How to Thermal Like a Pro: Find, Center & Climb | Paragliding Tutorial with Brett Janaway

Right, just to give you an idea on this talk, it's, it's made-up as I go. I haven't done it for five years. So and I'm not I won't run into the full length. I normally do. It's I'll try not to because I can do 2 hours on this easy. When we get going, we're going to do it in an hour. So I'll skip things. I have, I think I did this about four years ago in one of the Sr. s s in France when we had some bad weather. So if you want to see more of it, maybe we'll cover it all. You can also just hunt on

YouTube for what a thermal looks like my name and you'll you'll see it again. I used to do it a lot in the guiding days many years ago, and I do 3 or 4 * a year. I used to find people used to come back and listen to it two or three times because it's one of those talks that often it doesn't make sense until you experience the situation. And then after that, when you hear it, it helps to explain the situation. And what I want to try and do is give you an idea of what a thermal really looks like, not what the textbook says, except it's not what it really looks

like. It's weather, it's made-up, it's just my impression of what a thermal looks like. Some of you will have your own impressions, some of you are better pilots than me, so we've all got our own ideas. But this was really my struggle in my early days trying to thermal and not really knowing what to do. And people would just say if it beeps, turn. It's works to start, but if you want to be better, you need to start building up some mental images of things and then deciding how to how to adapt to that for your flying. So for sure, these are just ideas. They're just my ideas. You may have your own

impressions and yeah, we'll have some talks as we go. So I think with anything in thermaling, you first got to go backwards for the thermal. It's all right to say the instruments beeping. Let's turn. But I think we need to rewind quite a bit to where the thermal's coming from and things. So let's see if I can do some bad diagrams with limited colours. I have no green.

I think it's worth starting first at just the ground, the basic ground I What do you need for a thermal to resist up there? What do you need before you start, before the thermal can exist? So sun, sun's a good one. That's heat is what's a thermal is. So the, the sun's required in here. So the sun's shining down. What else are we going to need around to get this thing going?

Wind can be triggers. We need triggers. And yeah, the contrast, which is the sources. So it's interesting you think about some of this Sahara desert, it's hot, should be booming with thermals. It's probably not. It's probably quite stable because you don't have the contrast. The contrast in there are quite important. Temperature doesn't really matter. You get good thermals in Slovenia. I can do 100. I live in Slovenia. You can get good thermals in Slovenia every month of the year. 100 KS I can do in November, December, January, every month a year because it's not temperature, it's the differentials, it's the sources and the triggers. You need those things to get thermals going, which is why the

Alps is so good. The Alps is full of differentials for us to run through. A few basics on on here maybe. So we got the ground if we heat the ground up. So we got an area, ground that's a bit darker in colour. Imagine the black is grass. It's probably not far off this year. It's quite burnt in some areas around here. And then you got a an area that's the dark area that's probably going to heat up faster than the surrounding areas. And that's going to build up our source where the hot air is going to come from. So as the sun is shining down,

the sun is now red as well. It's shining down, It'll heat up the ground. Generally, this spot here is heating faster than the surrounding areas. So that's the area we're building up. A nice source. So what sort of things? Just namely a few random things, What would you expect to be a good source in most of this talk? I'm thinking of Alpine areas, but you expand it into flatlands. Spain. But yeah. So what was that one they had gravel. Yeah, gravel. Throw them out. There's hundreds of things. Rocks are good, concrete can be. That's all pretty hard. Solid substances so far. But yeah, brownfields, that's probably the most classic things we're going to meet when we're

flying is the, the the plowed fields, brownfields and things. Anything else? It's what power lines. That's not a source, that's another source. Actually, the metal I guess would heat up, but it's not a source as such. That's more of a trigger, which is a completely different thing. So, but it's, it's basically look at those differentials. There's dry ground, there's damp ground. You know, the dry ground's going to start heating sooner. It's, it's lots of things that can create sources. So when you're flying, you need to be looking at that terrain in front of you can see. And this around here in particular, it's all pretty bland at the moment, yellowy looking everywhere.

So there's no point just flying in a straight line over the terrain. You're going to have to just adapt a little bit for the areas you think are heating up the best. So the plough fields rather than the the green fields, not many of them at the moment, but just considering that terrain, where is the sun heating the best? So that that's one aspect. Your other aspects might be the shape of the terrain. So on there you'll probably find actually I got a pen and you wouldn't use the pen on this one. Actually you'll probably find how I've drawn it. But this area is heating the

best because it's facing the sun better. So angles of terrain also makes a big difference for what's heating the best and what's creating the best source. And then from that, let's go back to level.

If we've got this area here that we're considering is the best parts of all the terrain, just from there to there, the area it's going to heat up the best, it's then trying to visualize it mentally again for what's going on in that area. So for me, it helped me on it. If I visualize that it's a bubble of warm air there and it's got a skin on it, which it definitely does not have, but it's got a skin on it and that bubble of warm air builds up, getting hotter and hotter trying to release. It's not actually that there's a skin on it. It's more that the colder air

above it is holding it down. The colder air is more dense and the the denser, heavier air is trapping the lighter air there and it just can't release easily. But for me, just in my mind, it just became easier to think of it. It's a skin. It's all a bit trapped there. It can't go. I like easy systems. So this hot air, it wants to rise. Now it's got this skin on it for stopping. It can't go. So what do we need next to make this all start working?

The triggers. We need the triggers. So your pylons was 1. So we got a pylon that's sticking up here, whatever. And in doing so, it bursts the skin, it splits the skin there. And because of that, now the warm air starts breaking away coming up and you've, you've got your source, you've got trigger, you've got a thermal. So there's a simplistic way of thinking of the ground. And then for the next level part of it, once it's triggered, this dense air squeezing our skin, it starts forcing everything to that area. So you can think of it as it being sucked out with a loose air, the, the lighter air going

or just this is helping push it out through the, the split in the, the skin, if you like. So that's a nice simplistic way a hand went up there. This is what we say, right? But is there any scientific backing behind it?

