Wave Flight

 Tim writes about April 17:

Actually, it was a rotor/wave flight.

It was a tough start.  There were few clouds to start and those quickly evaporated.  I took a high tow (5K) to the west because if I didn't connect off tow I would have a second chance downwind of the airport.  Sure enough, I couldn't find wave lift near Miller Pond so I headed downwind before I got too low.  I was able to work rotor while drifting downwind.  I guess the wind was about 30 knots.  The lift was sometimes 14 knots in half a turn and minus 14 knots in the other half.  I was able to climb to about 8500 feet as I drifted almost to Mt. Cube.  Was able to work scraps of wave to about 9500 feet but was never well established.  Wind was now about 45 knots.

Moosilauke, Franconia Ridge and Mt. Washington from 9,500 feet

After 2.5 hours I had enough and was going to "declare victory" and land.  Pushing upwind northwest of the airport I found a spot of well-organized rotor lift that turned into wave and went up to 11,000 feet.  This was real wave lift - smooth, consistent and spread over a large area.  Even though there were no cloud markers you could fly carefully and stay in lift (the sink wasn't bad either).  I was able to explore a little and got up to 14,000 feet in the 60 knot wind.  The high winds made it slow to get around but the view was spectacular.  There wasn't a cloud from Canada to Massachusetts.

Below is the SkySight wave prediction and a satellite image from early morning.  And check out this flight to Mt. Washington in a motor glider.

Wave flight

 Andy Kozak (2R) writes:

May 31, 2024 - My most spectacular flight! 

The Skysight forecast was for strong NNW winds with high cloud bases. I had left my glider in the trailer overnight at Post Mills Airfield and was once again going to fly with Tim Chow (BU) and Greg Hanlon (JR). The morning sky showed lenticular clouds, indicating the presence of wave, although Skysight had not predicted wave. We prepared our oxygen systems. My pulse oximeter system can be preset to automatically provide oxygen once I am over 10,000 feet. All I then have to do is put on a nasal cannula. 

The goal for the day was Sugarloaf mountain. in Maine, 250 miles round trip. 

Here are Tim and Greg over Lake Fairlee. Post Mills is just to the left of the lake.

I topped off first and set off hoping to spend at least some of the day leading. This would not last long. After a climb over Piermont Mountain, I was a bit higher so I probed the leading edge of the cloud, hoping to connect to wave. Tim and Greg continued on course and I was suddenly off course and behind. 

For any sustained longer term flight, being able to thermal in consistent, steeply banked (45+ deg.) circles is critical. The NESA 1-34 is great for this with relatively good performance and a good trim control to reduce your workload. It helps to have a relaxed, light touch on the controls. 

Finding myself behind I was anything but relaxed and my thermaling showed. Greg reported good lift over Mount Lafayette but by the time I got there it may have been too late, or I was just not flying well. 

The thermal seemed broken up; there was noticeable strong drift over the 5,000 foot peaks, and I did not have a lot of room to work with. I was forced to penetrate out toward the northern entrance to Franconia notch. I flew through what seemed the worst extended sink and strongest turbulence I have experienced. 

Then, as if by magic it all changed. I turned the corner past Mount Lafayette and flew over of the north facing Lafayette ridge. A two place ship from the Franconia club was thermaling further to the east along the ridge. It was bright and sunny, with smooth air. After gaining some altitude on the ridge I headed for the clouds in the valley. I was somewhat low but within an easy glide of either Franconia, Mount Washington or Twin Mountain airfields. 

After gaining altitude over Cherry Mountain, the clouds provided mostly straight line flight with minimal circling toward Mount Washington. At 9,000 feet. I put on the nasal cannula. I passed just to the south of the summit. To my surprise there was no sink. Lift seemed to come in surges that threatened to pull me up into the clouds. I blundered about over the Carter range until Tim suggested I fly back toward Mount Washington and over the “Horn”. This is the sharp, uphill, left turn under my wingtip:

It used to be customary that drivers on the Mount Washington auto road sounded their horn at this turn. The road was narrower at that time. It is a well known location for wave lift. 

I found smooth, steady 2-3 knot lift. Not very strong for wave. Greg and Tim had topped out at 13,000 feet and headed NE toward Old Speck Mountain, but I was too low to follow and very content to continue climbing.

In this photo you can see Huntington Ravine as the prominent rock bowl in the lower left third of the frame and at the bottom you can see snow in Tuckerman ravine, a mecca for extreme skiing.

