Posts on the Alpisto engineering blog filed under #ransac.
Every pilot knows a thermal drifts with the wind. How much, and in what way, a single pilot cannot tell: climbing and drifting happen at the same time. A competition gaggle can — a hundred pilots in one thermal at different heights in the same minute. From the published tracks of 28 competitions on 18 sites I rebuilt the axis of 8,409 thermals. In the mountains, near the ground, the column stays put and the wind lays it over at 45°; over flat land, and higher up everywhere, it stands nearly straight and the whole thing drifts at two thirds to three quarters of the wind. And the radio a FANET vario already listens to is enough to see it from the air.