Flying a glider isn’t that much of an issue, but somehow, I don’t manage to get the “A” award in the ridge soaring tutorial. Lacking points in all three categories. I mean, I understand what I’m supposed to do and keep my speed in the required range, but there doesn’t actually seem to be much updraft at the ridge and I lose a few hundred feet of altitude throughout the lesson.
I tried various things - but where exactly do they want me to fly? The blue CFD streaks don’t seem to help much and they’re especially scarce around the ridge and at starting altitude. I tried high, low, close to the ridge, farther away from the ridge - I only occasionally get updraft, though.
Rl glider pilot here I did ridge soaring in RL and I can tell you this lesson is broken on many levels - no clear criteria, you start so high and so close to airfield you shouldn’t be forced to fly at that high speed and it is not clear you should use airbrakes to descend and fly low or keep high with weaker lift, those blue lines are thermal visualizations, not airflow visualizations! The irony is in debug mode in debug weather window there is proper airflow visualization toggle that would work better here as it shows how particle from given startpoint would travel including terrain geometry. For good ridge lesson they should have set weather without thermals (like stratus in autumn) - as I was able to skip the ridge, climb in thermal areas over flatlands located upwind and got higher ridge lift score than I tried do it realistically flying near ridge - ridiculous!
I did’t file it as a bug yet as I think there are way more important, glider related bugs - namely thermal model lacking basic/fundamental properties of RL thermals - there is a wishlist item for better thermal realim.
I managed to get the A now. Idon’t know exactly what I did first, I suppose I simply went to the second waypoint far away from the ridge and within the termals instead, still losing a lot of altitutde, and then I went back to the third waypoint at about 100 m /300 ft directly above the ridge in a slight updraft. It got me back to 130 m. Before reaching the WP I turned around again, once more riding just about 100 m above the ridge. By the time the turning point came up, I was back at about 220 m. Then another turn towards the third waypoint. I guess I was at about 160 m in the end, but with over 8800 points.
Finally! After several 7700-7800s, and a couple of scary lee-side moments, I found that I needed to go quite away out from the ridge (see image), on both the way there and back, to get an 8000+.
Problem is that, after all that continous Vario sound, I fear I shall be dreaming of these characters tonight:
You need a deft fingertip touch and quick reactions to keep it level always with an eye out that you stay out of the yellow but also above 80kts including when coordinating the turn. When you restart it remembers your last trim so after the finish line trim for 90kts before she kicks you out.
For gliders I have a profile with my throttle axis set for elevator trim but totally desensitized
I use my G27 pedals as rudders (with the middle for the brake). You got me thinking if the wheel would work when unpowered so I could use it as a very large trim wheel (it’s hung under my desk, in a not dissimilar position to a C152 I guess), but sadly it needs power. I might just investigate the throttle on my stick and another profile
The throttle on my stick is on the left which makes it kind of natural for me (I’d say the green knob in gliders is always left).
However if you don’t want to set up a new profile you can set the knob with your mouse (although unless you’re ambidextrous that pretty much means no dynamic adjustments during the trial).
I’d never explored the profile option but I’ve now set myself up a GA profile and a Glider profile for the stick - using the throttle on my old MS Sidewinder Precision Pro works very smoothly indeed. Thanks for the inspiration.
Not only have I not been able to get an A on the ridge soaring, but I am now unable to fly the lesson due to starting on the ground with no way to get up into the air to fly the lesson! Anyone know of a fix for that?