Yes and no. I haven't looked at studies, but I think it's definitely this air is more dense and cooler. So it's definitely a push on to this and definitely it forms a type of boundary layer and that's what accelerates it. Piles that they are. Pylons for me are some of the best triggers. I suggest not using them on too close to save, but some of my best climbs have been here. I had a notable 1. I mean my background. I've been flying since the beginning of the 90s. In paragliding my father was Hang Gliding in the 80s. My father was gliding and parachuting when I was born.

I grew up with aviation and I've I've dabbled in pretty much most things in this sport. So I've got an Atos. I fly occasionally, hang gliders, para motors, I've been around a few and I used to a lot of paramotoring in the UK and there was an airfield, all green, the worst source in the world and the slight hill, horrendous. But I needed to cross it and it's an old military World War 2 airfield. It was huge and there's one pylon in the middle and if I sat myself on top of that there was always a thermal. They work, so that's one, but what other triggers are there? There's far more than pylons, So

what other things would work as a good trigger? Lakes, if you were sorry, small lakes. Small lakes. So that's always a good one. So for those of us from Jamona, where's my cloth gone?

Those of us who are flying in Jamona recently, I don't know. If you notice, not far from Port Arno, there's a lake around the corner. And a lot of people just think, oh, water, no thermals. The lakes can be really good triggers, not sources, and so when often when you fly just over the lake's edge, just down wind of the edge, you find that it there's often a thermal just there. See how well this cleans off? It's. Nice because they show the ripples as well, so you see exactly. Yeah, the water can indicate a lot, but just having that water here, it often assumes some wind. So if we get a wind sock in

here, so the wind's blowing this way, the the source here is now drifting gently with the wind and it pushes up against this cold lake and it just triggers on the edge there and off goes the thermal. So lakes could be really good triggers if you get the right part of the lake. So that works well. What are the triggers? We got tractors. Yep, that's one I used to read in. I don't know if you ever sort of well heard of Judy Lennon. She was in the 90s, eighties, 90s. She was hang glider and paraglider, world champion and she wrote a book and her favorite was tractors. Or how was it as described?

Someone went out flatland flying in Spain and flew 100 kilometres and all his mates were impressed and asked him how he did it. He said I just flew tractor to tractor. It was easy. His mate came back a week later, said I managed it as well, but I didn't use a single tractor. Explain that then oh, Sunday there's no tractors out that day

anyway, are tractors. But that actually does lead into something, things like tractors and things. It's gives me a little impression of how deep this bubble might be because for a tractor to burst that skin tension, it suggests actually this bubbles not that tall, it's quite close to the ground. Hedges. You haven't meant just hedges, but hedges could be a good trigger or trees can be a very good trigger. Tree lines in particular, all these things are not that tall, so our source bubble is not necessarily that deep. So another indicator can help there. So yeah, we've got in our trees and hedges there. Anybody else we can Chuck in slope traders terrain changes?

Yeah, that's a brilliant one for me. So it might be that the terrain lifts up and with that wind direction, it just triggers on the little terrain change. But the terrain change could be both directions. So I used to fly in Azure quite a lot and we used to have ditches there or just a terrain going down. And the hot air doesn't like going downhill or across these, it just triggers. So really triggers can be anything that's just not that bland area you had. Anything that's just suddenly different can cause a trigger, whether it be through shape, through piercing the bubble or just through colours or something.

And if you've got none of that lot, it can still trigger. If it is just bland ground, eventually it gets so hot it will trigger anyway. It'll just be bubbling and bursting and off it'll eventually go anyway.

Yeah, small towns often actually, though I find towns can be strange. They can be so convoluted with triggers and stuff. They're not always the best towns, but if it's a town then surrounded by the blandiac trigger, then it does does trigger. So towns I find a funny one. Big towns can be difficult finding stuff in. But small towns like in Spain, or collections of houses, yeah, they're superb triggers, yeah. Along the sea of cow, the egg. Ah so clouds sucking that's yeah so the clouds there, I guess they're sucking it's much harder one to form theories on but disturb it oh oh the shadows. Sorry the shadows. Sorry.

The shadows, yeah, shadows again. They're just like the lake. The shadows cold and the edge of it can trigger again. Yeah, the. Which which way often see. Yeah. So, yeah, for sure, as the shadows moving across the gowns, the edge of the shadow acts as the cold boundary layer and triggers. That works. So I mean, we're going on forever, believe me. There's a lot of sources and triggers out there, but the basics are just look for those large areas that look like they were heat. He's trying to record this, He's got a phone call. Look for those large areas that will record. I sort of build this the source.

Either look for the differentials on the downwind side, preferably that will trigger it, or inside it that will trigger it. And if there's no winds, then the trigger has to be somewhere within that source to get it to go. So that's a little bit on sources and triggers, just really to get you thinking on those as you go. How you adapt these today like the other day. Well, yeah, it's too windy to go into too much detail on this. This is more of your classic days, this sort of thing. There's just some ideas to get you thinking really on that. The next one worth looking at a

little bit is the thermal when it's rising and where we should be positioning ourselves on those thermals. Where should we dive in? Let's just sort of redraw the basics of that again. So we've got a thermal bubble.

It triggers whatever you want that's used for a trigger. So let's just say it's our antenna mass this time. Again, it triggers when we're thermalling. Where is the core on that thermal? You've got a thermal going up, so let's go with our textbook thermal. They sort of look like that, apparently, with a cloud on top. That's what they draw in the textbooks. Typically. I'll change the shape in a minute because I don't agree with that shape entirely, but where is the core on this thing? Is it 1-2 or three? Yeah, it's sort of nearer to why it's in this area, the core somewhere around there. But the question is, why is it there?

Why isn't it in the middle? This is of the inertia. Inertia. OK, let's let's go for another one then. It's, I don't know, is it? No, maybe that's a bit much to throw in it. Let's just start with this one. The core is we generally appreciate it's on the upwind side near the front of the cloud. I think we all pretty much understand that, but it's definitely worth trying to understand why the mathematicians might get this faster. The fast part. The, So it's, it's the, yeah, the hottest air I've probably got the hottest air goes more vertical. So I don't know if we can just throw in some numbers for the

sake of it. Let's say the wind is at 1 metre a second. It's a light wind in the Alps air. What's the average thermal strength we get in the sport? In most places we fly, it's about 2-3 metres a second and that's pretty much the norm everywhere we go. So if we got a light wind and we got air that's rising at 3 meters a second, this this air, it's going up 3 meters, but it will drift 1m with the wind and it'll go up 3 meters, drift 1m with the wind. So that hot air is heading at that angle is the first thing. But in this source, this field's not a perfect field.

