Convergence lift occurs when two air masses meet and force air upward. The winds don’t have to collide head-on. Simply, any time air piles up, it rises, often creating strong, sweet usable lift for us glider pilots!

Sea-Breeze Convergence

One of the most common sources of convergence is the sea-breeze front, for sure you've at least heard about it, used it to great advantage, or had it spoil your day...

Is There Anything To Learn?

I believe the answer is clearly “yes”.  The following summarizes my personal takeaways.  You may need to adjust these based on your flying environment, your experience and skills, and your glider.

Recognize

How Does It Feel in the Cockpit When We Encounter A Microburst?

What we experience in the cockpit differs greatly depending on our altitude (and on the stage of the microburst’s development when we encounter it).

Microburst Encounters at Altitude

Imagine that you fly through the descending shaft of the microburst as illustrated below.

In this case, the only indication of a microburst may be very strong

What Caused the Crash?

I believe Rick’s analysis is spot on. The deadly trap was a microburst.

“The virga produced a microburst directly over Shmulik as he was waiting for the jet. He expedited his landing trying to fly out of what was likely epic sink. While his base leg was low it looked high enough to make the runway with plenty of energy to flare and roll out. But he then got hit from behind or

Editors Note:  This week's newsletter is the second of a three-part series reporting in detail events leading up to a fatal accident in June 2022.  The first article, including Rick's first-hand account, is archived on the W&W blog page.  This week's article lays out environmental factors and the last seconds before the crash.  The article is longer than usual.  We hope you read through

It’s been a few weeks since our friend Shmulik Dimentstein died in a tragic crash of his HpH Shark just as he was about to land at his home airport Rifle in Garfield County, Colorado.

As I’ve written before, soaring is objectively dangerous.  Per activity hour, the risk of dying is about 40x greater than when driving a car.

However, we also know that it does not have to be so dangerous. About 90%

Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance, SkySight is the tool that I use for this. A beautifully thought out & well-developed weather forecasting web-based application put together by Australian, Matthew Scutter. With excellent customer service & constant development, this is a one-stop-shop for your daily weather & task planning needs.

SkySight over other forecasting tools is its simplicity, ease