Impressions day 16

Raz · Post by **Raz** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 2:03 am

Hmmm, lets see.

Flew about 20-30k.
Got tired of flying.
Landed in a cow pasture.
Had some good cheese but regreted tossing the wine out the window to clear the ridge.

Other than that. a good overall afternoon.

Heat · Post by **Heat** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 8:58 am

Hope to do better next time, but hints on getting above base much apprieciated.

Basicly getting over cloudbase altitude w/o flying in cloud is much too easy in condor, compared to real life. In real life it usually needs a certain type of wind which produces a tiny ridge on the side of the cloud, with very weak lift at start and sometimes getting into decent wave higher up.

Anyway when thermal width is set to "wide" or "very wide" the thermals are actually wide enough so you can circle with one wing in cloud in the side of cloud and eventually get on top of cloud and center on the thermal. Remember that you only get cloudflying penalty when youre at over 80% density of cloud for 3 seconds. (yes, on most occasions inversion height appears to be se so that it is possible to gain some height even above cloudtop)

Also, to improve your chances on getting on top without penalty, try to choose as small and developing cloud with solid strong thermal as possible. If its small cloud enough you might even be able to circle the whole cloud and be still on the rising area.

And last, but not least, even if you train this for a long, you wont make it all the time, it always needs a bit of luck too :) Specially in the more marginal weather setups.

Hope this helps a bit.

cruiser · Post by **cruiser** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 10:45 am

swt wrote:Cruiser, A7 and me started below clouds and see what A7 did with that

Congratulations

Tomcat84 · Post by **Tomcat84** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 11:46 am

blacksun wrote:
Hope to do better next time, but hints on getting above base much apprieciated.

hey there! first off, good to see you joining in on Lowlands, it is really the best way to learn lots and lots about Condor flying i must say.

As far as the above cloudbase thing is concerned, you are a bit unlucky that this was your first condor task, as normally the startheight is always about 100 / 200 meters below the cloudbase approx. But this time the designer made a mistake and forgot to set it, thats why we could start so high and then you just need luck to get above there.

Basicly what you need is the luck to fly into or be close to a thermal that is just developing into a cloud. Me and SL flew into a thermal when there was nothing there yet and as we circled a puff built in the middle, it grew very quickly too, the bigger it gets the harder it gets to still get on top of it if u are still below it, so u need lot of luck.

But fortunately, usually it is not an issue with Condor if the designer doesnt make this mistake

First time too, though he did make another mistake before setting the max startheight much too low! that was an interesting one as well

Buellsteven · Post by **Buellsteven** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 2:39 pm

Hello,
Afther take off,the weather looked good.I did not took time to prepare myself by looking the chart,the time and date and even the wind for a while.I found good lift and was in no time at cloud base.A few even got the chance and skils to got higher than clowdbase.When the gate opens I didn't have any strategy at all,so I stayed right on track.PT and JJJ made a great start and raced away at high speed.Smart tactick's kept them high.Here I messed up already by getting confused where (at what side)to find the lift at cloudbase,so I already lost to much altitude.As my flight continued,clouds start to disappear.I was flying in the middle of the big valley,with the ridge on my left side,loosing altitude.I saw 2 pilots preparing a good fieldlanding,and I even thought about this for myself(better go for a good landing than a bad crash).But al of the sudden I found in a far distance a gap in the ridge that could give me the chance to find somme lift by the slope.The risk was the fieldlanding would be impossible by the the large number of trees.So I dumped my water and watched my speed.A "lot" of patience brought me high enough to get me at the right side of the ridge.So the next 20 Km to the turnpoint I have flown at economic.I saw 19 crossing my path to the finnish.Afther making the turnpoint I folowed the ridge again but situation was changed.It was getteing real late and the wind seems to calm down a bit.Afther playing a bit with my MC on the ipaq I was able to speed up again an finnish the task.I was astonishing to see how well PT and JJJ have been flying,also F3,SL and several others.19 must have started verry late and got a high ranking in the same weater(same server)as I was in.Verry nice flying I would say.But afther all I was glad that I made it!And the support from the winners to the left overs like WW and myself gave a warm feeling.Thanks guys

PS one small note about the problems LLC is dealing with.It is sad to see what is happening here.The LL team have my support and I hope Mr Zink can be brought to ather thoughts.

Happy new year

thermal · Post by **thermal** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 4:28 pm

Well, got my usual "I/O error 32" again, this time after only 17 km or so.

I sent my logs and traces to Support, and received a message from Uros that they located this nasty problem.
It has to do with scenery refresh, while at the same time entering the ~23 km. proximity of an airport.
The problem will be fixed in the next patch.