Welcome to the Soaring Economist. My mission is to inspire and teach the art of soaring. I have made a home for my writings, presentations, and materials collected over the past 11 years.
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Latest Blog Posts
Bringing It All Together | A Lap Along the Local Ridge
It’s a nice day with moderate wind, perpendicular wind direction, and decent thermals. We had towed over to the ridge, tested out the conditions and dropped down on the trees. We are finally ready to soar along the ridge, having trained all of the key ridge concepts and raring to go! In this video, we …
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Introduction to Ridge Transitions | The Catfish Ridge Jump
This segment is a crash course in how to do ridge transitions. We start out with the Catfish Ridge transition as it is the first one that many pilots will encounter in their ridge training. This little offset has all the features of a transition and gives our pilots a great way to practice their …
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Off-Angle Wind
When the wind angle shifts more than 30 degrees off from perpendicular, the ridge lift becomes less reliable. As a result, we strongly recommend that beginners “stick to the formula”; wind speed 15-25 knots at ridge top, within 30 degrees of perpendicular for the section you are flying. In these conditions, you can generally expect …
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