And here I am  at 16,500 feet next to a lenticular cloud:

At that point I noticed a much higher lenticular cloud had formed just to my south. I lost some altitude getting to it but there was good lift along its leading edge:

At 17,800 feet I headed away from the lift so as not to violate Class A airspace. It looked like the cloud and likely the lift, extended another 10,000 feet higher.

The flight back was smooth and fast. Once at cumulus cloud level, turbulence restarted and continued down to the ground. 

We never reached our goal but found something special. The White Mountains are beautiful viewed from the air as well as from the ground. Add cumulus and lenticular clouds and their associated shadows and the views on this flight were spectacular. The OLC link is here. 

Isaias Wave

Hurricane Isaias blew through Tuesday and left enough wind on Thursday to generate wave behind Mt. Washington, I wanted to try a flight to Mt. Washington.  After a late start (2:15) because VW was extracting money from the tow pilot to fix his car, I started thermaling northwards.  Thermals were consistent but cloud base was only 5,500-6,000' which is on the low side of my comfort level for a trip to W (Mt. Washington).  I took my time and arrived at W around 4:00.  Ridge lift was good on the Presidentials and I ridge soared the face contemplating my next move.  There were no clouds between the summit of W and the Carters to indicate wave or any other kind of lift.   I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to being down wind of and lower than the Presidentials if I couldn't find wave this late in the day.  But I came this far...  I jumped the ridge into Huntington Ravine.  In less about 90 seconds I felt the first indication of lift at 5,900'.  A quick 180 to point into the wind and I was in zero sink and then climbing at 1 kt.  I was surprised how close the wave was to the summit.  1 kt soon turned into 2 kts then 3 kts by the time I got to 10,000' I was climbing at 8 kts.

Huntington Ravine climbing at 1 kt.

View of Carters - no wave clouds

10,000' climbing at 7.8 kts

After 45 minutes I was just shy of 18,000' and climbing at 1.5 kts.  It was almost 5:00 so it was time to head home.  I dialed Post Mills into the Oudie and was happy to see that even with a 35 kt headwind I had Post Mills with 6,000' to spare - my kind of final glide!

17,500' - Start of final glide

After flying carefully to Franconia to make sure the Oudie wasn't lying to me,  I finished the final glide into PM at 95-100 kts and still arrived with 4,000' to spare.

It was a great flight in thermal, ridge and wave lift and I made it home for dinner.  Thank you Rick for towing and crewing.

Shear Wave

6,600' over Post Mills on Sunday

Sunday mark the beginning of wave season in New England.  It was kind of windy, thermals were generally weak, cloud base was low and the clouds sort formed streets (perpendicular to the wind).  The first 2 hours of my flight I tried to thermal to cloud base and then look for wave.  Most of the time was spent trying to get to cloud base in the weak thermals and avoiding the strong areas of sink.  Since the wind was out of the northwest, when I got to cloud base I would try to move toward the northeast (mistake) and generally found sink.

I found a strong thermal over Rich Starr's house (I guess there's a lot of hot air around there) that took me to cloudbase over the east ridge and from there I was able to transition to wave at about 5,000'.  When I looked around I noticed I was on the southwest side of the cloud street and the glide computer said the wind was 280 degrees at 20 kts.  Below 5,000' the wind was 320 degrees at 10 kts.

I think what was happening was there was cloud street that runs perpendicular to the wind (320 to 140 degrees).  The thermals push up into the inversion at 5,000' and forms a "ridge".  The inversion layer is moving at 20 kts from 280 degrees and hits the "ridge" at a 40 degree angle and has to go up and over the "ridge" forming the shear wave (see cloud street wave).

While the OLC points and the maximum altitude were unremarkable, it was a really fun flight.

SkySight Wave Forecast...Round 2

Sunday offered another chance to fly wave.  Strong NW wind in Summer is not normally considered prime wave weather but SkySight was showing areas of more than 7 kts and going to altitudes over 32,000'.

My flight started off with a tow to the northwest in a cloudless sky (at least in our area).  The tow was in sink from the time we past West Fairlee.  I held on to the tow until we got to 5,200' hoping that we would find some good air but we never did.  I continued in sink for a few more miles to the northwest.  Finally, I made a big left turn to the northeast.  It wasn't until I got over Middlebrook 4-5 miles north of the airport that I finally found my first traces of lift and slowly worked into wave and up to 12,000'.  SkySight had predicted the bad tow and the sink during the first part of the flight (the box showing -0.8 kts shows where I turned around and headed northeast).  SkySight also showed wave right where I found it (the blue dot), over Middlebrook and Lake Fairlee.