It's got a couple of wet puddles in that part. It's got a little bit of a slope going downhill here. It's not all heating up to exactly the same temperature in our bubble. So in our bubble, and I've no idea real temperatures, I just make them up in the head. I I would say that there's air in there that's maybe 4° C hotter than the surrounding area. There's a little areas that are already 1° C hotter, and then all of that gets disturbed it it releases, it's got this dead air pushing everywhere, forcing it out through the broken bit of skin. And that 4°, I don't know, maybe

it's 8°. Whatever it is, it's rising quite fast. It's quite warm relative to the surrounding air. So it goes up 44 meters a second, because you're 3M a second climb is actually a 4m a second thermal. We're always falling. So it rises 4 meters and it drifts with wind 1m. But this 1° air that's also in the bubble, it also gets pushed through the hole. But because it's much cooler, it only rises 1m per second and still drifts 1 and rises 1 and drifts 1. So it goes off at a shallower angle as it goes. It's very slow rising air, it's at the back, the strong rising air's at the front.

And you might even find that this slower rising air stabilises with the surrounding air much sooner. So maybe the 1m a second climb stops here, the 2 meter second climb gets to here, the three gets to here, and the strong stuff gets the top. That makes sense. So I think the back of the thermal is more likely to have a A curve to it like this where the weak stuff just stabilises and it's very weak and the strong stuff goes all the way to the top very quickly. I don't know, it all made sense, but it's basically that's why your strong air is at the front.

It's pushed very vertical without much drift. The weak stuff's at the back. That all makes sense. So the next one is then why is it we have to push into the wind now and again? Why not? Why not? It's doing constant thermals in that strong bit of air all the way up. Should be easy according to that, but it's not easy. We have to push in to win now and again to stay in the core. So what's causing that effect? No ideas there's. It's the falling bit that's doing it that's causing us to to drift out. So let's see if I can make enough of a clear board to explain the theory on that.

So it's the air goes up, but the four meters a second, just backwards 1m a second, and then you fall 1m a second and then it goes up four backwards one down one. So the air itself is going to that angle, but you tend to go off at a shallower angle because of this constant falling up 4 back one, down one. The next problem is now you're in the three metre a second air. So now you're going up 3, back one, down 1. And when you've done that a few times, well now you're in the two metre a second area. So you gradually just get thrown out of the back if you don't

push into wind now and again. So you have to push into wind a little bit to counteract where you've been falling, which has pushed me backwards in the thermal effectively. And then that'll keep you in the core. So the stronger the wind, the more you've got to keep pushing in to stop yourself getting blown backwards. See if it's a 3 metre, a second wind, you get back here into the weak stuff much faster. So keep pushing up to into wind. That makes sense. Stop me if you have any questions anytime. Right that way. Is that changing ice with ice? It's great, but it is single day

or the single day or attach yourself.

I've just obviously we're talking weather. There's a million scenarios, but so, yeah, but the winds, the stability will affect things for sure. So I was going to cover a little bit about inversions and stuff in a minute and how that will change. I've got another. Question, but I haven't quite voiced it out there. And so if you've got this bubble which contains different heated passes of air which aren't going to mix particularly well together, but they're all very squeezed out through the same what, presumably then you're going to have sections of that, but it's not going to be a continuous 4 metre a second at the front of that line, then be

bits of four metre a second. Yeah, that that's, that gets into lots of different areas. Like I, I like to say this is an Alpine torque because the Alps tend to give a fairly constant feed. The sources aren't switching on and off. But yeah, if if it's the source is switching on and off, you know, can it'll get to a point all the hot air's gone out and the other bits with it that it has to reheat and switch on or yeah, the hot eggs all accelerated out. You've got the cooler air. Eventually it'll just stop releasing for a while until it re warms up and then go again. So but all of this says just

weather. It's very hard to cover every scenario. Let's throw in then whip. You're flying along. You've been left behind 20 KS by the lead gaggle, so you're completely on your own and there's no birds or anything, you're just in the sky on your own. You hit lift, Which way do you turn? Left or right?

It's the answer generally should always be if you've got no other information, and usually even if you do have information into wind, you should always go into wind if you're not sure if we sort of look down on the thermal. So looking straight down, you got a big round thermal cloud, whatever shape it is, and you're just flying randomly along on your paraglider in this direction. You hit lift, it started beeping. It's which way to turn. Because of how we know the wind direction, we should know that the core in theory is in this area. It should be on the upwind side of this bigger thermal area. So by turning into wind, it's

still 5050. It might be you caught just the front of it, you turn into wind and you got it wrong. But the beauty of getting it wrong there is when you turn around, you're going downwind, you're very quickly into the core. Whereas if you got it wrong on the back, turn downwind, having met the back you, you very quickly fall away from it. And now you got to fly into wind to get to the core. So if you got no other information, it's always better to turn into wind. It's usually better, especially, I mean, the only time you fell out and got it wrong is if you were right at the front.

Whereas if you do it here, you're on the core. Do it here, you're not on the core, but it's still better than here. Here, this area's still better. So you just turn into wind 1st and then you'd often just keep pushing into wind and it's getting better and better and better. At some point it's going to stop. I wouldn't wait until it stopped. I would just wait until it's got enough. I'm happy. So if I'm pretty close to base anyway, I might go all the way in to see where the front is, but if I'm really low and desperate I would just go far enough that I can get some

height and build up a comfort zone before I explore further upwind. So how far to go depends on how comfortable you are in the task at that moment. But turn into wind and chances are the thermal will get better.

There's exceptions to some of that, but that's that covers most situations. It's also worth looking at that same scenario sideways on. So going back to our thermal. So there's our thermal there, our cloud on top. If we're lucky, it's again you're flying along, you hit lift, you're inside the thermal, now you've got beeps. If you turn into wind, we're going to be closer to the core, so hopefully going up. But if you turn the wrong way so that you dropped out of the back, you're now In Sync, losing air whilst you've turned to go back to the the thermal and you're flying into wind. You get back into the thermal.

