6 ms·

From Nevada to Kansas by Glider

176 points by sammelaugust 9mo ago

spacemark 9mo ago
Super cool. Hope to be well enough off one day to do stuff like this.
- willturman 9mo ago
  I met a guy in a gas station parking lot in southern New Hampshire who was towing a long trailer with a beat up Subaru Forester. A question of "what the heck is in the trailer?" led to him telling me about his glider and thermals and various techniques for gaining speed / altitude and turning it into distance. Easily one of the best conversations I've ever had. There was nothing about his set-up that screamed what I imagine would be considered "well-off" in this crowd. That's all to say, that I doubt money is as big of an obstacle to getting started in this as you imagine if you prioritized it. I found the website to their glider club: http://www.franconiasoaring.org/glider-rides.php http://www.franconiasoaring.org/glider-rides.php A ride costs less than a full day lift ticket at most American ski resorts.
  - cdwhite 9mo ago
    > That's all to say, that I doubt money is as big of an obstacle to getting started in this as you imagine if you prioritized it. Very much the case! (Well, idk quite what gp imagined, but it's not as expensive as many things.) When I was learning, around 2020, I budgeted ~$300 / month for glider flying, + ~$600 (I think: they've gone up!) for annual club dues. These days the monthly would be a bit higher, and the dues more like $700-800, I think. Flying as a club member is a lot cheaper than rides; you pay for the tow and for time on the aircraft, but aircraft time is way, way cheaper than power (no fuel to burn, no engine to maintain) and the instructors are volunteers. NB this is in a club environment. The upside is that it's cheap and the club environment is a really good place to learn by osmosis / watching everybody else / listening to stories / seeing all kinds of different situations. The downside is that it's a huge time commitment. You'll drive 1.5 hrs and hang around all day to get twoish flights, sometimes < 10 min. each. And you have to be willing to commit all of every Saturday (or Sunday) for a year plus: you need to be flying just about every week, and given that some weekends'll be weathered out you have to be ready to take advantage of every flyable weekend. Folks that aren't committed just don't make progress: hang around, season after season, still flying with instructors, until they finally give up or just occasionally grind it out. (I did the bulk of my training in 2020 and spring/early summer 2021. This was perfect: I was single and newish to the area I was living in, and thanks to Covid I had nothing else going on in my life. Even as things started to reopen in 2021 it was easy to maintain that "saturday? of course I'm at the field" habit.) This is all harder to do as a Real Adult with responsibilities. Some folks manage to do it, but it's harder. Commercial operations, where you go and get a whole bunch of flying in relatively quickly, are also an option---but I hear there's a wide range of quality, and even the best won't get you the seasoning / airmanship you get from hanging around at the field every weekend for a year, flying in all sorts of conditions and taking advantage of the unofficial ground school from all the other instructor/student pairs there at the same time. The economics change first once you've got your rating, when you're no longer doing short training flights and the bulk of your flying is (one hopes!) longer soaring flights; and then again when (if) you buy your own glider---but it's still that few thousand bucks / year order of magnitude. Expensive, but doable, especially compared to power. Gliders themselves range from "surprisingly inexpensive" to "less expensive than a new powered aircraft", more or less. I'd expect to hear something like $5,000 for a Schweizer 1-26 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_SGS_1-26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_SGS_1-26: classic glider, still widely flown by a devoted community, but appreciably lower performance than gliders built after the massive jump that came with the switch to fiberglass); I have a part-share in a Jantar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SZD-41_Jantar_Standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SZD-41_Jantar_Standard, early fiberglass) that totals $25,000 or a little less, with reasonably nice avionics. So, all told, yes, flying gliders costs a meaningful amount of money, but isn't terribly terribly expensive. The question to ask yourself is really not whether you've got the money, but whether you've got the time.
