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I placed a 2000ft thermal just beyond the upwind end of rwy 14 at Ipswich, launched in the Schweizer and pulled at 1000ft agl. Pretty soon found the thermal which wasn't very strong and managed to stay in it up to about 1500ft



Then took a westerly heading without straying too far from the field and turned back at around 900ft. managed to get back into the thermal by about 700ft and got back up to 1000ft.



Then I turned back on a southwesterly heading for a landing. Not sure about the Schweizer - it has a rather unbelievable glide angle and the approach was a bit lower than this shot makes it look. If you stay at a more reasonable height you end up pulling enormous amounts of air brake to reduce your speed.



Steady approach, brakes on and off to maintain a safe approach speed - but still ended up landing well down the runway.



Now I just need the tractor to come and tow me in.



I like gliding in the sim. This is the first thermal I've put in and now I know how I think I'll experiment a bit more. There was a lovely little ridge at my old gliding club - might have to do a scenery  ;)

Nice scenery...and shots  8)

Fantastic shots are you still sat there??

* YAWN*  ::)  I really must try gliding in FS! It Looks soooo cool! Lovely shots Roller!

Cool, nicely composed shots and interesting info...but you're right, I can't get too worked up about gliding in FS...

Very soothing Roger

Boring?
Hell no!

It takes some real skill to

Nice shots Roller

I should definitely do more gliding in FS9.

Cool Shots Rollerball,

A typical British gliding day with one thermal to 2000' I see.

Now, imagine racing cross country with lift at 8-10 metres/sec going to 10 thousand feet or more, you can cruise at over 100kts and cover some ground, not a typical British weather pattern, but common enough elsewhere in the world.

If you use "Cumulus!" to create thermals, they will randomly generate according to some basic parameters.
You can set the area coverage, (I would just create 3 sets for the whole of Britain for instance), average strength, average height, and minimum and maximum values for those parameters, cloudbase is linked to the heights of the thermals, distance between thermals can be set, cycle time, etc. You never know when one is going to grow or diminish, or whether it will show cloud or not. I reckon Cumulus! is the best thermal generator I've seen for FS. It's a little awkward to use at first is all.

You need to use the cockpit to