But the trouble is you didn't have to just turn the mistake. You've got all this extra distance to get back into the cone because you're lower the cones much further upwind. It's why you could often feel like a real battle when you just fall out the back. You're sinking fast and you've also got further to go to get there. Whereas if you make the mistake on the front come out, you almost fall back into it. If you get lose too much height because the cone is underneath you the thermal. So always go upwind if you've got no other information to help you. If you've got other gliders it's

easy, just join in with them and then scare them a bit by pushing upwind a bit on every turn. So I tend to do when I'm with a group of people. In my experience, majority of pilots, even at PwC level actually, they're getting better but they often don't push far enough at winds to explore a little bit each turn. I sometimes explore too far. Russell Ogden, we're quite lucky in the UK, we have a racing Academy for our top pilots and Russell Ogden coaches us. So next week we're all off to Saint Andre and we got a week's coaching by him and so he gives us good tips.

He says he explores less than he used to, but it still nudged the group upwind a little bit and it's usually better.

So that's a bit about the sideways view.

What else can we cover? Yep. I experienced the thermos of eugilly term and month. I better we have to say Gilly I Eugilly will lead by the birds. Yeah, and that's in first two materials and then I decide what's what's Silo Fern doesn't speak to me too much. And you feel like you. Yeah. So with wings being drawn to thermals and things, yeah. First Sentry. Yeah, so some, some paragliders are better than others. Some paragliders you you can feel which side the thermal's better on and then turn into it. Not all paragliders are very good at sensing them, but some are very good. So if you get a chance to test

gliders, it can be good really to go out thermalling with a few different wings you're testing and see what suits your feel to find things hang. Gliders are the opposite, they get pushed away from thermals. So hang gliders could be an absolute nightmare. For those of you who are sharing the air with the hang glider, I'll give you it from the hang gliders perspective. It who flies hang gliders here? Not many, but you'll know it's sometimes that paraglider's coming to join you in the thermal or you just go into the thermal and on the paraglider with the pendulum, it overrides so many natural forces. You just bang into the thermal

and you yank a breakdown and off you go. For the hang glider's perspective, he's trying to get into a stronger part of the thermal or join the thermal and the wing lifts and turns them away because it's a rigid wing. And what you have to do with the hang glider is pull more speed on and get the turn in. And sometimes it still doesn't do it. And then you push the bar in and out a bit to get things moving and sometimes it still doesn't do it. And you're going along at a horrendous rate of knots with a paraglider in front of you who's oblivious to you. And yeah, it gets a bit scary on

a hang glider sometimes. And often you just give up and go the other way. Or you buy an Atos. An Atos, you just do it with a finger and you're guaranteed to turn. But yeah, give some space to hang gliders on weekdays. They have a hell of a time with thermals. But yeah, paragliders, it's often you feel it drifting. You've been drawn somewhere. If a paraglider feels like it's just suddenly going somewhere, go with it. It's probably been drawn to a thermal, which I'll I can look at again in a moment a bit more.

If you lose a thermal, which way do you go to find it Upwind all agreed. What about stable day?

Stable, Sorry, an inversion. More to the point, what about an inverted day? So again, the textbooks, they tend to show things like you got an inversion up there, the thermal's rising up to there and it suddenly gets to the inversion and it doesn't go through, especially earlier in the day. And then the textbook likes to show somebody with a hose pipe just squirting water at it, and it just gradually eats away at the inversion until eventually off it goes. But The thing is when you lose the thermal here on that inversion layer, if you try and fly into winds, you would definitely not find it at an

inversion layer, the thermal is downwinds. Usually on thermaling, you lose it, you've fallen out the back. But that's not what's happened at the inversion layer. It's usually more that the air that's going up at 4 meters a second here, if it's going to get through, you know the hose pipes squirting at it, all it's doing is rising very slowly through it. And then eventually when it gets through your inversion layer, it might take off again. And so you usually have to fly downwind at the inversion layer to find that thermal because you've been busy pushing into wind, pushing into wind, trying to find it. Now you just got to drift downwind and it's over here the

thermal. So on on those if you know that the air slows down 2000 meters quite significantly, just try drifting with it and you you'll probably breakthrough sooner then. So that's an unusual 1.

Any questions where I'm up to bit more alcohol? What can we cover next? Ask me some questions on thermals. I just remember something else. Watch out. What have I got on my notes which are destroying with alcohol?

OK, yeah, that's a good one, which I normally cover. Do that. OK, so the wind gradient. So again, we showed that thermal with straight lines, which I of course said that I don't think it's like that at the back. I think it's more like that at the back because of this air only getting a certain distance and stopping, but the winds. So on the ground, let's say it's blowing at one metre a second, and up here it's blowing at 4 metres a second probably. Zero. She could metres a second. My Valley's got some valley with it. It's the Alps torque, remember? I've got a valley wind but.

In this small. Burslem Air. It's the Alps. I could feel wind on the ground. It's an Alpine torque. I've got to go with one metre a second here and four metres up here, just as an example of this valley. But this air that's coming up here that we said is rising at 4 metres a second, drifting 1, rising at 4, drifting one. It's still doing something like that at the top here, the same sort of angle, because it's got a lot of mass. And so even though the wind is strong up here, it doesn't blow off with the wind that quickly. It doesn't get to a stage where it's going up four drifting 4 up

four drifting 4. It stays with just a 1m drift because it has a huge mass. And if you you see all these textbook figures that it's got this many tons or whatever in the thermal, there's a much simpler way of visualizing it. 120 a 118 pilots all in the same start gaggle. OK, it wasn't that classic a start gaggle of the other day. We're weighing about whatever it is, 18 tonnes. How much did that thermal slow down? Not a tiny bit. That's there's so much mass in that thermal, that air it, that wind blowing isn't really changing, accelerating it that much. It's carrying on with the same momentum, but it does cause

other effects around it. So we get to cloud base. You've seen in the textbooks about climbing up the front of the cloud. Well, where does the thermal stop? Where's the top of the thermal there? It's not here. That's not where the thermal stops. It's, it's more like this, the top of the cloud. And again, it's I, I once had a flight back in the 90s, I took someone for a tandem in the Pyrenees. It's not far from here. And before we took off, she'd never flown. She said, I want to go. So all you want to do on the flight, you know, expecting spirals or something, I want to go through the cloud and out the

top. It can't do that. The thermal stop here, can't climb out the top. And I don't mind a bit of cloud flying outside the comp. Very off we went. We got to the cloud, so really small things, 5000 metres deep. So I went through it and I came out the top and kept on going. Fuck me, all the years I've been flowing, flying, never done it. Someone asks for it and we do it. But in principle, your top of your thermal, somewhere at the top of the cloud, that's where the air stopped rising and that's where we can talk about, you know, climb up to here. Was was it an SRS?

