Hang Gliding and Paragliding Volume 44 / Issue 12:December 2014 | Page 54

Thinking Outside the Blocks
Part XII: Thermal Trixz

A

fter decades of flying I can look
back and see some milestone
learning experiences, such as my
first soaring flight, my first thermal,
my first cross-country. I can remember
each of these wonderful experiences
like it was the day before yesterday.
But there have been many other bits of
learning that were subtler, yet perhaps more important to my overall
development as a pilot. I learned these
techniques and tricks by observation,
trial and error, copying other pilots or
simply asking a thousand questions.
The funny thing is, after many
years of accumulation, sometimes this
human forgets some of the tricks. If
you’re human, you probably will, too.
Just the other day I was flying with only
one other pilot. It was a weak day on
a weekday. He was way up and back;
I was low and feeling neglected by the
lift angel. She must have felt my pain,
for soon I hit a mild thermal and began
coring. I was thinking how I really
needed to max the climb since there
were long pauses between thermals;
altitude meant survival.
I was turning as efficiently as I could
in that lonely thermal, then I remembered the trick. I guess I haven’t been
flying competition so I haven’t been
focusing on best-performance procedures. But as soon as I applied the trick,
my climb rate increased and I wrung
that thermal out like a pair of worried
hands. Of course, there are many tricks

54

HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

by Dennis Pagen

to effective flying, but I call this one the
trick because it seems to work like no
other in needy situations.

MAXIMIZING MINIMUM SINK
What I call the trick has also been
called maximum turns or spinning up.
No matter what it’s called, it works. I
first became aware of it in the late ‘80s
when I saw the well-known ace, Larry
Tudor, winding up through gaggles at
a Brazilian comp. He did it more than
once against pilots with the same glider.
I wasn’t the only pilot observing Larry,
and some of us discussed the technique,
but it took a while to parse it out. Now,
most top pilots use the trick and newer
pilots have the benefit of reading about
it and learning faster.
Essentially, the trick involves setting
a bank angle in a thermal and pushing
out until the inside wing is kissing a
stall. If it does stall it will tend to drop
down and back. But by levering yourself
to the high side of the glider (outside of
the turn) you fight the glider tendency
and produce the most efficient thermal
turn possible while still maintaining control over your bank and circle
configuration.
When you are in this turning mode,
your inside arm is nearly straight,
pushing hard to keep your body to the
high side. Your outside arm either pulls
or pushes as needed to keep the glider
rotating smoothly around the circle.
Figure 1 illustrates the positioning.

Note we have shown about a 30-degree
bank. I find that if the bank angle is
much less than this, the inside wing
stall is so abrupt or severe that it is hard
to overcome with high siding and the
circling becomes erratic or you drop out
of the thermal.
We should all be aware that the
steeper the bank, the less we have to
use roll force to control bank angle, and
the more pitch can effectively tighten
or widen our circle. Many pilots get
fatigued when they thermal for an hour
or more because they bank too flatly
and have to use a lot more force controlling roll, especially in rowdy thermals.
On the other hand, this maximizing
technique is also tiring. In general, good
pilots only use it when they need a save
or a jump of some sort. Also, in competition, pilots use it in the last thermal or
two before final glide to try to top out
the gaggle.
Here’s more: In general, curvedtip gliders are more adaptable to this
maximum turn technique than square
tippers because the flexible tip wand
allows the glider to wash out (twist) a
bit more when you push out beyond
the normal stall point. But I saw Larry
Tudor doing it on a square-tip Wills
Wing HP AT. In fact, here’s anot