    - jebarker 9mo ago
      Thanks for sharing this detail. I've been interested in taking some form of flight training for a long time and finally have the financial means to do it, but I haven't decided whether to go with glider or powered flight. Your comments makes me realize that the time commitment might be larger than I can manage at this stage (two kids 1 and 5) and so may need to wait until a little later in life.
      - cdwhite 9mo ago
        I want so badly to try and talk you into flying gliders, because it's amazing: way, way more fun (IMO) than the overwhelming majority of the power flying you can do as a civilian. And there are people who make it work! But ... probably this is wise, and better to make thoughtful decision. It seems like this gets easier as the kids get older; I've seen parents of teenagers make it work. For some folks it's a family affair---several kids & one or both parents learning to fly. These families have been uniformly super fun to have at the field! For others I think it's a matter of the kids being old enough to have some independence, + I'm sure a very supportive partner. So don't give up on gliders forever! I'm expecting times in my life when I can't get out to the field enough to stay proficient & safe, and I'll have to quit flying for a little---but a dearly hope not forever. It's just that, likewise, now's maybe not the right time for you.
    - BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 9mo ago
      You need to keep your nose on the grindstone for years to progress to glider cross country flying. Then you end up as an instructor and have to finagle time in your own glider. There's a bunch of time upgrading and updating flight instruments. You need a viable glider club to have enough people to get you in the air between working on club aircraft, equipment and airfield issues. These guys had a big oxygen tank. It's nice to see they were using an Air Glide S and managed to make their goal against the odd 56kt headwind.
    - HWR_14 9mo ago
      > Folks that aren't committed just don't make progress: hang around, season after season, still flying with instructors, until they finally give up or just occasionally grind it out. They take more calendar time, but do they take more instruction? Because if they make the same progress per session, I don't see why you would think it inferior to spread it out over several years.
- imglorp 9mo ago
  It's some of the cheapest flying you can do, especially at a club. You pay for the tow and the ship time but there's no fuel and no engine to overhaul.
  - m4rtink 9mo ago
    People flying in aeroclubs here in Czech Republic AFAIK not pay for flight time (they pay fowlr tow of course) - they pay some yearly membership fee & slave for the club during the year doing maintenance and repairs or running information service on the aeroclub airport tower.
    - imglorp 9mo ago
      Ooh, Czech soaring... Blanik much?
      - m4rtink 9mo ago
        Mostly Super Blanik now - and still a lot of Zlin tow planes. :)
- siralonso 9mo ago
  Super affordable for an aviation thing. I'll often fly 4-5 hours from a $50 tow. My previous club charged about $500/yr with no hourly fees for glider use. I bought my own mid-performance glider for $15k and a $200 annual inspection. Occasionally you do land out in a field and need to buy dinner for the club-members that come pick you up!
k2enemy 9mo ago
A video with Gordon Boettger about it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8p95a4JRcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8p95a4JRcw
shafoshaf 9mo ago
"it’s very important to be patient." I was a tow pilot in the Rockies for a ski season and got a whopping 3.5 hours of glider time. The spinning in circles to gain altitude was enough for me to stick with powered flight (patience indeed!) This is an amazing accomplishment, way to go!
- imglorp 9mo ago
  It's not all thermals! There's also ridge and wave.
  - mtnGoat 9mo ago
    Yup! A lot of folks forget about mechanical lift and only think of thermic lift.
- dlcarrier 9mo ago
  I feel like most powered flight I see is just flying in circles around the runway, with a touch-and-go at each pass.
  - Onavo 9mo ago
    Well, I am not sure if it's easier in a glider but the approach and landing of an aircraft under various conditions is about 50% of PPL training. (For the non pilots here, getting the private pilot license is equivalent to learning your first programming language/shipping your first app). All other accreditations and ratings are gated behind it.
