pg-hg thermalling together

[tomceunen]

to the 4HG at dickies today (01/28/06) and everyone else who wants to reply
Correct me if I'm wrong but I noticed in the air that we PG were making it sometimes (many times?) difficult for you to thermal
Let us know if so and how we can improve the situation.
Keep in mind that some of use never thermalled with HG and vica versa of course.
Regards
Tom

[mcgowantk]

Hey Tom
?
The four hang glider pilots had a great time at Dickey Ridge too.? Pete Schumann, Bruce Engen, Gary Smith and Tom McGowan.? I believe we all topped out around the same altitude and flew for as long as we wanted.? I made it out to the top of the mountain to the SW of the LZ, but didn't find any lift and had to scoot back to the main ridge.? In all, a pretty good day for January.
?
Regarding thermalling, because paragliders fly more slowly than hang gliders,?working together is?a new challenge but?I thought things worked pretty well.? We pretty much thermalled in the same direction and were able to climb together.? I believe everyone (hg's and pg's) were making room for others, so I didn't see too much problem.? Hopefully, I didn't chase you out of too many thermals.? I would be interested in your observations on this.
?
I was very jealous of the top landings I saw.? I often thought you could land a hang glider up there, but I have little experience top landing so I have passed on trying that out.? Did you experience any turbulence when landing on top?
?
See you soon
?
Tom McGowan

tomceunen <tomceunen@hotmail.com> wrote:

to the 4HG at dickies today (01/28/06) and everyone else who wants to reply
Correct me if I'm wrong but I noticed in the air that we PG were making it sometimes (many times?) difficult for you to thermal
Let us know if so and how we can improve the situation.
Keep in mind that some of use never thermalled with HG and vica versa of course.
Regards
Tom

Yahoo! Autos. Looking for a sweet ride? Get pricing, reviews, & more on new and used cars.

[Ashley Groves]

I have never had a sustained successful hg/pg combo in the thermal without significant vertical clearance. I have shared a few thermals with them. A few turns at most before someone has to leave. PG flies slower and sinks slower, making any sort of sustained and effecient thermalling pattern impossible as far as I can tell.

Plus there is the characteristics of the specific thermal you are in as an added variable. (width, strength, boundary characteristics, etc.)

Same for flex wing and rigids for that matter.

Ashley Groves

[Matthew]

Oddly enough, I prefer thermalling my PG more with HGs than PGs. HGS are much more predictable. They go in circles and you can easily figure out where they will be in a thermal. I often have no idea what my fellow PG pilots are doing in thermals.... unless they are cranked over hard. Sometimes PGs just sit there. Sometimes they wiggle back and forth. So I just leave and go find something else.

Matthew

[Marcel Dettling]

My take on that subject: in stronger thermals with a clearly defined core, I often try to bank the wing up, turn tight and really hook the core. Probably did that yesterday too, when we (HG/PG) thermalled together. It was Tom Ceunen who afterwards told me that he had the impression that with my style of flying, I sometimes cut off your way and might have bothered you.

I'd like to hear if this was really the case, so that I can improve my flying in this regard. But if you HGs yesterday didn't feel disturbed by me/us, we don't have to create a problem where there is none. Maybe, it even helps if we PGs turn tighter and you can circle with bigger speed and greater turn radius around us? Don't know, but might be.

In any case, I enjoyed the flying with you guys yesterday very much. Until Tom brought up the point mentioned above, I also thought that things worked out pretty well. Certainly, I was never chasen out of a thermal by a HG.

I remember very well when we (2 HGs/2 PGs) all topped out in the same thermal and headed for Buck Mountain, on the opposite side of the LZ. That's definitely the moment I'm very jealous on HG pilots. You can just pull in the bar and speed up. I also pushed the speedbar, but was still much slower. Then, I also saw that you couldn't find lift over Buck, so I turned around over the LZ already.

Cheers,

Marcel

[tomceunen]

Tom,

Well I never had an issue with a HG cutting me off (only PG).
What I expercienced yesterday was we PG flying the core in your previously found thermal and we try to stay in while flying slow. For you that must be an obstacle to get in the core again as well. Speed and bank angle are different.
At Bills Hill last year I was flying with HG very close in thermals and it was never a problem.
Comment about the speed:
I'm able to speed up my glider to 60km/h but my glide angle will go dramatically down.
Next a comparison showing a not proto type PG performs well among modest HG
Polar my glider : (60km/h=37mph, 2,7m/s=531feet/min)

For the HG it is about this

[Marcel Dettling]

Really cool post, Tom. At full speedbar, my glider (new, well performing DHV 1-2) goes around 48-50km/h, so around 30mph+. Sink is more difficult to guess, I'd say somewhere between 2 and 2.5m/s, that's 400-500fpm. So except for the clearly slower topspeed, I'm not that far off a Falcon polar.

