Glider climbs through rotor turbulence to surf the Blue Wave of the Rocky Mountains
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- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- Blue Wave: it is November 5 2021 and a westerly wind across the Continental Divide has triggered mountain wave in the lee of the Rocky Mountains - excellent conditions for glider pilots to soar great distances in rapidly rising air - if they can tame the rotor turbulence and get there! Dry air is preventing the development of clouds which means that the areas of rising and sinking air and the potentially vicious rotors below are completely invisible.
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This video illustrates the conditions for mountain wave to set up as well as the challenges that glider pilots must overcome to reach it.
Once I got established in wave, I flew a distance of more than 400 km without having to make a single turn to climb. On the longest leg of the flight - more than 175 km (110 miles) - I reached an average ground speed of 238 kilometers per hour. The maximum ground speed was 310 km/h. A lot more distance would have been possible on that day but my three layers of clothes were at least one too few and so I decided to come back to land early. The video covers the first leg of the flight through the rotor and into the wave.
Special thanks to my friends CG, SVI (5K), and JC (TR) from the Soaring Society of Boulder (SSB) who shared the sky with me on this day and provided position reports via radio about the conditions ahead. Thanks also to SHR for competently towing us all into the sky.
My glider is a Ventus 2cxT 18m high-performance sailplane from Schempp-Hirth. The flight originated and ended at Boulder Municipal Airport (KBDU) - an ideal location for exploring the wave systems along Colorado's Front Range.
All music is from Epidemic Sound.
The full flight trace can be found here: weglide.org/fl...
I loved your video! I found astonishingly clear your descriptions and explanations. They made progressively sense of an environment that looked as an absolute question mark at the beginning! Thanks a lot for sharing and I wish you great flights
Gracie, Giovanni :-). Buone feste!
I found you channel about 2 weeks ago and have been watching as many of your videos as possible. You produce excellent videos! I really appreciate and enjoy that you use captions to explain what you're doing and what is happening. I assume that your season is about finished but I look forward to your next video. Thank you!!
Thanks Anthony!
A great hug from Portugal. What a vídeo.
Awww. Muito obrigado!
How come you anwser me in portguese?
@@eduardofaria3897 why not? seemed appropriate :-)
I was even very pleased. Thank you for that.
Love it thx ! Great explanations & helpful graphics !
Absolutley fantastic video man! I knew you'd be good in front of the camera & explaining what your doing & why. Thank you for sharing your knowledge & that experience with us I loved it! Oh and @20:28 if you look between the B & R of climb rate as you had on the screen you can clearly see a commercial passenger jet flying above you from left to right! Fantastic stuff I'm going to watch this again without pausing so much ha ha! Cheers from Down Under!
Thanks, Leo :-)
Good teaching tool, but please leave the captions on the screen longer.
Another fantastic video Clemens!!! Well done!
Thank you, Paul!
Dear ChessintheAir, your films are beautiful, very interesting and fantastic !!!
Thanks, Daniel!
Amazing lesson!
I was studying about waves and I kept wondering how it wold feel in real situation. And your video shows perfectly how it works and what the pilot feels! Wonderful! Thanks for posting your experience with all explanations.
Thank you! Glad you found it helpful!
to much lift! what a glider problem:) great vid!
Wonderfully made video! This is your best yet - despite not showing the end of it. This was absolutely epic. Again, best yet. My plan is to drag the DG505 out there and have someone like yourself take me for a spin. I'm hoping someone will show me these ropes. It looks absolutely spectacular. Well done on the video man. Well done.
Thanks for the kind feedback. Yeah, come on out to Boulder and fly with us. It's a very technical place to fly but the conditions and scenery are pretty awesome.
As usual, another wonderful video and discription of a phenomenal flight! Great to see these coming from a fellow Colorado soaring pilot. Prost!
Thanks!
awesome... in the true sense of the word (forcing awe) thank you for sharing!
Great video. I was getting tense as you were talking us through your thought processes and the additional considerations you must make at these altitudes. Just watching you manage your height was fascinating. Glad you didn't bust your height restriction. How'd you fit the keyboard in as well as your other stuff really well done
Thanks! We get a lot of practice in staying below Class A. I'd guess that up to 50% of soaring days in our area offer the opportunity to climb that high :-)
Love watching the videos! Very interesting and enjoyable!
