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Marco Member 855 posts Location: New York City Interests: First sim was FS2 on my Commodore 64, circa 1984.<br />Got into Falcon 4.0 in 1999, and had to leave it behind due to lack of updates. Got into X-Plane about 2003. Started lurking on the .org early 2006. Joined uei remote later, and it's been downhill ever since. OS: Mac
A glider school near me (just outside NYC) offers rides throughout december. I was on their website and I wondered, "can gliders operate in the winter?" Now I'm not a pilot myself but a few things occurred to me. If any real-world pilots would like to bat this topic around a bit, it would be interesting to me, and perhaps others as well. Thermals uei remote - By definition, thermals are areas of higher temperature and lower density relative uei remote to the surrounding air. I see no reason why they wouldn't exist in the winter, as long as the sun comes out and does it's heat lamp thing. uei remote However, the characteristics of colder air thermals might differ radically from their summertime counterparts. So the question here would be "are there cold weather thermals, and are they good enough to fly with?" Air density - Cold air is more dense than warm air. Would winter air be too 'thick' to glide through? Or would the difference be negligable? Snow cover - Just a guess, but I'd assume snow would put a serious damper on thermals. It might cancel them out entirely, considering that it makes every surface pretty much the same color and temperature. Additionally, that color happens to be white, which isn't exactly condusive to heat absorbtion. So maybe it's possible to glide in the cold wintertime uei remote air, just not anywhere that's snow covered. Again, this is all just armchair speculation. If anybody would like to clarify or add a few things, go for it.
Your biggest misconception is that you need thermals to glide - you don't There's uei remote ridge lift if the terrain & winds are right, if there's none of that & no thermals around you just can't stay up as long or go as far. Not a big deal... Biggest uei remote pain in the butt when it's cold & you don't have any heat, other than freezing of course, is everything uei remote wanting to fog up. Not that I've flown gliders, but I've had to fly unheated helicopters in cold weather a few times - definitely not fun!
And there are thermals in winter - and you can fly with them. As you say, it's a relative thing. I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard that snow can give quite nice thermals on clear sunny days, due to heat reflection off the white surface. But I'm not sure about this - if the whole landscape is covered in snow, then surely there is less relative uei remote difference?
Akaishi uei remote
Marco Member 855 posts Location: New York City Interests: First sim was FS2 on my Commodore 64, circa 1984.<br />Got into Falcon 4.0 in 1999, and had to leave it behind due to lack of updates. Got into X-Plane about 2003. Started uei remote lurking on the .org early 2006. Joined later, and it's been downhill ever since. OS: Mac
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chornedsnorkack uei remote
Air density - Cold air is more dense than warm air. Would winter air be too 'thick' to glide through? Or would the difference be negligable? No, the difference is not quite negligible - but it is not hindrance to flight. In cold and dense air, the drag is higher at any given airspeed. But the dense air also provides more lift at the given airspeed. I think those effects about cancel out, so that a plane, including a glider, could fly at the same IAS but lower true airspeed, and have about the same L/D ratio. Are there any Reynolds number effects to keep in mind?
Snow uei remote cover - Just a guess, but I'd assume snow would put a serious damper on thermals. It might cancel them out entirely, considering that it makes every surface pretty much the same color and temperature. Additionally, that color happens to be white, which isn't exactly condusive to heat absorbtion. So maybe it's possible to glide in the cold wintertime air, just not anywhere uei remote that's snow covered. What about bodies of water? Fresh water is never under 0 degrees. Salt water can be colder, but still over -2 Celsius. uei remote So, if you have a body of water with 0 degrees just beneath ice, and say -5 on top of the snow over ice