the finish. By delegating the route planning and reading the sky to John, I was able to focus on the basics of flying, and yet achieve the task.

(*) my computer in the cockpit said I tagged all the circles. WeGlide says I missed. I need to figure out what I missconfigured.

Photos

Emilie’s GPS Track

WeGlide flight analysis