Had been playing in the rotor thermals for a while on the day of the video, and caught sight of the edge of a cumulus rotating faster than any cloud I've ever seen which lead to this. The glider is a Duo Discus flying from Santa Cilia, filmed with a Drift HD170. Fantastic stuff, apologies for the language, and feel free to ask any questions. ;)
I don't know Dan - when you have 9m/s lift in a sky like that and the variometer is wailing , "fucking hell" and "fucking awesome" seem like completely appropriate language to me! Thanks for posting and keep an eye on the mountainsides.
Please tell me what gliding club you two are flying from and in which country an the day, month and year in this 9 metre rate of climb wave flying video. Cheers, Richard Leschen.🧐
Got to 14,500ft and then went sight seeing. At that time of day I'm not sure the wave actually went any heigher, but we managed to get back into it later, not very high, but the lenticulars were then probably 20k. Thanks, Dan
what a incredible sport, right next on my wish list...thnks for sharing
Waves are amazing!!
That was a very beautiful sky that day ! Giving high mountain Himalaya feelings, somewhere in between. You were very lucky. I flew one day in waves (vol d'onde) in France south of Auvergne, it was magical, I was 15, had flown less than 20 flights so mainly a passenger, had an old experienced instructor, a very lucky day too, I wish I had a video cam with fisheye to share, we flew between like huges cliffs of clouds, sort of giant labyrynth hidden from the ground, and all of this in that very calm air you meet in waves (above the rotors zone... :-( ), no turbulence, while you see the vario on +6, the altimeter constantly spinning... But we had no oxygen. It was like living à dream , it made worthy all the time spent for learning theory, pushing gliders on the terrain... I had begun glider in order to become à "true" commercial pilot later... on that precise flight only now and then mattered, and If ever I could have regrets this was so close from my best dreams it remains like an achievement. I wish to every pilots to look for that wave's flight even as passenger. Also I had some very basic and smooth accroflight on a twin astir with a very peaceful 70 years pilot old school, very good memories too. By the way If you intend to learn search for your own best instructor, do not hesitate to fly with several and choose who you prefer to fly with. Keep cool, it's allowed to forget career, perfection, performance.. enjoy ! Thanks a lot for keeping filming and sharing.
Wow ! What a ride. Brings back memories of 1000 fpm climbs over Mt. Washington in 1980-81 during our Thanksgiving weekend. Many days of frustration interspersed with brief moments of sheer exhilaration, followed by a lobsterfest in Maine to celebrate the few hard earned diamond climbs. And the rotor was always lurking around to punish the unwary. What FUN !
What a spectacular experience!! In my club here in Chile we have just received our DG-200 and hope to be getting some wave flying in this year. Regards from the home of the ANDES. Dave
That was great fun, thanks for sharing. Loved watching the reflection of you getting out the O2. Awesome !!
Nice flight, my only experience of wave was out of Nympsfield, pre solo, in a K13 without Oxygen, the instructor called it a day at about 8500'. It was a club glider so the decison was partly 'fair usage' but the flight was a little over an hour, not bad, from memory (25+ years later) Nympsfield is around 700' AGL, the winch launch took us to about 1200+' above the air field, roughly 2000' AGL from the surrounding terrain, We ran the ridge to about 2500-3000' and the picked up wave of the Welsh mountains, rode the rollercoaster to to about 8.5K' and put in some spin practice on the way back (Serious Shits & Giggle) I love that shit.
Just amazing. Thanks for the ride!
Nice! Our club do have an event every year here in Norway called "Vågå Wave camp" where we do experience some of the same conditions. This is a video from a pilot friend soaring among the mountains in Norway! Bjorli Mountain Soaring
Must be a blast to be cloudsurfing like that! I've climbed up to 4700m in a wave last year in France, it's fantastic!
Et même plus ! Est spectaculaire la longue période avec le vario en butée et l'alti qui s'enballe ! Merci aux pilotes pour ce partage.
Great climb! Great plane! Always happy landings!
Fantastic video! Wow, what scenery, and what a RIDE! Excellent video.
COOL!!!!!
Now that you are above the clouds...bit scary going back into them to come back down eeh?, My instructor always told me: Dont go in there... there are monsters in there...
could flying can be fun too!
somehow true... I have forced spin to 'safely' go thru a cloud layer.
It is not completely overcast, there are holes they can go through and always remain in visual conditions
Scenery is beautiful.
Gotta love that wave. We were at 15,000' over Lake Pukaki in the Mackenzie Basin in November 2013: just glorious! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks man, was an absolute joy to film. It's a shame that the video doesn't show it, but at around 4:10 it was the only time I have ever seen myself moving vertically upwards relative to a mountain more than 10km away, in this case the mountains shown on the right of the video.