I think it was an SRS in Jamona a year or two ago. We had a classic one. We had layers of cloud down here somewhere which we got past and then we kept on going and then we were soaring up the fronts of the clouds. And if you got round here, you were just getting flushed. But if you're on the front, we could climb up the front and keep on going. And we were going up to some much horrendous heights, 34000 metres that day. And I got there by luck because I thought I'm at cloud based, great place to start. Couldn't see anything above me. There was a cloud and I was sudden radio with me asking

where I was. I'm at cloud based, 2 1/2 thousand metres. No, I'm at cloud based at 3 1/2 thousand metres. And then he said just go around the cloud, you can come some more. So yeah, climbing up the front, but it is down to this, this mass, this of air that's climbing up at this strong rate and it blocks the wind. And so this wind that's coming in starts going over the cloud. It creates like Ridge lift if you like on the cloud. And so you can S your way up them and get higher up on the front which then gets into cloud flying complaints. Because there's some poor sort

over here that can't see you're in front of a cloud. Then we start and you come out 4000 meters and he starts at 2000 meters and all he sees is you emerge from the cloud. So that's a common way we get cloud flying complaints on the compt people that are not really in the clouds, but from perspective it looks like they came out. There's also a lot of people that fly in the clouds, like the last tasks I saw you coming out of the clouds. So here's a mix I do recommend if you want to take advantage of this, which is usually legal on the current version of Section

7. It briefly went banned at a couple of years ago, but it had to become legal again. Fly with a camera. Video camera. Section 7 currently says Ulrich, remind me if I got it right is something like if the if the scorer suspects you or is it director suspects you or something, you can be investigated and penalized. Or if a couple of pilots complain against you, you can be penalized or whatever the other one is. There's three ways that can trigger you being penalized and that particular part. Section 7 is not typical western law. You are guilty until proven innocent, not innocent or proven guilty. And the IT says suggested in

Section 7 that the pilot flies with a camera to prove innocence. Even if you were clear, if you can't prove it, you'll be penalised. And some of you also know what me and Lisa and that we do have a bit of a reputation for investigating cloud flying and penalising. I think my most interesting one was the Freedom Open 2 three years ago. We penalised A5 hour investigation, we put the time in five hours. We penalised about I can't really have 1516 pilots who were all completely adamant they weren't in the cloud and when they eventually realised the next day I wasn't going to back down on the penalty.

One of them just comes up to the air. We were in the cloud, really was trying to get out of it, didn't think you could prove it. So so yeah, it happens. I do like to stop it because it's not safe in the sport. There's too many of you in there. It's not safe. So and it's not sporting obviously is the other reason the people gaining the extra 50 metres yesterday, yesterday, that was it yesterday before you say that was a good advantage on that particular cloud catasque. So watch out for it. Anyway, I'm going off of the thermals here. So that's, that's a nice effect

there and why it blocks and the other beauty of it blocking, pushing into wind as we were, if you could get in line with a thermal, so if you saw people thermalling, it was good to get exactly down wind of them. The thermal can block and you could help you progress towards that thermal. Then the winds, the air has been pushed, not just over, it's only been pushed over near the top. The rest is being pushed around and you can get a little bit shielded as you approach it. So that's another good one to get into wind. When in the pad vents we predicted also so you can share

the terminal, so you call the pre terminal whereas a bit of windowy or thought this dumbless more or less stationary and. So that's why I start all of this. What? Well, this is an Alpine torque. I live in the Alps. I don't know how to fly in Spain. Yeah, I sort of generally I understand then, but I tend not to go too much on that. The UK has also its effects. We tend to fly bubbles in the UK. So you just get up to a cloud and then you don't bother flying downwind to next cloud. You just stay under your cloud and drift with it until you've

got as far as you want or more commonly actually with cloud streets and we fly the cloud streets. So that'd be one effects, I'm guessing that that particular one the thermal upwind is in thermal. It's probably more to do with that shielding effect again and you've reduced the wind strength upwind and downwind, which allows the source to build more to then let a thermal triggering upwind as a guess. I don't. I haven't built a big enough picture. Play down. Or downwinds again and. Then you get in, oh, it's yeah, you struggle like for 10 minutes and how did you working? And they play further down and

they get. The yeah, I'm only guessing, but I would say it's probably think related in the theory of leaside thermals. So you've got all this wind blowing and it's destroyed with the hills rather than your thing, but you've got all this wind blowing, really strong wind. So the what did we get up to the other day? I was on full bar doing 20 KMH. So I guess we had a 40 KMH wind, 30 KMH wind, strong winds anyway. And the wind is so strong that even though you've got your triggers, the sources don't have time to build up any warm air. They're just constantly being broken and the air's releasing. And so flying as you would like,

a source here under a trigger here on a light wind day, that's great, the thermal's coming out of here. But if the wind gets too much, well that ain't going to work because that source never builds up. So you're actually looking for the source to be behind and then triggering out from behind. So Lee side thermals with a Lee side thermal calm air, it gets much, much, much hotter before it releases. So possibly that one's a little bit like you got a thermal blocking here, which allows less wind strength. So the the ground behind can get hotter again because it's less wind and build up more strength.

