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Posted by Ray on 5/16/2008, 5:35 am, in reply to "Re: Magical Mini-Wave"
74.74.189.128
Indeed it is frustrating to sit in the silky-smooth, laminar flow halfway up the side of a cloud, watching people grind around and around below cloud base and not being able to join in. That particular wave was particular: there was a very specific place you had to be to get into it, and a specific time as well. Hydrodynamically, "standing" waves in the atmosphere, unlike laboratory simulations, are never perfectly stable, because of subtle yet crucial little changes in the requisite parameters. They "stand" kinda like a drunk on the sidewalk...i.e. stay more or less in the same place, but wobble around it. That's why sometimes a second pilot can go to the same place as the first contacting pilot and miss it. And that's why the second pilot needs to keep trying, keep probing...sooner or later, hopefully, the wobble will perfectly position the wave. Bottom line: pilots need to communicate, and communication = radios that work.
N.B.(Nota Bene): when one is the only pilot out of a bunch to make contact, there is an almost irresistible urge to gloat. It should be clear from the above that such is unwarranted, due to the element of luck. It can however be said that serendipity, the "prepared mind" together with luck, does play a role. Example: Alexander Fleming "accidently" discovered penicillin and so modern antibiotics, which got him the Nobel Prize in Medicine (ya think?) because he was slothy in cleaning up his filthy petri dishes after an experiment. BUT: when he saw something weird in one of those dishes, his (prepared) brain asked: "What the hell is that, and why is it there?" That is serendipity.
--Previous Message--
: I suspected too that womething was up, and
: heard a garbled call on the radio "Riz!
: garble garlbe North of gar4ble garble
: garble" Lets get the radio fixed in
: the Grob!, and Ray dont let that stop you!
: JR
:
: --Previous Message--
: Sorry that I forgot to post this earlier,
: but....last Sunday at Dansville some
: interesting things were going on in the
: atmosphere. After a late start usable
: convection got going, albeit with a low
: (maybe 3800 MSL) cloud base. I noticed that
: there was a fairly small but distinct and
: persistent blue hole over the
: valley....which means there MUST be a wave,
: although not necessarily a soarable one.
: This one was...I was able to get the Grob
: into it and work my way up the sides of the
: clouds in the sunshine to about 5,000 MSL. I
: saw the Pagasus at cloud base on the west
: side of the valley and tried to talk Riz and
: anyone else into it, but unfortunately I
: remained alone. After less than an hour the
: hole filled in, "something"
: changed, and everyone abruptly fell down (me
: too). Then, a couple of hours later, Jari
: got up to something like 6,000 MSL in
: thermals which went up to the
: "new" cloud base. What happened?
:
: The following analysis is (informed)
: speculation. Waves like to form when a
: hydrostatically stable layer is sandwiched
: between two unstable layers. There
: was probably initially a low (~4,000 MSL)
: inversion, likely blown off the relatively
: cold Lake Erie. This provided the stable
: layer for the wave (note that the air above
: cloud base when I had the wave was perfectly
: smooth). Then the wind shifted so that
: Dansville was no longer downstream from the
: lake, i.e. the stable layer was wiped out.
: After a couple of hours, the new air mass
: ripened and allowed convection to go up to
: the new level which Jari later reached. Very
: interesting.
:
: So, for my first flight of the year apart
: from the spring check ride, not bad.
:
:
:
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