I think you have some errors at the beginning. The rising air cools not because of the atmosphere, it cools because it's expanding. Also, it's not inherently humid at the ground as it warms up. It's just that the relative humidity keeps increasing as it rises due to temperature getting lower. Otherwise, thanks for your videos!
Thanks!! Great explanation!! Clouds and especially cloud suck is a pretty scary thing to think about, but I would love to get the opportunity to fly around small wispy clouds, just definitely want to stay out of them.
One tip I can add from experience. If you're in the situation of being inside that 45 degree cone under the cloud and cloud suck is apparent, do a 180. Back out and find a way around that's safe. We often think of pressing on with our original plan so doing a 180 doesn't come to mind very often but there could be way more life up ahead. At least you know the lift you've just flown through. Like you said Ari, prevention is way better than managing it once you're in deep. At the point of 20+m/s lift AND sink it is hardly possible to fly on a heading or keep big ears in at all.
not really, in a strong lift, when you turn 180 degrees, even assuming you do a perfect 180 degree,. you're in no way covering the same route as you did before, you're much higher with much stronger lift and the cloud keeps changing too. Plus if you were flying downwind, now you fly against it. Simply, if you're traversing a cloud, and getting close to the edge, there is no way that turning 180 degrees, back through the center of cloud is going to do any good to you. Not to mention that you are much more likely to lose orientation. What actually matters whe is: where is the closest opening, in which direction the cloud grows, what is the wind direction. Ideally you'd not be escaping against the wind and you definitely want to move towards the closest opening.
Hello Ari. I flew from Mount Leinster in the south east of Ireland. Second thermal took me into cloud for thirthy minutes. I followed my cheap ball compass to the east towards the sea. Big ears speed bar did nothing. Sea breeze saved me. I landed next to a church and kissed the ground when I landed. It was terrifying and turbulent but still an amazing experience. I flew into cloud again in Italy and it didn't bother me. I dont launch on black cloud days. Rather be on the ground looking up. Thanks
Hell yeah brother! Thanks for all the great information! Would love to have you on the channel!!! Would you be interesting in doing a video with me? ariintheair@gmail.com
Great stuff, Ari! I'm looking forward to taking my paramotor experience and turning it into paragliding at some point in life. I'll be in Bend, OR at the end of July, I'd love to meet up and learn what it takes!
Sucked into cloud near Chabre/Laragne last year, tried spiraling out but because of some stupid deep pull on the brake got into SAT alike configuration. Cost me a few days to really get over it. Now I follow the 45 rule ….
thanks for explaining all of this, very informative. I especially enjoyed when you tossed the paper when talking about the FFA rules...not sure if that was intentional or not....lol
I agree Ari, flying in Clouds looks cool the first 20 second then trying to maintain level flight with no horizon to work from is difficult I’ve been through enough clouds in my paramotor to say it’s not worth the risk I usually stay in the lower atmosphere around 2000 feet I’ve had very little experience with cloud suck of course I’m loaded with my para motor and my weight around 310 pounds plus I have a motor to push me in the direction I need to get to. Nice informational video 👋
Thank you for pointing out how different other places can be, as in your Mexico/Midwest example. My paragliding school’s adage “If you know the meteorology here well, you can fly anywhere” is nonsense. Continents, areas and sites are vastly different. I once got into cloud suck in SoCal under a fairly small cloud that would not be worth worrying about in the Alps/Europe. But the Alps don’t have the bone-dry desert air and the rock solid pacific air inversion. Different areas are different, and I can only encourage everyone to ask fundamental, embarrassingly stupid questions when showing up on a new area.
With that advice, you might be able to 'fly' anywhere, but being confident about how the clouds might develop so you can fly close to them will take specific experience with the area that you're in. Totally agree! Thanks for watching!
It would appear to me analyzing this entire video discourse that if you want to go streaking through the sky try to find yourself a big huge area of crop clouds with a big huge sink next to it then fly a line that keeps you 45 degrees under that cloud not anymore so you can't get caught but if you're under that 45° rim there and you look for other big spots of sink you might be able to kind of shoot straight along that edge would seem to me. I've been watching the sky here for decades. For years a little dark cloud followed me and rained on my parade and I had terrible luck. I've taken an interest in pair of gliding and I find the sky is clear about me and there's a big ring of pretty cotton candy clouds around me everywhere I go
I'd like to add that a B-line stall is also a very good and safe way to get out of a cloud if the cloud suck is not too crazy (below 8 m/s). That's also actually the only situation where I would use a B-line stall.
