The sky is alive..
26/07/09 15:50 Filed in: among clouds
... that's nothing new.
Usually it lives a rather slow and quiet life. That's what most people think, when they take the time and observe it on any given day.
As pilot, especially as soaring pilot, one lives in the sky, lives with the sky.
And there are times when one wishes that this very sky should move on with his life, get going, live a littler faster, please - for example, when the sun takes forever to reappear from behind a thick cirrus shelf, when it takes her ages to reignite the thermals again.
And there are times when one wishes that this very sky ought to stop its show, pause its movie, leave everything as it is - until one has reached final glide altitude in that last updraft of the evening, the last wave before the front moves through.
But what one really wants is a little monitor, a secret page on the Nav-computer or the PDA, where one can put the motion picture called "sky" in fast forward and find out what the atmosphere has planned for the next 15 , 30 minutes.
Oh, a perfidious influx of cold air at low levels, killing all thermals in no time...
Ah, a slight change in windspeed and -direction leading first to the collapse of the wave system, and then to its reappearance in a different location....
More often than not we'd be surprised about all that can happen in no time - or all that's going to stay unchanged "forever"
Well, here's a movie of only 23 seconds on what does and does not happen in.....
...well, in how much real time?
What's your guess - first, spontaneous guess?
Tell me!
Usually it lives a rather slow and quiet life. That's what most people think, when they take the time and observe it on any given day.
As pilot, especially as soaring pilot, one lives in the sky, lives with the sky.
And there are times when one wishes that this very sky should move on with his life, get going, live a littler faster, please - for example, when the sun takes forever to reappear from behind a thick cirrus shelf, when it takes her ages to reignite the thermals again.
And there are times when one wishes that this very sky ought to stop its show, pause its movie, leave everything as it is - until one has reached final glide altitude in that last updraft of the evening, the last wave before the front moves through.
But what one really wants is a little monitor, a secret page on the Nav-computer or the PDA, where one can put the motion picture called "sky" in fast forward and find out what the atmosphere has planned for the next 15 , 30 minutes.
Oh, a perfidious influx of cold air at low levels, killing all thermals in no time...
Ah, a slight change in windspeed and -direction leading first to the collapse of the wave system, and then to its reappearance in a different location....
More often than not we'd be surprised about all that can happen in no time - or all that's going to stay unchanged "forever"
Well, here's a movie of only 23 seconds on what does and does not happen in.....
...well, in how much real time?
What's your guess - first, spontaneous guess?
Tell me!
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