Bloody 'ell mate, good show! Simply brilliant!
Like a rocket for a while. Thanks for the upload.
Hi Dan, Great Video! I've been to 18,000 at Aboyne...1989...
That was mental! If only I could get wave climb like that around Cambridge (the flattest place on Earth, probably) well done that was EPIC!
Realy nut seeing your vario stuck ! Thanks for sharing.
Really a great video !! Supposedly you met an approaching cold front (upcoming mid- and high altitude clouds). Soaring above the Arizona desert (even at October) we tend to center thermals not by the vertical speed indicator (continuously at full-scale) but by the altimeter.
great Video and nice instruction how to handle the transition between rotor cloud and laminar part.
OK where's part 2??? he he. Seriously good video guys and good wave. Thoroughly enjoyed watching it as I learnt to fly in mountain terrain and it can be interesting flying and good comment near the start when you mention watching the mountain. Many forget.
Thanks man, hope to go back next year for more :)
What a stonking bit of footage. Wave just doesn't get any better than that. Cracking stuff.
Looks like a blast!
amazing flight! (and thanks for not adding music)
beautiful!
Going up? Climb rate indicator pinned. Are you guys back yet?
They’re still not back! I heard that the pilot has been eating the copilot and shitting in the back seat! That’s how much lift the had....
stunning
Great Video Dan, when you are next to the clouds @ 02:40 it really helps visualise how much height you are gaining while in the turn... and looks really really cool!
impressionnant l'altimètre !
Fantastic! Thanks for sharing..
Great work.
Brrrr....Looked cold!
That's bloody awesome, I so miss gliding but can't afford it in civy street :o(
that is awesome views folks.. would like to fly that scenery..cool guys
awesome video...thx for sharing and greetings from germany
Sick!
beautiful
Great stuff !!
Tank you vidéo magnifique
Wonderful! Thank you very much!
Hi Dan, What a brilliant video thanks; watching it I almost felt I was there! I have no experience of gliding above the clouds or in IMC, so I'd like to ask a question please. There seem to be only a couple of small gaps in the cloud to descend back through and those might not have been near your home airstrip, Would that be a source of concern for you on such flights or is there a way of descending through the cloud on instruments while reliably avoiding the mountainous terrain? Perhaps the gaps are bigger than they appear?
Good question Graham! Yeah ensuring you've got a route back down is always of really high importance, as descending blind over mountains wouldn't be too fun. That day there was an easy option of being able to glide back south away from the biggest peaks which would have offered a straight forward way down. Keep up with your flying, it's so worth it!
I miss gliding to...spins...soo exhilarating :)
Wow! beautiful video. Great flying! How do you predict the decent from above the clouds knowing that are mountains below? Blessings .
Respect!
Santa is an amazing place to Soar ;-) I go there every year with our Clubs Janus CT but never had the luck to get in to the wave. What was the date of filming?
1976. godine iznad Novog mesta (Slovenija), u zoni letjelišta me uhvatilo strujanje altokumulusa u nastajanju. S 300 m sam za nepune 3 minute bio sam 4.200 m, bez leda na krilima i u tih nekoliko zaokreta 30 km sjeveroistočnije.
My nose started bleeding at around 7:30 . Man talk about an updraft...you guys started to sound like you were breathing helium! Great video. Can a person have any more fun with their pants on?
GUTEN ABEND ZUSAMMEN SEHR GUTES VIDEO SUPPER @@@
***** Danke sehr Pavla machs gut...@@@@
Great Video & Flight! Thank You Very Much For Using Live Audio Only! Use Of "Music" Is Completely Unrelated!
I watch a glider do loop the loop about 10 times in 5 minutes just now. My girlfriend thought it must be an aeroplane but turned out it was a indeed a glider. couldn't believe what I was seeing.
fantastic
Gosh that was beautiful. I have a question, and I hope you won't take it as trolling or negative criticism. Do you have much experience and/or knowledge of wave soaring? I ask because I have more than a fair amount of experience, and I've gained mine with a LOTof low (1200 AGL) tow releases transitioning with thermals/ridge into wave. So from your video, I was curious why you circled in the wave as if it were a thermal (were you exploring the wave boundaries?), when it appeared that steady flight and/or S-turns into the wind would have found and maintained the strongest wave lift much faster than you did? I would have also positioned (or at least explored) my flight farther up-wind from the wave cloud front to find more consistent lift. In any case, I'm curious about your decisions, and not trying to back-seat pilot. Spectacular day and video. Thanks!