NelsonMinar 9mo ago
Wow they were flying at 27,000 feet for a lot of that. I was wondering how they'd get over the Rockies but had no idea they'd go all the way up there. Obviously they need oxygen and the plane has to be designed to fly in that thin of air, but just how hard is that?
- imglorp 9mo ago
  Not hard and the glider needn't be special; most already have a stunning glide ratio. I've been up in lesser wave in a clunky old trainer. You do need to coordinate with ATC to keep separation from jets. And the oxygen rig does has to be more serious than a nasal cannula above 18000 ft. Of course then there's these guys going to 90000 ft ... https://perlanproject.org/ https://perlanproject.org/
  - loeg 9mo ago
    As a glider it's probably easier with ATC to stay under 29,000 (RVSM), yeah?
    - imglorp 9mo ago
      In practice, in the US, gliders aiming for wave would ask ATC for a wave window that comes with other constraints. See page 8: https://www.norcalsoaring.org/uploads/1/0/0/6/100675970/high_altitude_wave_flight_considerations_-_mike_voie.pdf https://www.norcalsoaring.org/uploads/1/0/0/6/100675970/high...
- drob518 9mo ago
  Yea, I was wondering about the Rockies, too, but it looks like they just got themselves high at the start and then kept high all the way.
peterBlue75 9mo ago
Atmospheric waves are quite fascinating. Crazy to see a glider utilize this over such a distance: https://www.weather.gov/source/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/Miscellaneous/gravity_wave/gravity_wave.html https://www.weather.gov/source/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/Miscell...
mutagen 9mo ago
A few years ago I met a guy at the Smith Creek hot springs out in the middle of the Nevada desert towing a glider. He told me about glider flights from Truckee CA or Minden, NV to Utah and I was amazed then. Another impressive journey was Truckee CA to Nephi, UT and then back again against the prevailing winds. https://youtu.be/4xb-CKa-FPI https://youtu.be/4xb-CKa-FPI https://www.weglide.org/flight/407896 https://www.weglide.org/flight/407896
dinkleberg 9mo ago
I love seeing highly niche little social networks like this one.
- sammelaugust 9mo ago
  Thanks, took us some years to build. Respectful and friendly community all around.
GenerWork 9mo ago
I'm curious why he chose Minden as a starting point. I'm assuming it's because it's at the foot of the Sierras and as a result there's a lot of updrafts?
- dpe82 9mo ago
  Minden is a very popular place for gliders; with the right conditions the Sierras trigger serious mountain wave that you can ride for a long, long way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave
reactordev 9mo ago
Almost 1200nm!! Damn! What a flight! That’s got to be a new record.
jitl 9mo ago
Is there some kinda "here's what gliding is all about" article I can read to so I can understand this website / this accomplishment?
- canpan 9mo ago
  The tricky part is you don't have a motor. It's an unpowered vehicle. (Caveat is the start, you will be pulled up with a rope, another powered plane or have starter motor to get up once) You can go thousands of miles without propulsion! IF the weather and wind plays nice. So you go up with thermals (warm air) or lift from hill sides and go forward by gliding. Repeat with skill and luck.
aseg 9mo ago
Gordo and Bruce are pioneers in the gliding world. One of their coolest flights that shows their creative flight planning shows up in their 3000km flight in the Sierra Nevada's, and the build up to it. Some basics: The major challenge in flying gliders is the inherent stochasticity in the weather system. Think of it as a contextual bandit problem with high variance w.r.t local weather (i.e. Even the best planning cannot help if the weather doesn't comply). We have some observability due to forecasting tools (skysight.io) and any policy must have affordances for pilot skill and a margin of safety. A good pilot (or 'policy') starts with multiple plans, quickly modifies to plans to suit the environment, and can seamlessly switch between plans. The primary "reward signals" are duration of flight, distance covered, and (in competitions) hitting certain waypoints. Previous WR's for longest flight were mostly in the Andes or Alps. You want to be in a mountain range to utilize either the [ridge lift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orographic_lift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orographic_lift) of a