What you might have come across is "convergence" where you get an offshore and an onshore flow colliding. There are a couple of zones around LA where this is quite common so I suppose its possible to get it in other places in CA.
The symptoms are that you start in a generic thermal going up at a normal rate till you get to 500' or so and then your plane gets sucked into this massive thermal that's about the size of the entire sky. Your plane goes up like a rocket and can spec out inside a couple of turns. The challenge then becomes getting it down, preferably in one piece. The lift is so strong that it will take anything up, even things that are not supposed to be able to fly (I've read of full size pilots finding all sorts of junk in the lift with them such as cardboard boxes.) Martin Usher ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Swingle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "RCSE" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 2:26 PM Subject: [RCSE] Weather archives??? > > Last Saturday I had a miracle flight at the slope with my Boomer. With > nearly no wind, I was able to ride a thermal, wave, or other such phenomenon > into the clouds. It was an insane height for a silly combat wing! > RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