So when in rotor out in Spain, really the quickest way to make the transition into the wave is to circle in the rotor, because you often get rotor-enhanced thermals which can be incredibly tight and turbulent, and pressing on straight won't do you a huge amount of good. Once above cloudbase the risk/reward for pushing further upwind into a fairly tight valley to try and improve on a 10kt climb just wasn't good enough! Where do you fly out of? Wish I had the opportunity to do more wave stuff!
The majority of my wave experience is eastern U.S. in the Appalachians. Flew primarily in Vermont, lots and lots of experience in every concievable mix of thermal/rotor and ridge/thermal into wave. I've flown wave in the west, and all the features are MUCH larger, so I would never have attempted to gain a wave flight from a 1200' AGL airport release unless I had a nearby working ridge / mountain chain or fool-proof thermals. Happy flying!
pjd412 - That's a great story, all the more amazing because it was a foot launch! It does indeed sound as if you found wave. I'm curious now about the performance specs of a high-end hang-glider: best L/D? Speeds? Sink rates?
Nowhere near what you guys are used to! The link below is from gliders about 1 generation old--but should still give you a decent idea. 15:1 would be considered high performance today for a flex wing. Sink rates around 175 fpm. And there are rigid wing HGs that improve on this. www.willswing.com/polar-data-for-wills-wing-hang-gliders/
Nice ride!
In the futur I will too my dear friend ! :)
Pekny , este ze ste se nesrazili se sputnikem :-)
Thanks for watching and please share the link! Will be back there in about 6 weeks time so hoping for another few cllimbs like this....
Nice!
Chuffing great video
Great stuff. This is the best gliding video I've seen on KZhead. Am I right in thinking that you won the National Juniors' comp at Tibenham last year?
pedals, mate, pedaaaals!! hahaha ;) beaaautiful video though. My greatest climb in a glider has been at 4.8m/s.. Once in a lifetime I wanna have more then 7m/s - that's a goal of mine. Cheers, and happy landings
omg that climb
How do you maintain awareness of where the landing strip is? This seems disorienting to me.
The numbers I call out from about 4:15 onwards are the variometer averages in knots, peaking at 17.5 knots.
Vario went above my audible range at times, there...
I see your variometer is in m/s but is your altimeter calibrated in feet or meters?
Hi Dan, Stonking video. I need to give a talk to some newbie pilots can I use some excerpts from this please (full acknowledgements)
Sure thing
The altimeter was rising the way it does in a winch launch
Look at that Variometer dance
Hello. What was the highest height? Thanks for the info.
Ohhh my gooooodness ! That's amazing ! How can you get 9m/s with a rotor thermals ?! And how do you realised to continue to get higher and higher whereas you're above the clouds ?! In any case this is an amazing and fantastic video thanks to the vue !
Victor Baxerres They were flying in wave lift. Where the wind rises as it hits a mountain and continues to rise on the other side. People have reached 50,000ft in wave lift. You can fly up through cloud in a thermal but it carries increased risk if you don't know what you're doing and if you're near a club then there are probably other gliders nearby so it isn't safe. A cumulus cloud forms at the altitude where temperature, pressure and humidity say the dew point should be. The air will continue to rise until it has cooled to the temperature of the surrounding air.
question: in the confines of the small cabin why does no condensation or frost form at the high altitudes to obscure vision?
There is a small window on the left which can be opened or shut if it starts to get hot or cold. It could also stop condensation.
Air intake is open
Wow... you hit 1000ft/m between 4:20 and 5:20 mins. on the video. How cool is that.!!
how high did you fly, at what altitude did you put your oxygen mask on? I think I saw it in the reflection.
Above 10000 ft (3000 m) you may suffer from hypoxia so that's the altitude you should don your oxygen mask. that's what they did
Some say they are still climbing there today
Wow.. What lift
It sounds like you have a broken R2-D2 unit. 😊
Someone has a heavy left foot! Looks like slipping most of the flight. Was the lift that great? ie. flow from the turn center?
Camera angle.
Very nice video! For me it seems like it is thermals under the clouds, but the minute you get over the clouds the wave starts. Am I wrong? I'm a paraglider pilot and I'm a bit worried that I don't see any lenticularis in the video, which I always use as reference myself in my calculations of safe flying.
Yeah exactly, you can make out some lenticulars a way above us later on in the video. The wave was essentially just going vertically up the face of the cloud.
