No offense to good ol' Tom, but the lift and sink that I have
encountered feel different. The sinking part of the thermal before
the lift of the wing feels turbulent to me. It also seems to go
from more sink to less sink. This is the opposite of a lift,
where it goes from less lift to more lift.

So when I feel a roll that goes from a high roll rate to a low roll rate,
I am in the turbulent sink before the core of the thermal, and
when I go from a low roll rate to a high roll rate, I know that
wing is entering the core of the thermal and since it is the
lifted wing, I turn into it, and into the thermal.

I didn't even realise this is what I do and feel until
I verbalized it just then. I must say that this "feel"
has done very, very well for me. When I look at my
traces, I turn immediately into the thermal and circle
there effectively with little shift (no 270
degree turns or major corrections to the other side).
This seems to work quite well, and consistently.

Some of this was learned because I flew quite a few days in
perfectly clear air. Other than the feel of the stick and
the pitch and roll, I had no immediate indications of lift.
The vario was just too coarse.

In article ,
Jim Vincent wrote:
some pilots are not "in the zone" with their gliders, and could not
determine a "lifted wing" if they had rely on it to find a therma

I was recently enlightened by Tom Knauff that the lifted wing approach only
works about half the time.

Consider three sections of air: calm air, sink before a thermal, and the lift
of the thermal itself. Imagine that you're flying along and you happen to run
into the sink on the left wing and lift on the right wing (hand flying really
helps here). In this case, the lifted wing approach would work; turning into
the lifted wing would take you into the lift.

Now consider if you're flying along and run into the calm air on the left wing
and the sink on the right wing. If you use the lifted wing approach, you woud
turn into the calm air and away from the lift! The best course would be to
turn into the lowered wing, drive through the sink and on into the thermal.

So, it really makes do difference which way you turn. It matters more how you
respond to the conditions you experince when you make the turn.

Jim Vincent
CFIG
N483SZ



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Mark Boyd
Avenal, California, USA