Foam Addict
Squirrel member
Hey all,
Over the past 2 months, I have fallen in love with slope soaring on the hill behind my campus. I have been flying with a heavy, draggy, floppy 8 foot wingspan 3 channel glider I made. This thread is to post my experiences and hard learned lessons about slope soaring. I'll start out with 3 basic rules for any slope soaring site.
1) It needs to have a steady source of wind.
2) It needs to have a fairly steep rise facing the wind. (Round hills are awesome for this, as they always face the wind.)
3) If you want to enjoy it, it should be easy to climb.
The hill behind my Campus is wonderful as it meets all three of these criteria:
One really nice thing about sloping is that you can fly almost anything if the wind is strong enough, but to start, a stable glider with a long span is probably the most forgiving, and they can usually handle quite a bit of wind if they have to.
Once you have found your plane and your slope, flying it can be a real challenge at first, so here are 3 more guidelines that proved indispensable to me as I learned.
1) Always turn AWAY from the slope! This diagram from Sig shows the general pattern most sloper's stick to:
2) When in doubt, keep the plane above eye level. This can save you from a long hike if you lose lift without a motor.
3) Keep the plane in front of you, and stay over the up slope. When the wind passes over the crest of the hill, it will drop sharply, creating turbulent downdrafts known as rotors.
The lift lies along the hill in 3 stages. The first is rather weak lift that occurs close to the hill and near its base. This probably isn't enough to keep you aloft, so avoid it unless you are desperate.
The second is the sweet spot, its generally strongest over the higher middle portion of the hill, but can be found almost anywhere with sufficient altitude (6-30 ft agl).
The last is an area to be avoided at all costs, even with a motor glider. The rotors will often cause a stall if the aircraft is flown into them with insufficient speed, and will definitely try to drive your glider to the ground.
The catch is, in order to land, you will occasionally have to fly through these at high speed, then dump as much lift as possible before landing. (spoilers are nice here)
That's all for now, I'll keep updating this thread as I learn more about Aircraft designed for the slope, Mean time, I hope this is helpful to someone out there who's looking into slope soaring.
Over the past 2 months, I have fallen in love with slope soaring on the hill behind my campus. I have been flying with a heavy, draggy, floppy 8 foot wingspan 3 channel glider I made. This thread is to post my experiences and hard learned lessons about slope soaring. I'll start out with 3 basic rules for any slope soaring site.
1) It needs to have a steady source of wind.
2) It needs to have a fairly steep rise facing the wind. (Round hills are awesome for this, as they always face the wind.)
3) If you want to enjoy it, it should be easy to climb.
The hill behind my Campus is wonderful as it meets all three of these criteria:
One really nice thing about sloping is that you can fly almost anything if the wind is strong enough, but to start, a stable glider with a long span is probably the most forgiving, and they can usually handle quite a bit of wind if they have to.
Once you have found your plane and your slope, flying it can be a real challenge at first, so here are 3 more guidelines that proved indispensable to me as I learned.
1) Always turn AWAY from the slope! This diagram from Sig shows the general pattern most sloper's stick to:
2) When in doubt, keep the plane above eye level. This can save you from a long hike if you lose lift without a motor.
3) Keep the plane in front of you, and stay over the up slope. When the wind passes over the crest of the hill, it will drop sharply, creating turbulent downdrafts known as rotors.
The lift lies along the hill in 3 stages. The first is rather weak lift that occurs close to the hill and near its base. This probably isn't enough to keep you aloft, so avoid it unless you are desperate.
The second is the sweet spot, its generally strongest over the higher middle portion of the hill, but can be found almost anywhere with sufficient altitude (6-30 ft agl).
The last is an area to be avoided at all costs, even with a motor glider. The rotors will often cause a stall if the aircraft is flown into them with insufficient speed, and will definitely try to drive your glider to the ground.
The catch is, in order to land, you will occasionally have to fly through these at high speed, then dump as much lift as possible before landing. (spoilers are nice here)
That's all for now, I'll keep updating this thread as I learn more about Aircraft designed for the slope, Mean time, I hope this is helpful to someone out there who's looking into slope soaring.
