On May 20, 6:50*am, Nine Bravo Ground wrote:
On May 18, 5:15*pm, John Smith wrote:

Read Reichmann, he explains everything.

While real life tactics may have changed, the mathematical basics are
still the same, and it's still good advice to start with strict McCready
and adopt only later when you have understood and mastered the basics.

One reason why it often pays to force yourself to fly straight ahead
rather than circling more than pure McCready theory would tell you is
that you rarely roll right into the core of a thermal. Often you spend
a number of circles getting centered and on occasion you completely
miss and make a circle in sink. *The shorter the potential climb the
more this effect hurts you. Within a couple thousand feet of cloudbase
it hardly ever pays to take a circle. In theory you could roll this
into the McCready calculation, but people rarely do the extra math -
except BB.

I've found a similar effect on the last climb to make final glide -
climbing up to the altitude needed to match the McCready setting to
your climb rate almost always puts you behind the glider who leaves a
little earlier.

9B

This is theoratically correct, but I found out more often than not
that the lift right below cloudbase (keeping FAR clearance of course)
is stronger and more widespread than couple of thousands below, which
allows much faster speed without loosing altitude.

Ramy