I was thinking about soaring at work today and how cool it is, and how I might actually try to take it up at some point in the future.  It's so relaxing, and to me it seems like it would be more relaxing than flying a powered plane.  After all, you don't need to worry about the engine dying

Anywho, started out doing the soaring mission to get a feel for finding thermals, turns out that's the only way to get GREAT soaring in FS as far as I know.  Ridge lift doesn't happen outside of the mission, and thermals aren't nearly as abundant in free flight

Releasing from the tow plane


I feel like this should be a promo shot for FSX.  'Learn how to soar with Thermal Visualization (TM)' 


I failed the mission.  I got distracted, thought the gates were somewhere else, lost my wave lift, and couldn't make it to a thermal.  Turned around and landed safely at an airport.  The voiceover said 'Well, at least you're on airport property'.  Gee, thanks


Moved on to Tasmania, cause it's purtee



I got towed to around 2000 feet, then barely made a thermal, and hung out around 10 miles from the airport.  Dumping water ballast here for speed to try to make it back (keyword: try )


For about a mile (seriously, AT LEAST a mile), I was hugging the ground.  I thought for sure I would land out.  But I stuck to it, kept that wheel in, and worked the flaps.  Dodged trees, literally!


This was my short final.  Bringing a little Princess Juliana spirit to Tasmania 


Finally got one last tow, hung in some thermals.  Made it back perfectly safely this time, no tree dodging


All in all great fun!  I will be doing this more, you better believe it!

Comments welcome

Stuff like this reminds one how varied and great fsx really is.

What Krigl said => install Aerotow, as well as CumulusX, and enjoy your guided two plane and ridge lifts
Those shots are really excellent, I love the colors and those view angles that you used. You just gave me the will to restart my gliding flights in FSX, thanks !

Daube wrote on Jan 13^th, 2012 at 8:06am:


It's unfortunate timing, all this cool gliding stuff makes me want to glide, but I just bought the Carenado JetPROP so I have to fly that!

I need some other gliders, probably some of Wolfgang Piper's.  I mean, the default is great, but it's honestly more capable and complex than I want.

Jayhawk Jake wrote on Jan 13^th, 2012 at 12:42pm:


there is this AMAZING site for gliders in FS,i think it also has the main gliding programs + a winch tow(!) download!(I HAD it but it suddenly didn't work...)

just google FS gliders...

CumulusX should appear as a external window as soon as you launch the sim, when you reach the start menu where you can choose your plane etc... Take a look:




Then, once you launch a flight and reach your cockpit, CumulusX will start to analyze the terrain shape and winds, and generate thermals.

One important remark: if, by switching to windowed mode to see both your sim and the CumulusX little window, you notice that the color boxes next to "ridge lift" etc... are orange or red, then there is a problem: CumulusX cannot connect to your FSX and cannot analyze the terrain.

This happens when one has installed Acceleration directly over a fresh FSX installation. It happend to me, for example. The solution consists in uninstalling Acceleration (from the control panel), download and install the SP1 and SP2 patches for FSX, then uninstall the SP2, and reinstall Acceleration. The SP2 seems to register some stuff that is left there when you uninstall it. I don't know the details, but I had to go through that procedure on two computers (my old one and my new one), and both times CumulusX worked like a charm afterwhile

Of course, prior to install/uninstall anything, I checked that my FTX Central (I have some OrbX sceneries) was set to default FSX, and I also had my list of addons that changed some default textures. For example, after the reinstallation of Acceleration, I had to reinstall my water textures, as well as my lclookup.bgl that replaces the mountain rendering etc... The whole operation took something like an hour or so.

Ah then it works well.
Forget the thermal clouds, if you don't see them you're lucky, because they are not default clouds, they are additionnal, weird-looking clouds that don't look good at all.

What I suggest you is to set a manual-advanced weather. Create a wind layer that goes from the ground up to 10.000 feet, and choose a direction so that the wind will bump into some nearby mountains. Set the wind at least 15 knots. Then take off with the glider, and go down-wind to fly alonside the mountain. You will feel the lift created by CumulusX on the side of the mountain, to simulate the fact that the wind bumps into it, then goes up to get over it.

You'll eventually bump into thermals somewhere