mountain face or [mountain wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave), ideally in a polar region during the summer to maximize the daylight hours so you can fly under VFR for longer. However, while the Sierra Nevada's have great mountain wave and ridge lift, the number of daylight hours is not ``competitive''. Their main innovation was in acclimatizing themselves with using night vision goggles for long duration in a glider. There's an article on this [here](https://magazine.weglide.org/gliding-at-night-breaking-the-3000km-mark/ https://magazine.weglide.org/gliding-at-night-breaking-the-3...) which describes the acclimatizing flights and the 3k km flight in great detail. It doesn't get official recognition because the FAI requires the flight to be done in daylight, but still an extremely cool flight!
- zovirl 9mo ago
  Can you speak more on why glider pilots need night vision googles to fly at night but single-engine pilots don’t? Is it the risk of landing out? Or are they flying closer to the terrain?
  - pintxo 9mo ago
    Not the OP, but I'd say both are yes. You will be flying in close proximity to mountains, no way you can do this without actually seeing the mountain.
davidw 9mo ago
Kansas was the end of the line because no more.... 'thermals' to ride higher? If that's the correct term. What's the difference between doing this in the summer vs the winter? I think I would be freaked out (probably an understatement) in an unpowered vehicle way up in the air if it were dark.
- tintor 9mo ago
  or pilot(s) were just tired
- wat10000 9mo ago
  They're flying in mountain wave. Basically, the wind flows over the mountains and you get ripples downstream. You can ride the upward parts of those ripples. They eventually ran out of mountains. Winter tends to have more favorable conditions for creating these ripples. It needs more than wind, you also need the right temperature profile in the atmosphere. Darkness is a big problem. Normally you just have to wait for sunrise to fly, and land before sunset. These guys used night vision goggles to avoid that limitation.
mkw5053 9mo ago
Maybe this is a stupid question, but after looking at the (incredible) photos, I couldn't help but think - how the heck did they go to the bathroom? Guessing it was a strictly number 1 24h. Even still...
- kop316 9mo ago
  Look up "piddle packs".
  - luz666 9mo ago
    Interesting. Do they also use condom catheter?
  - bigiain 9mo ago
    I have friends who fly in paragliding competitions. Look up "male external catheter".
- j00pY 9mo ago
  I used to fly gliders although I never did any long flights, but there used to be a tube that you would wear and urinate into and it would travel out the bottom of the glider.
siralonso 9mo ago
If any of this looks like fun (it is so very much fun), dropping by your friendly local soaring club on a weekend is a good place to start! The Soaring Society of America has a club map here: https://www.ssa.org/where-to-fly-map-2/ https://www.ssa.org/where-to-fly-map-2/
ed_mercer 9mo ago
I love gliding but had a near-miss experience and am scared to fly a glider plane ever since. Statistically it's about 40x times more dangerous than driving.
- noman-land 9mo ago
  What was the near miss?
  - ed_mercer 9mo ago
    My instructor and I were launched using a powered winch launch. As we were ascending, another glider passed over us and barely missed us. They later claimed they didn't see us, though they were later found to be at fault.
- j00pY 9mo ago
  Same here. I had lots of experience playing flight sims, but in reality I taught myself a load of bad habits... I had two scary situations where I didn't realise I was about to stall relatively low to the ground. Also, combined with all of the egos at the airfield, that was enough for me to find a safer hobby.
  - neucoas 9mo ago
    Avid flight simmer here and PPL holder, curious to hear what types of bad habits you’re referring to. I had a similar experience at the start of my training—looking too much at the instruments—but it was pretty easy for me to get over it
    - j00pY 9mo ago
      Well, I would say not looking at my instruments enough! Without realising, I would let my nose drift up when I was turning and I got extremely close to stalling. I'm extremely happy with my current flight sims and VR combo. It gives me enough of what I was after as I think I used to find solo gliding pretty stressful.
throwawayffffas 9mo ago
Did they use the jet at all? Or did they have it just for safety?
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

