Rory O'Conor wrote:

were several studies that used smoke, but that can't

be analyzed

I was wondering about orange smoke flares but I can
see that one might either fill the cockpit with an
impenetrable haze or knock chucks off the horizontal
stabiliser. Both would cause a greater degradation of
performance than a need to pee.

I can also see that flares attached to balloons are
difficult to push through the clear view panel. But
maybe the T21 will come in handy!

I wonder how "skywriters" make their smoke and what
the effect of thermalling with a smoke dispenser would
be like, maybe personal IMC conditions.

Thermals could be colour coded according to strength.

If the dispenser was attached to the vario, then the
smoke could be varied by colour according to lift,
making it easier to move towards the green smoke and
away from the red smoke. - with the potential to
reverse the colours if needed to confuse the unwanted.


Today, most work of this kind is done with LIDAR
(Laser Radar) which can track naturally occurring
tiny aerosols of pollen and dust revealing the 3D
structure of airflow with great precision over a
large area in real time.


Has anyone any leads to accessible output on the
results of LIDAR?

Rory



I thought the Northern soaring season had started already...