June 2015 International Free Flying Magazine 160 THE WILD BLUE YONDER Pinging out in Scotland with the latest performance three-liners
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IN THE C RE Thermalling is at the heart of what we do, yet it's difficult to teach, takes time to learn and you will spend a lifetime mastering it. We asked for some tips. By Ed Ewing When you re a beginner thermalling can seem like a black art. You will never understand it, you think, as you try to feel the glider and guess which side of the pitching machine above your head this socalled thermal actually is. Instructors may have talked to you about cobble zones surges and bite, speeding up and being pulled in, or being tipped sideways and spat out. Sometimes, they explain, thermals can be aggressive and you have to pull hard; other times they are barely there and you have to use a light touch. They are either in front of you, to the left, the right, or breaking off out front. Very rarely do you find one. Once in one, you have to listen to the vario, wait three seconds before turning, monitor your position, handle the glider, stay out of other people s way, and fly the glider actively to get into the best lift. Then you have to start to think about modelling this invisible force in your head! It can be difficult, you discover, thinking in 3D while pulling strings at 250m above the ground. All this time there is some beeping, perhaps some crackling as your instructor says Left the other left over the radio, and a knot in your stomach as you ache to get round and higher. It s like learning to read at school Jonny can do it, you can too says the teacher. But when you look up all you see is Jonny specking out against the clouds. Eventually, with practice, the help of some technology, maybe a lecture or two plus a few evenings devoted to reading, it all starts to fall into place. Slowly, you start to get it. Then one day, not too long after things first click, you find yourself getting higher and the thermalling becoming easier as the thermal expands and gets fatter. Suddenly you realise you re almost at cloudbase and you ve got a decision to make. Hanging about at the top of the thermal close to cloud is fun but weirdly harder than the textbook made out and slowly you drift off over the back, tracking the thermal and cutting your psychological tie to your take-off site. Next thing you know, you are gliding off downwind hoping to find the next one. Hello XC flying. Thermalling is at the core of what we do, and you can never learn enough about it or do enough of it. To help us learn more we asked some learned pilots a few questions, aimed at novice, intermediate and expert pilots. Here s what they said. LEAN IN Thermalling is not just hucking constant circles. You need to be adjusting your wing with the thermal and trying to figure out what bank angle will maximise your climb for that thermal at that level and keep adjusting as you go. Brad Gunnuscio Photo: Marcus King THERMALLING CROSS COUNTRY 160 61
FEEL THE GLIDER Try to recognise and get used to the feeling you get where the canopy gets pulled up or down to know where the climb is better. Use the sound not the screen of your vario to zone in on where the best climb is. This will help you to circle while keeping the core in the center. Armin Harich Photo: Charlie King The Novice I m just learning to thermal what top three tips can you give me that will help me learn to thermal better this season? Fresh back from a season running XC trips in South America and SIV courses in Mexico, the USA s Brad Gunnuscio says his first tip is, Patience! He means don t try to run before you can walk. When we first experience it, the rush of catching that first thermal and harnessing mother nature can be so exciting and exhilarating that I ve seen lots of pilots get in way over their head. They fly in conditions they are not ready for, and scare themselves. This is just going to slow down your learning process and it s dangerous. Chill out. Take your time and enjoy the journey. His second tip is never stop working. Thermalling is not just hucking constant circles. You need to be adjusting your wing with the thermal and trying to figure out what bank angle will maximise your climb for that thermal at that level and keep adjusting as you go. Watch a bird when it thermals it is always working, moving its wings and feathers as it goes. Be more like a bird when you fly, feel the thermal and become one with it. Third, Keep your head on a swivel. We re looking at clouds, dust devils, flags, birds and other pilots while avoiding mid-air collisions and watching the weather. It makes for a big mental workload. Sometimes we get fixated on looking one way and forget to scan 360 degrees and we miss something that was just simply obvious. I love after a long glide hooking that first thermal, even if it s a light one, as it gives me an opportunity to look around 360 degrees and make sure I m not missing anything. Austrian Arena s Kelly Farina is just gearing up for his alpine season when asked for his advice. Number one, never join thermals face on face, he says, echoing Brad s Take it easy. Think about closing speeds. There is an art to joining a thermal gracefully and the last thing you want is a mid-air collision, so if the sky and the thermals are too busy for you, find a less busy one, or find your own. If you do that at a busy site you ll soon have friends come and join you, but you ll be established and will feel more relaxed. 62 CROSS COUNTRY 160 THERMALLING