Dan Smallbone This is interesting, and I sort-of commented on it, above. I have a lot of wave experience in various conditions, and I've developed some theories about wave/thermal interactions. From your video, I would tend to believe that the wave started below/in front of the low cumulus looking lennie bar clouds at a lower altitude than you think. I couldn't say on this video how far below the cloud bottoms the wave lift started, but my theory is that the rising wave-air pulls the moist airmass up and through the low cumulus-lennie bar (wave-enhanced cumulus formation?) which is where the cu/lennie cloud forms because that airmass has reached its dew-point at that altitude. The cloud is their ONLY because it has reached its dewpoint, and NOT because that's where the wave lift starts. Of course, every day, and every location will offer enormous variations of thermal/wave interaction. But I've tested this theory in hundreds of flights in spring-summer-fall that featured strong morning wave, disrupted at low altitude by strong mid-day thermal production, only to again develope an interesting low altitude thermal/wave combo later in the day as the solar energy of the day waned and the winds became more laminar at all altiitudes. Regardless of the technicals, some of my favorite soaring moments are when first hooked into the wave, rising past and above the cloud front!
Hey Dan, i dont know a lot about aviation or gliding. Was curious what the changing tone is for? Great video btw.
It's the sound from the electrical variometer, which indicates us our vertical speed (negative if we go down or positive if we go up, for example the 9 m/sec of the title). You can see the pointers of his two variometers (on the right) moving as the sound changes ;)
Awesome, thank you for taking the time to answer my question Raph.
You're welcome !
Hi Folks, where were you flying? NZ or Alpine Mountains in France/Switzerland?
The Pyrenees, on the spanish side.
why does this aircraft has a sweptback wingtips (raked) like the 787, How does the sweep play a role in reducing induced drag??
+Hagop Toranian there is a vortex at the wingtips due to a low pressure on the top of the wing and a high pressure on the bottom. by bending the wing you can reduce the stregnth of that vortex and thereby the drag
It catches more of the vortex as it trails behind the wing. Sort of.
The appearance of sweep on this video is not actual sweep but just a gentle bend upwards of straight wings, due to wing loading, coupled with a small taper. Conventional sailplane's like the one in the video have virtual no sweep as it's structurally and aerodynamically more efficient at the speeds sailplanes fly at. Swept wings typically have more induced drag than equivalent unswept wings, which is a bit part of why sailplanes have long unswept wings. Jet aircraft like the 787 fly much faster so the aerodynamic factors are different and increasingly dominated by the effects of the sound barrier, here sweep becomes and more important so the tradeoffs in poorer structural efficiency and higher induced drag are worth it.
is there a problem with lack of oxygen if you go too high?
Certainly. Thus they did put on their oxygen 'whiskers' at about 10000 ft.
Great video ! 9 m/s (2000'/ mte) constant wave up to almost 13300 ft ! lucky you ))... Hope you haven't be cought in a Foehn hole !!
I heard him ask about the temperature. Since there is no engine how do you keep the cabin warm at such low temperatures?
It's a glasshouse.
Please tell me you can turn off the beeping on the VSI.
when i was flying gliders they were only T21 they came along way now
what was the maximum height do you reach??'
Why dont they put the instruments to the left and right so you can see the nose and not have your view blocked?
Damn Cn clouds are dangerous if you get caught in a strong updraft. There was a story of a man who got caught in such an updraft and got up to 30,000 feet and lost consciousness because of lack of oxygen. Lucky for him the glider cruised down on his own and he was able to regain his mind and land, but not everyone is so lucky. For anyone wondering, couldn't he just point down? - No, gliders have a VNE - never exceed speed so pointing the plane down could literally rip the plane apart.
Slip + full spoilers should work xD
How does one actually get into gliding? I have always been interested. I assume you don't own this glider freehold, but how do you get lessons/a glider to fly etc. Is there insurance?
I was really lucky in that my Dad was an instructor, so that made getting into gliding pretty easy! If you're interested in flying just go along to your local gliding club and get a trial flight organised. Yeah so the glider is insured and most (probably all?) policies cover occupants to some degree as well.
+Igor K judging clouds like that.... I don't think clouds are a good choice for practicing landings. Clouds aren't as thick as paint you know...
chazzatheninja go on the internet and find your local gliding club. Contact them for a trial lesson and if you like it (I am sure you will) you can join the club. You will fly club two sweaters while learning and if you wish you can join a private syndicate or buy a glider outright when you are qualified. It's all down to you.
34,000 ft on a sailplane. Temperature, -15 degrees.
I haven't done Jaca yet...looks interesting..I'm wanting to sell my Europa Xs Tri gear G CGDH shares and get an ASH 25M...!! 1/6 Should be OK.!
Cheers mate, my video from this year's trip will be up in a few hours so take a look! Dan