And then you can end up with a chain of it would be my picture on that without experiencing it. So leaside thermals when it's sheltered for the wind, it can get hotter, build up more before it releases. So they're they're interesting ones to go for leaside thermals, though they come with other dangers. Turbulence, they're hotter. It goes back to if you like that first source we was talking about with all the different temperatures inside it. And I'm sure you know, a place like Columbia give really good examples. When we fly in Columbia, it's got all this classic stuff in there of differentials in the ground, tiny little triggers everywhere, plenty of sun.

We get some really good sources, really good triggers off the thermals go. And you know, generally with our 4 meter 5m thermals out of place like that, if you arrive at 500 meters, you hook in and you've got a beautiful smooth 3M a second thermal all the way back to base. But if you take these things low 100 meters off the ground, they're turbulent. You're getting rattled around a lot. It's still that mixing air. It hasn't separated yet, so the hot stuff's trying to push through the knots of hot stuff that's rising, and they're just shoving their way past each other as they get going. All the hot stuff goes up together, all the cooler stuff

goes together. Further downwinds, the temperatures get separated at a nice gradient, but low down they're all shoving past each other, trying to get the path they want. And so we get the turbulence low down and the Lee side thermal's even worse because if your nice thermals are leaving your ground at 4°, whatever it is, fourth meters a second, your Lee side 1 might be doing 8 degrees, 8 meters a second. So it's even more turbulent as it's leaving. But once you get away, they're the best ones, but they are turbulent. Be very careful Lee side thermals trying to capture Lee side thermal when you're low it. Was the top of the mass of the

air. It takes 200 meters usually for the mass to. Accelerate. Yeah, I don't know your thought on that. But yeah, with that big mass, it takes time to get his momentum going. You should be in low. And that's what's pushing through the inversion ultimately is it keeps battering away with that momentum and so they can get his breakthrough it properly. There's a brief hand there. He had a big point it. Was this side down? I was in the gumball now and. Yeah, it's always different when you're teaching low airtime pilots. It's just basically don't go near lease sides to avoid the lease side always. But when you start racing and what we're doing, if you want to

catch up the lead gaggle, take a lease side thermal. But that's up to you. You know where your skill level is. You need to judge the ground and which lease side thermals. But yeah, lease sides will be stronger, typically the thermals, but it goes nicely into the next one. But I'll do that question the first before I go into it of how close can you go behind an object before it's turbulent. So I'll give you a theory on that in a second. But what was the question? So you know you you did a sight tool and super turbu. So sushi did that massive still, What's a say these options?

Just you go to your Paisley? Did you get simple inlet tool? Was it this? This also could be. It's it's one of those that when you get start playing with those thermals, it's down to your experience and how much you know you're weighing and everything else. With weather, you can never give a hard and fast rule of what to do. But yeah, when on a thermal, anytime you just try to get that hoop going on the strong part of the thermal and just get a constant rate going. Everything got to be smooth, smooth flowing to get the best climb. So yeah, what to do? I don't know, it's a hard question to answer really on

that. But what I can do is give a picture of when what you can go behind and what you can't. So we know landing in the Lee of a building or a set of trees has a high chance of a collapse. So this 20m tree landing just downwind of it, you've got a high chance to take the collapse in that. So what? So when can we go behind an object? If a 20m tree is not safe, why do we think going behind mountains are safe? They're much bigger. So why aren't we getting problems on those? Tenerife, you're flying in the Lee of the of the mountain all

the time. It's the only place to fly is in the Lee. So it's when is the Lee safe and when it's not? Well, again, it's weather. There's no definite hard rule. But if you take a mountain that stick it up in the wind, my rule usually is the danger zone is something like 100 meters deep somewhere around there. That's the area I'm really scared of for going. Depends on the wind strength, but certainly a kilometre, that whole 100 metre deep, one kilometre zone for me is the most dangerous place to be on it. If I'm down here, it's probably very sheltered and calm. So I can land in this area and we're talking a significant

thing, a 500 meters tall or something. I could be landing down here, it's blocking the wind, but here the wind is blowing over it and bubbling behind it. And where's the least side thermal going to be with this strong winds on this side? So nothing's forming and the sun's blowing, shining on the other side. It's going to be building up the heat here and releasing here. And it might be drawing some air up that way. So on top, it's a nice release and it's coming from behind, but I wouldn't go into that zone to take it. It's just that's a significant area. The 100 meters deep trees, 20m tall buildings are 50 meters

tall. You don't go behind them and see at least a kilometre, say downwind. So again, you you got to look at every scenario, every shape to side, but just be aware if you're in that type of area. What a cash flow below your leisure and you. Actually, don't climb out. Below your leisure. So if it's coming from a source here, you mean you start climbing out with it here again, every situation is different, but probably when I'm in the thermal it has that mass to protect me from the wind, so I can climb out with it whilst I'm within the bubble. Just don't fall out your bubble.

So there's that one. What was I going to roll onto? I forget still. Be pretty messy. Oh yeah, still be messy. So yeah, make sure you've got your echo and skills ready. Have a chat with Cesar and that does probably roll into SIV as well. So who's not done SIV here yet? I, I won't kick you out the comp despite the rules. No one's admitting to it. OK, someone did actually on the the feedback list. I think a few comps back they hadn't done SIV. It's like, well, it's kind of in the rules. So this rule this year we have on the rules you, you must have

done had SIV experience. So we don't put time limits on it. But SIV experience is pretty key. I don't think you need to be personally, I don't think you need to be super experienced in stalls or anything, but you do need to be experienced in capturing the dive, for example. So you probably know it's pretty much the first exercise on SIV. Of course you're done. You get into a bit of a spiral and you come out and the wing goes back. Miles shoots forward and he taught to catch it because that will teach you probably half of what you need to stay safe clearing cravats. But we don't actually do cravats on SIV.

Usually we just go through the motions of clearing the cravats, which is how to pump it out. It's not this, it's, you know, pump this thing out sharp. Quick note, hold down there, you get up. You should hopefully all done this on courses. So yeah, clear the cravats, but the more skills you have in that, the more you can think about playing with this. But don't go diving in this unless you've got the skills for the ruffster. It is going to be rough behind there, so it should. Be fine as up a wise sync. You know they get Freelander for spirits to get out there. So if you're In Sync, heavy

sync, depends where you are in that whole thermal chain. Again, if it's synced because I've just left at base and we're heading towards the next turn point.