I see Tom's glider about equal to an Eagle, again except for the slower topspeed. And a top end comp glider with a low-drag harness could probably almost keep up with a Sport 2. I hear they go 40mph+ with a glide of around 8, that gives around 2.3m/s (460fpm) of sink.

Never thought about that comparsion to HGs.

Marcel

[brianvh]

My single surface falcon thermals perfectly with Matthew's intermediate PG - at Woodstock we once followed each other around the circle at the same level for several turns with no problem. To extrapolate from this I once had a thermalling flight with a fusion (high performance HG) in which I was tight in the core and he was circling around me: we went up at the same speed, at the same level, and did not interfere with each other. This only worked because I had cored the thermal and wasn't in search mode.

So a PG flies pretty much like a HG one class lower. If mixed class HG aren't a problem, HG and PG shouldn't be a problem so long as they use the same flying style.

[Matthew]

On the other end of the spectrum, I (and many others) have thermalled hang gliders with sailplanes at Ridgely and have never had any problems. They just go faster and are at a further distance from the center of the core. Even though a sailane is going much, much faster than a hang glider, it's still easy to keep a safe realtive distance and keep track of the sailplane(s) because they are at a further radius and thus revolving around the center of the core at the nearly the same revolotuions per minute as a HG. So the same should hold true for a slower PG and a faster HG is the PG pilot winds it up tight in the core inside the radius of the HG.

Again, I've never had any trouble thermalling my PG with a HG.

Matthew

[mcelrah]

This past summer at Ridgely, one of the local sailplane driver's was
thermaling with a couple of us. I spoke to him after and learned
that he had been filming us. He was friendly, asked if it bothered
us. On the contrary, it was cool being in the same thermal with
him. I certainly paid close attention to where he was, but was never
alarmed. - Hugh

[markc]

If mixed class HG aren't a problem, HG and PG shouldn't be a problem so long as they use the same flying style.

I think the above is a key point. Both HG and PG have to know what
to expect from each other : same direction, cranked and banked,
often HG outside/faster and PG inside/slower.

If a PG'er is (as Matthew puts it) wiggling around, or not actually
circling, then there's potential for conflict.

There's also potential for conflict in strong, small-core thermals.
In that case, both the HG'er and PG'er may want to be in the same
place at the same time.

And don't forget pilot experience : I thermal differently with HG
pilots depending on my knowledge of their skills/currency/etc.
I usually don't have that info for a PG pilot (nor s/he for me) .

Mark C.

[Flying Lobster]

Modern paraglider polars tend to be a little deceptive (what a surprise) because they generally reflect glide efficiencies in still air. The newer pgs certainly go great compared to older ones--but the fact remains that when you start flying into a 20 mph headwind they will become inefficient on glide, even compared to an intermediate hang glider like the sport 2. Your glider may have a rating of 30 to 40 mph max speed with speedbar--but it will likely be going backwards or straight down if the headwind component is a significant majority of that airspeed.

Paragliders main strength--and weakness--is their ability to fly very slowly compared to hang gliders. Using the same vario, I often can find good lift that I would otherwise fly straight through on a hang glider without ever knowing it was there. The whole flight and how I experience it is quite different from what I experience on a hang glider--most of the time a good thing.

Mixing paragliders and hang gliders is problematic because of the inherent speed differences. This means that aspects such as merging, overtaking, climbing, circling etc. are more challenging because of the speed differences. If the core is strong enough, a paraglider can remain almost stationary while going straight up! Because a paraglider flies more slowly, their response to changes in lift, gusts etc may be more unpredicatable compared to hang gliders.

On marginally soarable days, paragliders can exploit their slower flying speeds to "loiter" in small areas of lift, maximizing their presence in lifting air, but presenting navigational obstacles to faster flying craft like hang gliders, which are at a disadvantage because of thei faster speed--hence shorter time in limited lift. Conflicts can and will occur. A close pass overhead can wake a paraglider, causing a significant collapse.

marc