176 points by sammelaugust 9mo ago

spacemark 9mo ago

Super cool. Hope to be well enough off one day to do stuff like this.

willturman 9mo ago
I met a guy in a gas station parking lot in southern New Hampshire who was towing a long trailer with a beat up Subaru Forester. A question of "what the heck is in the trailer?" led to him telling me about his glider and thermals and various techniques for gaining speed / altitude and turning it into distance. Easily one of the best conversations I've ever had. There was nothing about his set-up that screamed what I imagine would be considered "well-off" in this crowd. That's all to say, that I doubt money is as big of an obstacle to getting started in this as you imagine if you prioritized it. I found the website to their glider club: http://www.franconiasoaring.org/glider-rides.php http://www.franconiasoaring.org/glider-rides.php A ride costs less than a full day lift ticket at most American ski resorts.
- cdwhite 9mo ago
  > That's all to say, that I doubt money is as big of an obstacle to getting started in this as you imagine if you prioritized it. Very much the case! (Well, idk quite what gp imagined, but it's not as expensive as many things.) When I was learning, around 2020, I budgeted ~$300 / month for glider flying, + ~$600 (I think: they've gone up!) for annual club dues. These days the monthly would be a bit higher, and the dues more like $700-800, I think. Flying as a club member is a lot cheaper than rides; you pay for the tow and for time on the aircraft, but aircraft time is way, way cheaper than power (no fuel to burn, no engine to maintain) and the instructors are volunteers. NB this is in a club environment. The upside is that it's cheap and the club environment is a really good place to learn by osmosis / watching everybody else / listening to stories / seeing all kinds of different situations. The downside is that it's a huge time commitment. You'll drive 1.5 hrs and hang around all day to get twoish flights, sometimes < 10 min. each. And you have to be willing to commit all of every Saturday (or Sunday) for a year plus: you need to be flying just about every week, and given that some weekends'll be weathered out you have to be ready to take advantage of every flyable weekend. Folks that aren't committed just don't make progress: hang around, season after season, still flying with instructors, until they finally give up or just occasionally grind it out. (I did the bulk of my training in 2020 and spring/early summer 2021. This was perfect: I was single and newish to the area I was living in, and thanks to Covid I had nothing else going on in my life. Even as things started to reopen in 2021 it was easy to maintain that "saturday? of course I'm at the field" habit.) This is all harder to do as a Real Adult with responsibilities. Some folks manage to do it, but it's harder. Commercial operations, where you go and get a whole bunch of flying in relatively quickly, are also an option---but I hear there's a wide range of quality, and even the best won't get you the seasoning / airmanship you get from hanging around at the field every weekend for a year, flying in all sorts of conditions and taking advantage of the unofficial ground school from all the other instructor/student pairs there at the same time. The economics change first once you've got your rating, when you're no longer doing short training flights and the bulk of your flying is (one hopes!) longer soaring flights; and then again when (if) you buy your own glider---but it's still that few thousand bucks / year order of magnitude. Expensive, but doable, especially compared to power. Gliders themselves range from "surprisingly inexpensive" to "less expensive than a new powered aircraft", more or less. I'd expect to hear something like $5,000 for a Schweizer 1-26 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_SGS_1-26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_SGS_1-26: classic glider, still widely flown by a devoted community, but appreciably lower performance than gliders built after the massive jump that came with the switch to fiberglass); I have a part-share in a Jantar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SZD-41_Jantar_Standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SZD-41_Jantar_Standard, early fiberglass) that totals $25,000 or a little less, with reasonably nice avionics. So, all told, yes, flying gliders costs a meaningful amount of money, but isn't terribly terribly expensive. The question to ask yourself is really not whether you've got the money, but whether you've got the time.
  - jebarker 9mo ago
    Thanks for sharing this detail. I've been interested in taking some form of flight training for a long time and finally have the financial means to do it, but I haven't decided whether to go with glider or powered flight. Your comments makes me realize that the time commitment might be larger than I can manage at this stage (two kids 1 and 5) and so may need to wait until a little later in life.
    - cdwhite 9mo ago
      I want so badly to try and talk you into flying gliders, because it's amazing: way, way more fun (IMO) than the overwhelming majority of the power flying you can do as a civilian. And there are people who make it work! But ... probably this is wise, and better to make thoughtful decision. It seems like this gets easier as the kids get older; I've seen parents of teenagers make it work. For some folks it's a family affair---several kids & one or both parents learning to fly. These families have been uniformly super fun to have at the field! For others I think it's a matter of the kids being old enough to have some independence, + I'm sure a very supportive partner. So don't give up on gliders forever! I'm expecting times in my life when I can't get out to the field enough to stay proficient & safe, and I'll have to quit flying for a little---but a dearly hope not forever. It's just that, likewise, now's maybe not the right time for you.
  - BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 9mo ago
    You need to keep your nose on the grindstone for years to progress to glider cross country flying. Then you end up as an instructor and have to finagle time in your own glider. There's a bunch of time upgrading and updating flight instruments. You need a viable glider club to have enough people to get you in the air between working on club aircraft, equipment and airfield issues. These guys had a big oxygen tank. It's nice to see they were using an Air Glide S and managed to make their goal against the odd 56kt headwind.
  - HWR_14 9mo ago
    > Folks that aren't committed just don't make progress: hang around, season after season, still flying with instructors, until they finally give up or just occasionally grind it out. They take more calendar time, but do they take more instruction? Because if they make the same progress per session, I don't see why you would think it inferior to spread it out over several years.
imglorp 9mo ago
It's some of the cheapest flying you can do, especially at a club. You pay for the tow and the ship time but there's no fuel and no engine to overhaul.
- m4rtink 9mo ago
  People flying in aeroclubs here in Czech Republic AFAIK not pay for flight time (they pay fowlr tow of course) - they pay some yearly membership fee & slave for the club during the year doing maintenance and repairs or running information service on the aeroclub airport tower.
  - imglorp 9mo ago
    Ooh, Czech soaring... Blanik much?
    - m4rtink 9mo ago
      Mostly Super Blanik now - and still a lot of Zlin tow planes. :)
siralonso 9mo ago
Super affordable for an aviation thing. I'll often fly 4-5 hours from a $50 tow. My previous club charged about $500/yr with no hourly fees for glider use. I bought my own mid-performance glider for $15k and a $200 annual inspection. Occasionally you do land out in a field and need to buy dinner for the club-members that come pick you up!