The the first rules on that would be don't follow the person directly in front of you. Spread out a little, not far, 10 metres the side of them and hopefully someone else will be 10 metres the side. You just spread out a little because then you'll see some of you will get a better line than others and then you just turn 45° and join the ones doing better. If I'm on the own a little bit and I've got sync on that transition, turn 45°, go to the side a little because you'll be amazed how sometimes you just keep on going. You're in 3 or 4 meters and you

just try and push the bar harder and it just never ending. Just turn 45°, you probably only have to go for your 40 meters and suddenly you've got the floating line. There was definitely a notable one on the task the other day. Myself and another GTO, we left, we were together thermally and we left and we went slightly different lines. And he was only 20 meters off from me in front of me without an SRS mirror. And by the time we'd gone 2 kilometers, he was 300 meters lower than me. So keep an eye on people around you. Just turn a little so that that's the transition scenario.

It could also be these thermals again, where you're trying to push into wind and you're just behind this thing, you're trying to push in into winter to catch the thermal, but you're sliding underneath this cone and then it's in the weak stuff. You, you can slide all the way down trying to get to where the core is. Whereas if you fly downwind, you the place you, if you started here and that distance is a kilometre, the place you actually hit it might only be 800 metres away. You haven't got far to fly if you fly in downwind. Whereas here, if you kilometre away from the back of the thermal, it might take you 2

kilometres to get into it still because it's so much further away the place you're going to into the thermal. So in those cases, hard to know what to do, but try. And that's where I said earlier, if you see people thermally upwinder view, try and get in line with the thermal. So it's directly upwind. I'll be a little bit sheltered by it just to push there easier. But yeah, it's it's too many situations where you might be In Sync. You have to try and identify what's causing it and how can I get a better line as a result to get out of it. And if you're low, really low that you might have the

possibility of bomb if the situation allows. It's often just get hunting downwind. You can cross a lot of terrain downwind very quickly to try and find what's triggering. Just forcing and forcing and forcing into wind. You just got to deck yourself. Even cross wind is better than into wind in that scenario.

Let's jump in a different part of it all, because we don't just have thermals to take lift. Living in Slovenia is quite nice because all we've really got is ridges. So we do a lot of Ridge flying in there. You know, I was lucky enough I set a few world records on tandem flying out and returns, but it's just a Ridge run. SO220K100170 KS out, hundred and something KS back. Follow the Ridge in principle. So ridges which I can't draw easily in 2D, but you've got the valley floor here and you've got the top of the Ridge. Let's do something like that. So those who know it in Slovenia, this is the Stole

Ridge. We've got a launch up here. We've got the border to Italy over here and cobbered over here. So looking on it, you've got a Ridge that just gently climbs and the wind usually blows that way. It's a West wind if you're on a flying day usually. So when you're coming into ridges. As a general rule, and there's all lots of receptions, but as a general rule, I want to try and stay in that band to fly the Ridge. So you know, the top 10% of it or just above it is where the best lift is. The air is coming in on the Ridge itself. It's usually destroyed, drawn

up, so the valley winds coming down as it hits the Ridge, it gets drawn up the Ridge and then it's releasing somewhere on the top. But if you get too low down, there's not much wind and it's the climb rates are slow. As it gets up, it all gathers and accelerates and that zone is where the the Ridge. The best lift is and we're on a Ridge. Then you don't need to stop so much. You don't have to come along and there'll be good points on this Ridge. There's usually up this area around the launch. There's usually a very good thermal up here and this area,

because of how the train's working, there's usually a good thermal around there. But when I'm flying that Ridge, when I connect to it, I won't fly to here and I go, ah, good thermal up to the cloud and off I go. Because all I would do is waste time climbing. Then I'll leave the climb and I'll be in very sinky air until I land back on the Ridge again. And all I've done is just waste 5 minutes climbing. And the person who was with me, he just carried on in This Ridge lift is much further up. So on a good Ridge, don't waste time climbing. But remember you need to stay in the top.

It's not unusual to connect onto the stall Ridge and then you just keep flying and you know you're sinking at one metre a second. You need one metre a second climb air to stay up. And it's not that strong at the start, maybe it's only half a metre a second. So people fly along the Ridge hoping to climb out and they just get to a stage where they just drop too low on the Ridge, All their mates are up here on top flying along it and they're trying to keep up. And you just end up below this 10% rule I like, and then you just sink out very quickly.

So you sometimes got to take time to come back and zigzag to get back on top and then push on and then zigzag back on top and then push on. If you'd be just above, it's a very good chance you can run the whole Ridge without stopping. And you have to get above the Ridge for to do that. And As for these thermals, maybe if the wind's too much, I'll climb a little bit of it, but just so I can land here on it. But I definitely do not climb all the way to base on a Ridge. Use the Ridge itself to fly faster. Every turn. You're doing a thermal for half

of it. You're going in the wrong direction for the next turn point. So if I just keep pushing, it's faster. How long have we been going for? So many more topics, but an hour. How's your camera doing? We've finished his. His hammer only goes for one hour. Let's see where I just wrote one more interesting one. Yeah. So they so we absolutely have actually, but they're suburb. I saw that history. Well, I couldn't go over there thinking there you must sign involve or we're running there your cavities or cavities. So funny enough, that's exactly the thing I was going to go on to, I think this next one.

