I flew the big bird again today. After a week of (not so patiently) waiting for good weather, I finally had a beautiful day with only a very light breeze, and it was nice and sunny but not too hot. There were some nice fluffy clouds being formed over the morning, and the air definitely had some thermals. I tried to ride a few, but the plane is just too hard to maneuver with a 4m wingspan and no ailerons. Turning into thermals, adjusting the circle in thermals, and simply turning anywhere in a hurry isn't easy.
Once I was coming into land with about 4-5m altitude, and I hit a thermal and maybe gained half a metre or so while flying through it instead of losing half a metre. The problem is, without spoilers, that 1 metre difference carries the glider into a huge overshoot, so I needed to do a go-around. I think I might make a smaller (1.5m or so) balsa glider with ailerons specially made for thermalling. While I didn't successfully ride a thermal, I did see the potential for a heck of a lot of fun!