Thinking I would head to Mt. Washington I headed towards Franconia trying to use ragged clouds as wave markers.  Once I passed Dean Memorial I fell out of the wave and was never able to find it again.  I spent the rest of the flight in turbulent, broken, rotory, frustrating lift.  I made it as far as the Mount Washington Hotel but at 6,000' I again chickened out (see last posting) and did not make the transition to Mt. Washington.
 

For this flight SkySight got everything right.  I got sink off of tow where SkySight expected sink.  I found weak wave near PM right where SkySight said it would be.  And I spent the rest of the day in a futile effort to find wave where SkySight said there won't be any.

I had looked at the SkySight forecast the night before the flight and I saw the strong wave prediction but I really didn't pay attention to the exact location they were predicting wave.  The strong wave was predicted to be in the Pemigewasset wilderness to Jackson NH.   From the area from Franconia to Mt. Washington it would have been very difficult to safely access the wave through the sink (especially with only 6,000').  This picture shows the forecast wave cross section for a line drawn from the MW Hotel to Jackson, NH.  It shows - 5 kts where we normally expect wave and +7 kts over Jackson, much further downwind than normal.  I guess we'll never know if this forecast is correct.

If I had paid more attention to the forecast maybe I would have tried to pick up wave behind Smarts Mountain, using Plymouth and Wentworth as safety airports.  I can get SkySight downloaded to my Oudie but I have to signup for SeeYou Cloud $59/yr.  Maybe I shouldn't be so cheap.

I also looked at a flight by Nelson Howe from GBSC.  He did a nice job of following the wave upstream for 4 wave cycles.  In this case SkySight seems to have predicted the wavelength to be twice as long he found:

SkySight Wave Forecast....Not!

I was able to contact wave during last Monday's flight.  After the flight I went back to see what SkySight had forecast for the day.

The thermal forecast was pretty accurate:

 

When I got to Twin Mountain (the mountain not the airport), it was completely blue to the North and East.   I was below 5,000' and the lift was broken up.   I figured if Mt. Washington wasn't working and there was sink between Twin Mountain and the Presidentials that I would end up scratching at 1000' over Twin Mountain airport (been-there-and-done-that-before) and I wasn't in the mood.  So I chickened out and instead of heading towards Mt. Washington I turned around. 

When I got back to Franconia I was able to find weak wave and work it up to about 8,000' where SkySight predicted no wave lift:

 

Once I was in wave I could maintain 7,500-8,000' as I drift back towards Twin Mountain (In an area SkySight predicted no wave lift).  At 7,500' over Twin Mountain I felt I could make a run at Mt. Washington and if it didn't work, return to Twin Mountain without too much stress.  As it turned out I flew over the summit with 1000' to spare and contacted weak wave right over the horn.  At times the lift averaged over 3 kts and I topped out at 13,500'.  SkySight was predicting 0.4 kts of lift:

 Recently Matthew Scutter wrote in RAS:

I'm biased because I wrote it, but;
For wave flying, the wave forecasts are so useful you'll wonder how you did it without it. Don't believe me - ask Dennis Tito or Morgan Sandercock, an OLC comment from on one of their 2000km flights, using SkySight in the cockpit:
“The SkySight forecast is so precise that we did not need to look at clouds to find lift. When the clouds went one way and SkySight went another way we found it was better to follow the SkySight prediction. We literally do not need to look out the window to find lift.
I have flown blue wave personally multiple times with SkySight and it really opened possibilities that were not there before. Predicting wave is quite easy because mountains don't move very fast and mid-to-upper level winds change slowly. The same applies to orographic convergences (i.e. wind splitting and joining behind an obstacle) or along the edge of plateaus/ridges. Overlay some wave flights on the forecast with the IGC Upload to see for yourself.
In highly dynamic or unstable wave conditions (fronts passing through etc) though your mileage may vary as to the placement of the wave hour by hour.

While SkySight might be good at predicting wave with big mountains in places like the Owens Valley, Patagonia, the Pyrenees, etc.  I think it still pays for us in New England to look out the window.