So I live in a place called Soritzer. I don't know if anyone's heard of Soritzer. It's it's in Slovenia. A lot of you probably know Tolman. And then you got Kern, the big mountain, the Tolman. I live on a house that's similar to that spine at Kern. It's just 15 KS before Kern. But I live on top of that spine at a ski resort and there's a lodge there called Soritzer that's only flyable about 5 or 6 days a year, properly flyable. But it the Julian alt certainly used to, probably still does hold more world records than anywhere else in the world. So it's just they're out on

returns, they're boring, and nobody looks at them. And the way we set the records there is we wait for bad weather, a local effect called a boreal winds, where we've had high pressure N low pressure S Bad weather comes through, sets up this wind, which is a strong northeast wind flowing through the Alps. And then on from that, we know that in four days at the right time of year, we might set a world record. And it's because on that last day, you wake up in the morning and it's an east wind going through all the valleys, and we take off on this east winds and

we fly for 100 KS. Then in the afternoon, the proper weather comes back and we have a West wind and we fly downwind all the way back again. And so we get a lovely out in return with downwinds even at both ways, even though it's out in return. But the Ridge itself, OK, if you've flown Tolman a lot, you know, we don't take off till 12:30. The sun's not working till then. The winds aren't right, 12/30, 1:00, it's about the normal launch time and off we go. But sorry, so we launched at 10:30. We can launch much, much earlier in the day and get going even though it's only 15 KS away.

And the the reasons for it, it's high. So it's above the inversion. All the valleys were inverted. If you think of the mountains, we're flying off a Ridge here or something. The inverted air, it tends to fill up at night. It just fills from this tip to this tip with cold air at night. All of that's your inversion inverted air in here. But if you can take off up here, you can be above those valleys filled with the cold air and the thermal start sooner up here than they do in the cold valley or the inverted valleys. So it has that advantage which taking off just above the inversion so we can start

earlier. It's in fact the world record days is usually so inverted in the valley that Kabbalah launch should normally starts 1231 o'clock. Sometimes it doesn't go until 2 much later start. And yet we've all been flying past them at 11 AM. They can see us flying booming along lovely conditions, but they they take off later because it's more Infinity for them. That's the local effect on it. But the next part of it, if we're looking down at all of this lot, the Ridge looking down tends to be actually a series of bowls and it's a repetitive pattern. So we, we've got the launch point here at Surrey, We're heading off towards Stoll in the

distance over here, whatever it is about 50 kilometres or something. And it's just a series of bowls that we're flying and it's you have the sun, sun's coming up on the east, the sun's coming up on this side. And the sun's heating up this side of the bowl all the time. And we rely on that because we, we take off and we just fly. Remember, it's, it's not, that's the winds up showing. This is the east wind. The sun's in the east. It's in east wind blowing that way. We take off, we fly downwind to the far side of the bowl. It's got sun on it and it's got winds blowing on it.

So we get a bit of Ridge lift, bit of sun. We climb up on top of the Ridge, We flop over this, we fly over the Lee side and we land on that bowl and we climb up, get high enough, flop over, miss the light Lee side into the next bowl. And that's just how you fly it all morning long. Just the far sides of the bowls are heating up and then in, in the afternoon, evening when we're coming back, the West wind is cut in and the sun's on the West side now, so it heats up. This side we do the same thing. We climb up here, we flop over the leaf side and we hit that

side and fly back. But it's just knowing the time of the day and what the sun is shining on, for what we can fly on. And these bowls, they're on many scales. They might be 5 kilometers long where it might contain small bowls within it, you know, a few 100 meters. But the pattern's still the same on every bowl. It's the pattern that counts. If that bowl works here, that bowl will work in the same place, and that bowl will work in the same place at the same time of day. So I learn everything I need to know about my day on the first bowl at that moment.

And then I apply that knowledge for what the next bowl will be like and then what the next bowl will be like. And it's just repeating the pattern. And as the day changes, it's very slow because obviously I update my model here, I update the model here, but it's about those repetitive patterns. I think the repetitive patterns are quite important in our sports all along. When we was flying that task 2 days ago and you got to the hills, you try to learn from the people in front of you, preferably where the climb was and where it wasn't. And then you repeat what they did and it's that repetitive

pattern. And then you sort you should be learning that terrain, which way it faced relative to the sun, the wind, and then repeat it on the next Ridge and the next. So just try to repeat repetitive patterns as the day goes and updating the model as you go. And you've always got your those of you on the narrator. Udi's example, it's got the map on there, the historic place, you'll find the thermals. It's about repetitive patterns. Again, you know, that's that farmer's field has been there for several 100 years. So the source has been there for several 100 years. The triggers might have changed a bit.

The pylons were only built 20 or 30 years ago, but they've been there long enough for your mapping data to take account of it. And we tend to fly when the wind directions are in the same direction. You know, the site is flyable on the east wind, but not West. So those that's is historic information that gives you, that gives you the model to fly and it's the same on this on a small scale in the minutes and hours or on the big scale of the months and time of year and so on. So for all of it, for me really it's like everything asked for.

The more you do it, the easier it gets. I used to hate the question on the guided trips of how did I know there was a thermal over there? I don't know of a subconscious wanting to go that way. I didn't realise I did go over there. I just went that way because I felt like it and climbed. That's training the subconscious from the repetitive models or the repetitive actions or the the acro. He was talking about building up the muscle memory. It's putting things in the subconscious because your subconscious is doing 100 times more work than your conscious. Maybe an example of that is when you passed your driving test,

you spent your whole first day trying to stay between 2 white lines because your conscious is driving. Now all these years later, you drove to Spain and you don't even remember the highway because your subconscious drove you here, not your conscious, your conscious just went. I've got to turn off at that exit or I need some fuel. That's all the conscious did. Your subconscious did all the other stuff. So the more you fly, the more you repeat patterns, the more you do it all, the less you think, or the more you do the SIV, the less your conscious thinks and the more capacity your brain has then to adapt to

the new stuff. More the conscious to focus on things that are actually making the difference for winning the day. If that all makes sense. I think that place along is like very, but the there of your sorts is about yeah, like flying off and just looking down, just getting in subconscious impressions how it looks at the one fine areas. It's probably over there. I don't know why, it's probably. Over there. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I it's very hard for me in the early days guiding with guiding, you're supposed to teach the people and I'm not very good at just working it out. I have to build up mental

pictures to help me. So it is just repetitive. But then it's when you're doing it repetitive, try and understand why your subconscious did that because it might help me with the next level then. So there you go. I've got tons of other stuff we could probably throw in, but that's probably enough to, if you list, find that talk online if you want some more. I definitely had other stuff in there I threw in as well, but there you go. Don't know how much it'll help you tomorrow, but fingers crossed for tomorrow.