Height Bands

When we first start our cross country flying, it’s like stumbling around in a forest hitting trees, and doing our best to stay airborne, often we are happy to just make it home.  As our experience grows and as you’ll soon notice, the experienced cross country pilots have a pre-determined course for all the eventualities that may happen, often this is subconscious.  What does this achieve? It reduces mental workload in tougher situations, frees up your focus for efficient flying, and minimizes your decision-making process.

We know that searching for lift down low costs time, adds stress and fatigue to your flight.  So it makes good sense to apply different strategies to avoid this eventuality, this process of strategy applies all the time-dependent on your height above ground.

Typically though, you can divide your height band into thirds, which will determine your tactics relative to your experience, the glider's performance, and the weather conditions observed ahead.  The beauty of this simple technique is that it frees up valuable headspace for other tasks that arise.

Upper Third

Typically when you’re in the upper third of the height band, you’re able to stay relatively on track (within 20°), fly towards your target clouds and turn point.  In the back of my mind though, I still always try to minimise my time in sink, so link up wisps along the way to the next cloud to extend your glide and chances of finding a good thermal.  Another point to note is that it takes time to center a thermal, with less height between you and the cloud above, there is less time to make up the average if you are slow to center, so unless it’s a really good climb, I find it better to skip the climbs in the upper third.  In this upper third, you can fly at the expected next climb rate MacCready setting.  Ingo Renner says, always stop in 10kts though, regardless of your relative height to the cloudbase!

Middle Third

This for me is my key climbing height band, it allows a long climb, and the length of time to center kind of disappears in a sense. Our flying style should change once in this band though, we should vary our track now up to 30° in order to cover as many lift sources as possible, I often find myself snaking (or S turning) in areas of lift to seek out the core or to extend my glide.  In this band I cruise about 2/3’s of the expected MacCready setting.  If you don’t find a climb, press on, if we do, then of course circle to stay clear of trouble and climb back into that comfortable upper third!

Lower Third

In this height band, we need to be more cautious.  If you get down the field selection altitude, then large amounts of time can be wasted, which may result in not even being able to make it home at all.  So should you need to do an exploratory 360° turn in an area of potential lift, you should do so.  Taking a below-average climb for a thousand feet doesn’t really hurt your day, but in fact, can greatly help – it changes the picture ahead and gives you that more reach, of course, it also delays that survival mode search!   Reduce your cruising speed by around 20-30% to extend your glide.  The focus should be to get back into the middle third, which will result in you getting back into that upper third where the view is better and the air cooler!

Stay cool & safe circles :)

Banner photo by John Absolon, 'Got that shot' Images

 Adam Woolley was born into the gliding world, being the 3rd generation in his family. Going solo at 15, his thirst for efficiency in soaring flight & quest for a world championship title to his name has never wavered. One big passion is sharing his experiences & joy with other glider pilots all around the world. Adam is an airline pilot in Japan on the B767 & spends his off time chasing summer around the globe. He has now won 7 national Championships & represented Australia at 5 WGC's & 1 EGC.