Amazing, I’ve flown in wave multiple times, but never with a blue sky!
We do have clouds more often than not but blue wave days are not uncommon here. The air is just so dry! The downside is elevated wildfire risk.
Thank you for information
Terrific video!
Thanks a lot, it is very educative and inspiring.
Glad you like it!
Of all the Gliding videos available, I consider yours to be far and away the best. They are extremely informative and very well edited. There is only one thing that bothers me. I adjust my volume to be able to hear you speak, and then when you edit in the music it is crazy loud!
Hi Brad, thanks for the feedback. I understand the point about sound volume. I‘m still no expert in video and sound editing- takes a lot of manual effort to get it right.
After the great effort of climbing through turbulence to get in the wave, it is such a shame you could not ride the wave as high as it would take you. All because of airspace restrictions.
We’re quite fortunate to have very few airspace restrictions in the Western US so I am not complaining. 25,000 ft or so would be nice but even 18,000 is much higher than the airspace for gliders in most countries. On many days the wave extends up to 40,000 feet, perhaps even higher. There is one specific area where we can get permission to use the airspace to climb higher (Arapahoe Soaring Area Wave Window). The Colorado state record is 44,100 ft. Flying at such altitudes is a different project altogether. You need different oxygen systems (pressure oxygen with face mask) plus appropriate back up (you would almost certainly die if the oxygen system were to fail). You also have to deal with the effects of extreme cold. This is more of an expedition than a fun weekend activity. Also, I would not want to expose my glider to such extreme temperatures because the finish of gliders can get brittle and crack in such conditions and that would get very expensive.
@@ChessInTheAir Thank you for all the detailed information, Clemens.
Yes, at 44,100 ft you would almost be an Astronaut!
@@ChessInTheAir Would it be possible to enter the restrictet airspace using a transponder ?
@@thomasgerber4465ATC would be unlikely to grant permission if flying without transponder. Almost all gliders in our area have transponders. It would be dangerous and unwise to fly without one given that we are crossing high frequency departure and arrival routes from and to Denver airport.
I didn’t think Vne changed with altitude? It’s purely an IAS.
Vne (expressed as IAS) is lower at altitude for most (if not all) gliders. Check the operating manual for whatever glider you're flying. A key issue is flutter which is primarily a function of TAS, not IAS. (TAS > IAS as air density decreases with increasing altitude). As an extreme example look at the Perlan Project. At very high altitudes Vne approaches stall speed and that becomes the maximum altitude a glider can reach from a design perspective.
Curious if there is a “wave window” around your area for clearance above 18K that Denver center could provide?
Yes there is. Currently being renegotiated to better align with revised flight paths. It’s somewhat complicated. Lots of cooks in the kitchen.
Do you ever get clearance to venture into Class A. by special and previous arrangement? Cowley Wave Camp, in Canada has wave camps where class A can be entered and flights over 27,000 are often made. Just wondering if your area does the same.
Hi Dino, yes we do have a local wave window. But we're in the process of reworking the agreement to redefine the coordinates to avoid common Denver departure routes. It has become difficult to get ATC to to open for us, but we should be close to a new agreement (hopefully). BTW - the Colorado altitude record is 44,100 ft - it's not something I aspire to break though - way too cold for me (among other issues).
If there's such a strong wave how come there're no lenticular clouds ?
The presence of cloud is mainly a factor of the moisture content of the air. The air was simply too dry for clouds to form.
Höre ich da einen östereichischen Akzent raus?
Gut erkannt :-) geht nie verloren ;-)
@@ChessInTheAir Hasta... Bin schon öfter über PHX reingekommen - das nächste Mal melde ich mich... Schaut richtig g**l aus
@@k.r.837 Rocky Mountains :-)
Are you using an IGC Oudie or the new Oudie N?
This is the IGC
Are you able to use voiceroid/vocaloid to speak what you write?
I don’t really know what you mean. I had to look up voiceroid and learned that it’s a speech synthesizer only available in Japanese. So no, I have not been using a speech synthesizer but I don’t really understand how I might be able to use one?
@@ChessInTheAir My point is that I can't read whole sentence sometime. If your writing is verbally spoken, I may not need to stop from place to place. There must be English speech synthesizer, correct?