up, where the thermal expands, you can turn wider and flatter. Gordon adds: On a hang glider make sure it is tuned to fly equally nicely in left and right hand turns or you will be fooled there is lift one side all the time. That feel for your glider is important to start developing early, says Skywalk s Armin Harich. A flatland hound he was the first to break the 300km mark in Germany (on a low-level EN-B no less). Try to visualise the thermal in your brain, he says. Try to recognise and get used to the feeling you get where the canopy gets pulled up or down to know where the climb is better. Use the sound not the screen of your vario to zone in on where the best climb is. This will help you to circle while keeping the core in the centre. Finally, if you hit a thermal, wait until you are far enough inside to not fall out again before you turn. This is two to three seconds if you circle tightly, five if you circle wide. The Intermediate I know how to thermal and fly XC, and I ve read all the books. But people still out-thermal me and I find myself climbing slowly. Have you got any advice to help me thermal better? Smoothness is the key, adds Kelly. From thermal entry to the initial turn to mapping the climb you re in opening out and then tightening in the rough direction where the strongest part was felt. All that should be done smoothly. To help do that, it is good to learn how your optimum circle feels, he explains. Use more weightshift and less brake and aim for a turn of around 16 seconds per 360. Most novice pilots will be turning a 360 in 25-30 seconds, which is why the most common advice beginners hear is Turn tighter! Gordon Rigg, who has been UK hang gliding champion numerous times and also flies paragliders, has given that advice plenty of times. The classic advice of straighten up in strong lift and turn tighter in weaker lift will get you into the middle of the thermal quite well. But usually to begin with pilots are not turning tight enough or reacting fast enough. The turn tighter advice is classic: pilots are often told to turn efficiently which is often interpreted as flatly. In reality turning efficiently is turning so you stay in the best lift and climb at your best rate low down that will often mean tight, banked turns. Higher As well as teaching Brad flies for the US team and has learnt a lot by flying in big gaggles of good pilots. I notice when I m getting out-thermalled it s because I see a pilot near me going up and then I try to get my wing in that same space and the same air as they are and I start flying by sight and not by feel. This never works. For one, your perception is off no matter how close they are. And secondly, the air is always moving. Take that climbing pilot as information that there is lift in the area but continue to fly by feel. Chances are you will start to outclimb that other pilot and they will run to you for your thermal. Gordon Rigg reckons the most common problem for intermediate pilots is, losing the lift and spending too long finding it again, or just giving up too soon and rushing off somewhere else. Rather than doing that, When the lift weakens, open the turn out wide and often you will find where the strong lift moved to. Kelly has helped hundreds of pilots learn to thermal on his courses in the Alps and he knows it is the pilot that counts, not the glider. Other pilots will only come through us from below if they are making fewer mistakes, increasing their efficiency, he says. Glider performance only plays a role when both pilots have similar, high-level skill-sets. THERMALLING CROSS COUNTRY 160 63
FLY SMOOTHLY, LIKE A CAT If you turn tight, take care of the position of your harness in relation to the airflow. You really don t want to be thermalling side on you ll add huge amounts of drag. Armin Harich Photo: Ed Ewing Increased efficiency comes from either the smoothness of our carve basically our line through the air or the way we open and tighten our carve to take advantage of the thermal s core. This is especially vital in light conditions, when simply maintaining can be crucial to staying in the air. Your climb rate will be better the more time you spend in the core. Opening your carve at the crucial angle and distance before tightening up again will help you stay with the strongest part. Kelly talks of acting as suspension to the bumps the thermal throws at us absorbing it, reacting evenly, trying to get a smooth ride. By this stage in your learning you will have started to mentally map the shape of the thermal as you climb. For most people this is hard, takes practice and involves a lot of guesswork. You have to make yourself a model of the thermal shape in your head and always know which direction the best bit is, says Gordon. So the sound of the vario must be linked to landmarks on the ground. Often wind shear will bend all the thermals on the day in the same direction at the same height, particularly in flatlands. So chasing the next thermal the same way as the last one went often works. He adds, Avoid turning the same way all the time. If you developed a preference one way, force yourself to turn the other way only for a while whenever you can. Your hang glider needs to be trimmed at the right speed for you to climb well. My hang glider is trimmed very slow, but my wife Kathleen flies the same glider trimmed three holes faster. Find what trim speed suits you. Active flying of course is key to thermalling well. Train in controlling pitch, says Armin, and improve your active flying as much as possible. Fly like a smooth cat. You will climb and glide a lot better and get a lot fewer collapses! Experiment with your thermalling. You ll often see three or four pilots turning away tightly in their own separate cores but in the same mass of rising air. Try touring around between them, flying flat. You ll be surprised how wide the area of lift can be, and you will have a better chance of finding stronger cores. Treat each thermal as a training session and learn to circle around the core as tight as possible, says Armin. If you lose it, you will find it a lot easier as it will not be far away! Flying tightly in cores has other benefits too, he says. The 64 CROSS COUNTRY 160 THERMALLING