k2enemy 9mo ago

A video with Gordon Boettger about it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8p95a4JRcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8p95a4JRcw

shafoshaf 9mo ago

"it’s very important to be patient." I was a tow pilot in the Rockies for a ski season and got a whopping 3.5 hours of glider time. The spinning in circles to gain altitude was enough for me to stick with powered flight (patience indeed!) This is an amazing accomplishment, way to go!

imglorp 9mo ago
It's not all thermals! There's also ridge and wave.
- mtnGoat 9mo ago
  Yup! A lot of folks forget about mechanical lift and only think of thermic lift.
dlcarrier 9mo ago
I feel like most powered flight I see is just flying in circles around the runway, with a touch-and-go at each pass.
- Onavo 9mo ago
  Well, I am not sure if it's easier in a glider but the approach and landing of an aircraft under various conditions is about 50% of PPL training. (For the non pilots here, getting the private pilot license is equivalent to learning your first programming language/shipping your first app). All other accreditations and ratings are gated behind it.

NelsonMinar 9mo ago

Wow they were flying at 27,000 feet for a lot of that. I was wondering how they'd get over the Rockies but had no idea they'd go all the way up there. Obviously they need oxygen and the plane has to be designed to fly in that thin of air, but just how hard is that?

imglorp 9mo ago
Not hard and the glider needn't be special; most already have a stunning glide ratio. I've been up in lesser wave in a clunky old trainer. You do need to coordinate with ATC to keep separation from jets. And the oxygen rig does has to be more serious than a nasal cannula above 18000 ft. Of course then there's these guys going to 90000 ft ... https://perlanproject.org/ https://perlanproject.org/
- loeg 9mo ago
  As a glider it's probably easier with ATC to stay under 29,000 (RVSM), yeah?
  - imglorp 9mo ago
    In practice, in the US, gliders aiming for wave would ask ATC for a wave window that comes with other constraints. See page 8: https://www.norcalsoaring.org/uploads/1/0/0/6/100675970/high_altitude_wave_flight_considerations_-_mike_voie.pdf https://www.norcalsoaring.org/uploads/1/0/0/6/100675970/high...
drob518 9mo ago
Yea, I was wondering about the Rockies, too, but it looks like they just got themselves high at the start and then kept high all the way.

peterBlue75 9mo ago

Atmospheric waves are quite fascinating. Crazy to see a glider utilize this over such a distance: https://www.weather.gov/source/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/Miscellaneous/gravity_wave/gravity_wave.html https://www.weather.gov/source/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/Miscell...

mutagen 9mo ago

A few years ago I met a guy at the Smith Creek hot springs out in the middle of the Nevada desert towing a glider. He told me about glider flights from Truckee CA or Minden, NV to Utah and I was amazed then. Another impressive journey was Truckee CA to Nephi, UT and then back again against the prevailing winds. https://youtu.be/4xb-CKa-FPI https://youtu.be/4xb-CKa-FPI https://www.weglide.org/flight/407896 https://www.weglide.org/flight/407896

dinkleberg 9mo ago

I love seeing highly niche little social networks like this one.

sammelaugust 9mo ago
Thanks, took us some years to build. Respectful and friendly community all around.

GenerWork 9mo ago

I'm curious why he chose Minden as a starting point. I'm assuming it's because it's at the foot of the Sierras and as a result there's a lot of updrafts?

dpe82 9mo ago
Minden is a very popular place for gliders; with the right conditions the Sierras trigger serious mountain wave that you can ride for a long, long way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave

reactordev 9mo ago

Almost 1200nm!! Damn! What a flight! That’s got to be a new record.

jitl 9mo ago

Is there some kinda "here's what gliding is all about" article I can read to so I can understand this website / this accomplishment?

canpan 9mo ago
The tricky part is you don't have a motor. It's an unpowered vehicle. (Caveat is the start, you will be pulled up with a rope, another powered plane or have starter motor to get up once) You can go thousands of miles without propulsion! IF the weather and wind plays nice. So you go up with thermals (warm air) or lift from hill sides and go forward by gliding. Repeat with skill and luck.

