Let's play a game of imagination and visualization.

Start with the upwind ridge on the left side of a piece of paper.
Looking into the paper is like looking to the north. The ridge is on
the west side of the paper and the wind is blowing from left to right.
As the air flows over the ridge top it sinks and then rebounds upward as
the rising air of the primary wave. Visualize it as a sinusoid. The
rotor is under this wave. The left side of the rotor (west) is
generally up while the right side of the rotor (east) is generally
down. If you have the altitude AGL you can generally climb on the
upwind side of the rotor and will get into the smooth laminar lift.
Another ridge downwind can either boost or kill the wave further
downwind. It depends upon wavelength and wind speed.

Personally, I would not penetrate upwind towards the leeward side of a
ridge in high winds hoping to get into the up side of a rotor.

YMMV

On 4/7/2016 6:26 PM, son_of_flubber wrote:
Mulling over a wave flight from last October and realized that I'd gotten it into my head (perhaps erroneously) that the up (lift) side of rotor is usually closer to the upwind ridge than the down side (sink) of the rotor. So for example, if I persist in heading closer towards the slope/ridge while in the downside of rotor, that I have a good chance of hitting the up side (lift) of the rotor. In other words, the sink side of the rotor is farther away from the upwind ridge than the lift side.

Now I realize that this situation is chaotic, anything can happen, and that before AGL gets tight, I'd better turn away from the slope and use the tailwind to hastily penetrate the sink that I just flew through and try for the secondary rotor, downwind ridge lift, or land.

But what about my assumption that the lift side of the rotor is generally found between the sink side of the rotor and the upwind ridge? Or does this depend on the particular ridge and the particular day?

And what about a downwind ridge? I've got it into my head that the sink side of the rotor is between the lift side of the rotor and the downwind ridge. There may be a band of ridge lift between the sink side of the rotor and the downwind ridge. Are rules of thumb possible/useful or is this just my limited experience on my local ridges?


--
Dan, 5J