canopy gets more collapse resistant with increased G-force. He adds, If you learn to circle with 20-45-degrees angle of bank, you are good and can climb faster than others. Take note too that where you fly will have an impact on what the thermals are doing. Especially in the flatlands, the direction you have to move your turning circle can change a lot and can be any direction. Use your feelings and learn to trust them. The Expert I m not sure there s anything you can tell me I don t know about thermalling, although I m open to learning. Any advice on how I can really hone my technique is always appreciated. I think we all need to take the sponge approach, says Brad diplomatically. I have been free flying for 20 years and I still feel like I learn so much every flight, I will be a life long student. Take in as much information as you can and absorb it like a sponge. In the long run this is going to make you a much better pilot and hopefully keep you from getting complacent. I call complacency intermediate syndrome, which this pilot has. Hopefully they make it through that process. This sport, more than any sport I ve ever seen, will teach you respect, or pound it into you. Fly with much better pilots than yourself, is Kelly s advice for the expert. If there s any difference in performance it s again only down to how clean your carve is. After that it s just the ability to physically move your carve as you hone in on the core. Smooth, like a cat. Pilots who carve cleanly maintain energy, converting less height through inefficient jerking movement. With a sensitive vario you should be able to place yourself exactly where you want. Simple but definitely not easy. Gordon Rigg says controlling your speed in the thermal is one way of climbing better. There are big gains to be made by speeding up and then slowing down in the strongest surge of the thermal. He adds, In busy thermals always use more bank and turn tighter than you would on your own. This keeps you in the middle, less likely to be pushed out, and your flight path is more predictable to others. Someone who waffles about on the edge of the thermal loses out and annoys everyone else! One of the key things is to always be flying at your best, don t get lazy. Remember that time you managed to climb from very low where the landings looked really iffy? That is how much skill you need to use in every thermal if you are going to climb the best! AND NOW FOR YOUR HOMEWORK... 1 2 300M 500M Burkhard Marten s book Thermal Flying has 10 really useful exercises that pilots can practise to get good at thermalling. Here are five. 1. Climb to cloudbase then leave the thermal and lose 300m of altitude quickly. Rejoin the thermal and climb back up as fast as you can. Repeat, but lose 500m, 750m etc. The goal is to practise coring and learn about the structure of thermals. 2. Switch back and forth between two reliable thermals. Climb to base in one, glide to the other, repeat but leave 200m below base to go back to the first thermal. Once there, climb again but leave at 400m from base. Continue until you are almost on the deck. The goal is to learn how to find thermals at different altitudes and improve scratching skills. 3. In a thermal try to widen your circles for every 360 degrees. Sooner or later you ll find the edge. Re-centre and find the core again. The goal is to learn about the ideal turn radius for a given thermal. 4. When soaring on thermally active slopes practise pushing out front and exploring the lift away from the slope until there is no more lift. If you find a thermal, try to bite into it and take it as high as you dare without risking getting blown back. The goal is to learn the difference between thermal lift and dynamic lift. 5. Practise thermalling the opposite way to your normal preference. The goal is to get proficient at thermalling in both directions. Having this skill sorted makes quick centring easier as we rarely hit thermals in the middle and almost always have to choose a direction to turn. Read more in Thermal Flying, by Burkhard Martens 3 4 THERMALLING CROSS COUNTRY 160 65
LISTEN CAREFULLY You have to make yourself a model of the thermal shape in your head and always know which direction the best bit is. So the sound of the vario must be linked to landmarks on the ground. Gordon Rigg Photo: Charlie King Another tip is to treat your free flying days as training. When training try switching the sound off on your instrument to see if you can still climb by feel alone. World Champion Thomas Suchanek once won a competition with no vario! Armin Harich reminds us it s not always about the glider: If you turn tight, take care of the position of your harness to the airflow. You really don t want to be thermalling side on you ll add huge amounts of drag. He explains you can train in this by making small wingovers. You can use your feet to twist the pod into the right direction. Not easy, but it will help a lot. It also helps if you understand what is going on with your wing. Understand how a paraglider steers. When you pull a brake, the lift on that side will increase. To not slip, which reduces performance, you have to put your bodyweight directly in line with your brake input. As soon as the brake slows down that side, the lift will decrease. Now to avoid the wing slipping you have to bring your bodyweight back inside the curve. If a thermal hits your inside wing, You need to move your body again, to compensate for it and to again stop the wing slipping. To turn tightly, You can slow the wing down to reduce the diameter of the circle while staying at the same angle of bank. Weightshift to the inside and control the turn with your outside brake. If the wing goes behind you if you hit a better climb you can open the brakes to keep it above your head. Thermalling for experts then is similar to thermalling for beginners. It s the same concept that you learn from the start, says Kelly, only done to a higher level of understanding, finesse and accuracy. As our level of understanding grows so will our performance. THANKS TO OUR EXPERTS Brad Gunnuscio is an instructor, SIV teacher and US competition team member. www.paraglideutah.com Kelly Farina is an alpine guide who runs courses in Austria and Italy through his company Austrian Arena. www.austrianarena.com Gordon Rigg has been British hang gliding champion too many times to count and is on the British team. Armin Harich is a partner in Skywalk Paragliders and a flatland guru. He has a tips channel in German at www.youtube.com/haricharmin 66 CROSS COUNTRY 160 THERMALLING