aseg 9mo ago

Gordo and Bruce are pioneers in the gliding world. One of their coolest flights that shows their creative flight planning shows up in their 3000km flight in the Sierra Nevada's, and the build up to it. Some basics: The major challenge in flying gliders is the inherent stochasticity in the weather system. Think of it as a contextual bandit problem with high variance w.r.t local weather (i.e. Even the best planning cannot help if the weather doesn't comply). We have some observability due to forecasting tools (skysight.io) and any policy must have affordances for pilot skill and a margin of safety. A good pilot (or 'policy') starts with multiple plans, quickly modifies to plans to suit the environment, and can seamlessly switch between plans. The primary "reward signals" are duration of flight, distance covered, and (in competitions) hitting certain waypoints. Previous WR's for longest flight were mostly in the Andes or Alps. You want to be in a mountain range to utilize either the [ridge lift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orographic_lift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orographic_lift) of a mountain face or [mountain wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave), ideally in a polar region during the summer to maximize the daylight hours so you can fly under VFR for longer. However, while the Sierra Nevada's have great mountain wave and ridge lift, the number of daylight hours is not ``competitive''. Their main innovation was in acclimatizing themselves with using night vision goggles for long duration in a glider. There's an article on this [here](https://magazine.weglide.org/gliding-at-night-breaking-the-3000km-mark/ https://magazine.weglide.org/gliding-at-night-breaking-the-3...) which describes the acclimatizing flights and the 3k km flight in great detail. It doesn't get official recognition because the FAI requires the flight to be done in daylight, but still an extremely cool flight!

zovirl 9mo ago
Can you speak more on why glider pilots need night vision googles to fly at night but single-engine pilots don’t? Is it the risk of landing out? Or are they flying closer to the terrain?
- pintxo 9mo ago
  Not the OP, but I'd say both are yes. You will be flying in close proximity to mountains, no way you can do this without actually seeing the mountain.

davidw 9mo ago

Kansas was the end of the line because no more.... 'thermals' to ride higher? If that's the correct term. What's the difference between doing this in the summer vs the winter? I think I would be freaked out (probably an understatement) in an unpowered vehicle way up in the air if it were dark.

tintor 9mo ago
or pilot(s) were just tired
wat10000 9mo ago
They're flying in mountain wave. Basically, the wind flows over the mountains and you get ripples downstream. You can ride the upward parts of those ripples. They eventually ran out of mountains. Winter tends to have more favorable conditions for creating these ripples. It needs more than wind, you also need the right temperature profile in the atmosphere. Darkness is a big problem. Normally you just have to wait for sunrise to fly, and land before sunset. These guys used night vision goggles to avoid that limitation.

mkw5053 9mo ago

Maybe this is a stupid question, but after looking at the (incredible) photos, I couldn't help but think - how the heck did they go to the bathroom? Guessing it was a strictly number 1 24h. Even still...

kop316 9mo ago
Look up "piddle packs".
- luz666 9mo ago
  Interesting. Do they also use condom catheter?
- bigiain 9mo ago
  I have friends who fly in paragliding competitions. Look up "male external catheter".
j00pY 9mo ago
I used to fly gliders although I never did any long flights, but there used to be a tube that you would wear and urinate into and it would travel out the bottom of the glider.

siralonso 9mo ago

If any of this looks like fun (it is so very much fun), dropping by your friendly local soaring club on a weekend is a good place to start! The Soaring Society of America has a club map here: https://www.ssa.org/where-to-fly-map-2/ https://www.ssa.org/where-to-fly-map-2/

ed_mercer 9mo ago

I love gliding but had a near-miss experience and am scared to fly a glider plane ever since. Statistically it's about 40x times more dangerous than driving.

noman-land 9mo ago
What was the near miss?
- ed_mercer 9mo ago
  My instructor and I were launched using a powered winch launch. As we were ascending, another glider passed over us and barely missed us. They later claimed they didn't see us, though they were later found to be at fault.
j00pY 9mo ago
Same here. I had lots of experience playing flight sims, but in reality I taught myself a load of bad habits... I had two scary situations where I didn't realise I was about to stall relatively low to the ground. Also, combined with all of the egos at the airfield, that was enough for me to find a safer hobby.
- neucoas 9mo ago
  Avid flight simmer here and PPL holder, curious to hear what types of bad habits you’re referring to. I had a similar experience at the start of my training—looking too much at the instruments—but it was pretty easy for me to get over it
  - j00pY 9mo ago
    Well, I would say not looking at my instruments enough! Without realising, I would let my nose drift up when I was turning and I got extremely close to stalling. I'm extremely happy with my current flight sims and VR combo. It gives me enough of what I was after as I think I used to find solo gliding pretty stressful.

throwawayffffas 9mo ago

Did they use the jet at all? Or did they have it just for safety?

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