Monthly Archives: August 2020

Editor Note - With schools quickly getting fired up again in some form or another, I thought it might be nice for our readers to read a traditional summer essay written by a newly minted CFI-G who is currently going to college, and represents the future of our sport.  Soaring is not dead, folks, it is simply going through a handoff from the baby boomers being the old heads and mentoring Generation

Searching the sky for the best lift is endlessly challenging. Decision-making is essentially a three-stage procedure. Firstly, continually analyze all relevant factors – the wind, sun, ground surface, and the shape and texture of the clouds throughout the flight. Secondly, use all your experience of ridges, convergence, wave, thunderstorms to process this information. Then try to build a mental picture

Before I get started, I want to make something very clear. I have been a tow pilot for about a year and a half now and in no way have the experience like some reading this may have when it comes to towing gliders. But one thing that I’ve noticed is that most tow pilots have a glider rating, however, most glider pilots do not tow. So that was the inspiration for this article, let me put you in the perspective

So you've found your cloud – but what's the best way to use it? 

Centering thermals efficiently, and climbing quickly, are probably the most fundamental skills you need to soar successfully. Even a small improvement in your technique could easily mean a few hundred feet in every thermal – or thousands of feet in a typical cross-country flight. Come to the end of the day, this might even