One thing that SkySight might have gotten right is the convergence forecast.  Often the transition from Twin Mountain to Mt. Washington is stressful because you are flying downwind, into rising terrain and there is often sink, and if things don't work out, you have to turn around and go upwind through the same sink to make it to the safety of Twin Mountain Airport.  On Monday the transition was easy, there was lift in this area (or zero sink) and little altitude was lost during the transition.  SkySight had predicted 0.4 kts of convergence lift:

P.S. - Thanks for the tow Andy!

Transition to Wave at PM

Here is the log of my flight last Saturday where I transitioned to wave a few miles north of PM airport.  I transitioned from thermals to wave at about 6,000' (cloud base) and then climbed in wave to about 9,000'.

The wind was out of the west (left) and I was flying directly downwind.  I was able to climb a little in 2 broken thermals (thermals are typically broken up by the rotor).  The third thermal was particularly strong (8 kts) and took me to cloud base.  I then pushed forward and continued to climb while I "ridge soared" the front of the clouds.  As is often the case the clouds drifted downwind.  Often more clouds will form up wind and you should push forward to get up wind of the new clouds.  In this case it looks like a jump downwind to another wave peak.

I was able to go to Franconia in wave without losing much altitude but I fell out of the wave (I thought for sure I would find better wave there) and had to thermal back to PM.

Here is the entire flight log:

Here is the Skew-t for the day:

The satellite image shows cloud streets (parallel to the wind) and not the usually wave bands (perpendicular to the wind):

Sugarbush Wave

I had a nice wave flight today.  Lift was rarely over 1.5 kts.  Clouds were few and far between but I did mange to get to 8,300'.  Wind was about 40 kts right from Sugarbush.  Thank you Rick for towing!

https://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=6161120

 Sugarbush and Camels Hump.  Adirondacks in the background.

Union Village Dam in the foreground and my neighborhood.

Mountain Flying, Explained, Again

Here is another video describing how airplane pilots can get in trouble flying near mountains.

It is amusing in at least two ways.  First, it actually contains some humor, which is unusual for a safety video.  But it also contains a fair amount of misinformation, which always brings a smile to my face.

We went through this with AOPA, whose Air Safety Foundation made three attempts to create a lesson on Mountain Flying for power pilots. The final version was OK, and they get credit for correcting their initial errors.

You can’t blame the guys in this video for trying to keep ignorant power pilots away from the turbulence and sink. But why can’t they ever make the distinction between turbulence and sink?  And why don’t they ever mention how smooth it can get?

And, of course, they never explain why some pilots are actually attracted to mountain waves.

Here’s a challenge.  Let’s collect a list of inaccuracies in the comments. I’ll go first.

Thanks to Andy G for finding the video.

VSF Wave 2-26-17

Eric (NT) wrote up the day on the PMSC forum.  I (AT) will just add a few comments and a couple of photos here.  The wind was unusually strong at ground level.  There was both cloud streeting and roto-cumulus clouds.  Wave lift was very localized.

Killington Ski Area

Roto-cumulus bars with streeting in the foreground

Here are the Skew-T and HHHR models from the weekend before when we (Eric (NT), Tim(AT), and Walter and Dennis (i1)) could not find wave.  It was a cloudless day.

New Year's Day Flight

I had a nice wave flight to celebrate the New Year.  Took a long tow and could only find weak wave behind Okemo Mountain.  Moved upwind of Okemo because the clouds looked better, and was able to climb while heading south almost to Mt. Snow.  I think the wave system was well establish to the west (from New York) as can be seen in the satellite images.  Okemo Mountain must have interfered with the established wave resulting in the poor climbs east of the mountain.  Maximum altitude was about 15,000'.

Stratton Mountain in the shade.

Mt. Ascutney is in the Center.  VSF, CMH, and Lake Sunapee are visible in the right pane.

Solstice Wave

Took my (AT) first wave flight out of Springfield, VT for the winter during the solstices (actually a week early).  Up north it was completely socked in, to the south there was no clouds but at Okemo there was just the right amount of clouds.  Wave was 1-2 kts down low, increased to 3-4 kts up to 13,000', and then slowed back down above 13,000'.  I was still climbing at 1-2 kts at 15,000' when I headed down to tow the next flight.

Walter and Peter Kelley took the next flight (i1) but couldn't connect to wave.  Then Walter flew with Bob Morehardt (i1) for about an hour and a half but could only get to 8,500'.

 Looking North - too cloudy

 Looking South - too clear

Looking at VSF from 9 nm away, 2 nm up and 50 kt tailwind - final glide even for a space shuttle