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 do a simple lap from the Upper Reservoir, to the Delaware Water Gap, up to the Millbrook Powerline, and back to the Upper Reservoir. We discuss the local landmarks along the way and some of they key thoughts that come to mind in various stages of the flight.
If any of the concepts or landmarks are not familiar to you, refer back to their respective videos.
It’s worth noting that when the conditions are working well, ridge soaring *feels easy*. And in a way it is; when a pilot has the foresight and skill to choose the appropriate conditions and stays in the wonderful ridge band, there’s little that can go wrong.
But the training, coaching and the practice is to prepare you for that very reason. When you know the traps, have a plan and have the knowledge to extricate yourself from various situations, you will be able to fly the ridge safely.
And this is why there is about 3 hours worth of explanation and context that goes into a 20 minute video of showing how it works when everything goes right.
Soaring Economist 