There are experienced glider pilots who can travel further with less altitude. There are thermal pockets you can find that will increase your altitude.
Glider pilot here. My instructor was the lead pilot on team USA gliding and his most recent flight was Wichita Kansas to San Antonio Texas from a 2,000 ft tow.
If we can some how use the ground effect on the glider the gliding effect lasts longer it's basically the end of the wings tilt 90⁰ downwards which gives it like mire rake off or longer glide
@@camdenschneider4421 Nice! One of my A&P instructors was a glider pilot. He would always derail off topic and talk about incredible flights and possibilities of a glider lol.
It really drives home how remarkable technology has gotten in the past century or so, doesn’t it? It used to take days to get just a few towns over by foot or even horseback. Now you can drive up and over (or thru) a mountain in minutes, or fly across a continent within hours. Travel is so fast now that the world has practically shrunken down to a fraction of its size as far as travel times are concerned. Shit’s crazy, and we’re only at the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Actually that is not true. You are not looking for air currents but thermals which are rising pockets of air. The pilot tries to spend as much time as possible in a thermal to gain as much height as possible.
@@Project_VideoGame the funny thing is it does exist in real life. Search for glider and wave. It happens in certain conditions when strong winds blow over high mountains and form a giant wind rotor movement on the flat land behind.
Glider pilots are legit amazing.. Imagine telling the wright brothers people will be flying currents for 100s of km for essentially free. The new gliders with small electric/jet engine start up motors are kinda a game changer.
The aerodynamics at that altitude become impossible to support any winged aircraft. There is a glider (Perlman II) designed to fly up to 90,000 feet. At that altitude the air is so thin that you have to go nearly supersonic to have enough airflow over the wings to support it.
@@kaeez the internet is a beautiful thing. Look it up. Basically he is saying for every 1km of altitude you have, you can glide for 46km. That glide ratio is really good where as actual commercial airliners are in the single digits.
What if... We built an autopilot system, from which data can be extracted from our flight decision,remote sensing, and topology mapping.... Dunno i just Uni student in mech eng
@@YAWBAD You still need the right conditions. They wouldn't be able to fly in a straight line. You'd need a mountain range to follow and perfect weather. This means you'd practically only manage to fly in circles as long as the weather allows for it.
Keep in mind that the specific glider you used has a glide ratio of 70:1 (for every meter lost in altitude you gain 70 in length, that’s if the glider you used is the eta, which has a wingspan of 30.9 m) most glider don’t have that glider ratio, the one i use has a glide ratio of 34:0.82, so my glider compared to that it’s like a Cessna 172 compared with an F16, but nice video tho!
It's amazing what you can do with a glider. You can fly very long distances with one, and yes. You can go even longer if you go from an airliner's altitude. Even if you went from a Darkstar's altitude, you'd be flying for a very long time, but in comparison from 35,000 feet in the air, flying from 280,000 feet would take you eight times as long, 16 hours. Still, though, that looks pretty cool. Keep up with the good work.
@@regalblack1503 Gliding is without thrust and flying is with thrust. Not exactly a difficult concept. Do you think pilots just turn off their engines mid flight lmao?
Paramotor pilot here, I believe a typical glider has a 50:1 glide ratio. They’re all different based on design of the plane but if you were 35000’ up, you could travel 350 miles. Of course it doesn’t work the same way in real life as it does on paper but if you were to find thermals and really search to see how long you could stay up there, it may never end. There’s always rising air somewhere. Next to the rising air is sinking air, there’s a good bit involved but you get the idea
Glider if you have a 60:1 ratio. Every 1’ of altitude you go 60’ forward. So you can do the simple math and find out how high you gotta go to go a given dist. In summer time I always had to wear extra socks, it gets cold!!! Oh, and fill the oxygen tank up. I started gliders at 12 got my rating when I was 14. Soaring is where my heart is at
I believe in the original msfx there is a glider training mission. I had the most fun flying those; not the jets and other planes. I remember the "instructor" said "it's like magic, isn't it?" While i was thinking it.
At 35k feet after all for a glider it's worst than an airliner because the air is less dense and having that whole wing span helps but not so much at lower altitudes per exemple at 8000 feet, the glider is going to be more stable and travel at a higher speed. But they can some of them are also pressurised, must of the times it's worst than flying at lower altitudes but if you are at 45 k feet you may have a better chance of encountering some wind thermals that help glider a *lot* .
Try an IFR flight out of a busy airport with VATSim. The radio communications alone will keep everyone busy. Also, the simulation speed can be adjusted.
A better comparison for how far the glider went from beginning to end is If the glider started at Jacksonville, FL, it would have touched down at the Everglades national Park, so it Basically flew the entirety of Florida.
Mr Nitpicky here...When your glider ran out of altitude 300 miles to the east of Tampa, it splashed into the Atlantic, but not anywhere close to "somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic".
You could have probably made it out all the way to the Bahamas like the barefoot bandit. He was in a propeller powered Cessna but it's still impressive. I wonder what the longest glider flight is irl?
When they use the rising air to stay aloft they can go a long way for a long time. Yesterday, starting off tow at 2000 feet above ground I flew over 200 miles over 4 hours. (Could have stayed up longer). It was an average day.
Basic knowledge. A glider like that can easily do better than 1:40 glide slope. So 1 meter loss in altitude will move you forward 40 meters. So from a height of 10,668 meters and in stable air it will get you at least 427 kilometers.
If you find the thermals you can theoretically stay up forever. Flying gliders is fun. Quite a while ago I was taking courses to get a glider pilots license. Made it about 1/2 way thru and life happened so I had to quit.
Assuming the destination is at sea-level, zero-wind conditions, and no thermals or sink, then a glider starting at 30000 ft with a glide ratio of 50:1 can fly 246 miles. If you have lift, it can fly much further.
pretty cool! but there are actually gliders out there that can do way more. record atm (if i remember correctly) had a very advanced glider actually climb to over 70,000 feet on thermals.... they are expecting to make another attempt this year with the goal of getting up to 100,000 feet!
Next time should I try taking off from Tampa and travel across the US I’m pretty sure you can hit the thermal pockets of warm air to raise the high up enough to continue gliding for several more hours
One of the people that holds a number of records was Hanna Reitch . Look her up very interesting woman. Some believe she was the first astronaut flying a missile as a test pilot. But because of secrecy nothing was mentioned.
gliders can travel indefinitly if you use thermals. It's not as simple as being dropped from a certain altitude to get a certain feet. you can climbs thousands of feet in the same spot by itself just by climbing thermals.