Wingovers aren't good for descending. You want to stall. That's your best bet. If you're not experienced with that, try a B-line stall first. If that doesn't slow you down enough you may have to full stall. If that doesn't help, maybe disconnect your paraglider. And pull your reserve only AFTER you're well below the lift. If that doesn't help, RIP
@@DrAElemayodisconnect your glider? How you would even manage to do that? Then throwing your reserve at free fall speed? It’s not a skydiving rig with delayed opening
You just said a couple things that are bad news if you get in that cloud you get wet or ice just like you said and then that wet glider is prone to collapse doesn't want to open easy and a lot of other things and those more maneuverish things that you suggested may cause a full collapse that doesn't recover very easily. Stay out of them clouds because they're wet and when the wind gets wet it doesn't want to fly very well
Hi Ari, Ewa Wisnierska is a polish (not Belgium 🇧🇪) pilot but lives and competes for Germany 🇩🇪 😉. Don’t fly close to the clouds if you don’t know how to avoid be sucking, is not funny and can be extremely dangerous.
Hey man! I had a thought while watching this video, thought I'd bounce it off you and see what you think. When you mentioned picking a heading to exit the white room, ideally with GPS help, to not change that heading. It got me thinking, if there were changes in your vertical acceleration, do you think that could be an indicator of where to go to get out of the cloud? For example, if we're in a big ol nimbus, just totally ass over tea kettle with no idea where to go, and we pick and heading and go in full speed bar but we start climbing faster, would a 180° turn to lower lift be a good idea? I'm sure it's super condition dependant, but I was just curious what you think. Ideally just stay out of papa cloud, but just a thought. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge man! Very appreciated, helping keep the community safe is quite metal🤘
Once in the cloud, I think I'm more concerned with getting out, than really controlling my height. I'd rather pop out hypoxic than dink around in the cloud looking for less lift and spend more time in the white room
I really like ur videos but i have to disagree about not spiraling. It´s our best option to lose altitude. Quite frankly it´s the only thing I ever do when I have to get lower. In the example you´ve given about the time you where sucked in you could have easily had a sink rate of 6-8m/s in a spiral. I´m flying a BGD Cure which has relatively long lines and I can safely sustain a sink rate of 15-18m/s for prolonged times. I´d say its the one an absolutely essential skill that we need in paragliding if we wanna fly XC in a save manner. With that beeing said keep up the work there´re some really good videos on ur channel Greetings from Austria ;)
I like this comment. In general, I agree with you - spiraling is the fastest decent technique and is something that every xc pilot should be comfortable with. But, not everyone is and I don't want to tell anyone who is not very practiced with spirals, to try them in an emergency situation, I've seen that go really wrong. I have also found myself in positions, on long flights, tired and hungry, where spiraling will make me dizzy very quickly, especially on a racing 2-liner. So, yeah, spiraling is great, but it isn't for everyone, and it can't be the only trick you have in your book. Thanks for the comment.
If you find yourself in the white room without a compass, head towards the light. If any direction seems brighter than another one, lock onto that and go in that direction.
@@AriintheAir you used the term backflying which i was unfamiliar with but I bet it would work better at making you go straight down than big ears, also o wonder if spiral dives would be the best, provided you dont pass out
@@AriintheAir because in a spiral dive the bottom of your wing is not facing the updraft thag you are trying to escape but it is diving into it in a screwing motion, ill bet it would be always the most effective way to loose altitude fast because the wing woulf be more perpendicular to the rising air
Full stall has relatively low sink values, comparing to e.g. spiral, plus if you have ever stalled your wing in stable conditions you'll not want to do in heavily turbulent area, not to mention difficulty of controlling it without proper reference point. And on top of that it inherits the main issue of the spiral -> you don't horizontally move out of the cloud. So it mixes the worst of all words. You won't escape and are likely to mess up your wing. Reserve is not what you want to use in the cloud either.
I love this question, and the answer is quite simple; they pull their wings in. All soaring birds have the ability to turn themselves into an incredibly aerodynamic football shape. Some falcons can do 200mph downwards. Thanks for watching!
@@AriintheAir You're welcome - and thanks for replying too, and for these videos! I'll go back and remind myself how to contribute. Very interesting, and makes sense.
The answer to question: 'What clouds you can fly in' is actually very simple. NONE. There is just no discussion about it. It's neither legal, nor safe and it's far too common. It's generally acceptable to fly through cloud edges or thin cloud layers, but even then an encounter with a fast approaching glider or another pilot with the same idea can be lethal. And gliders love to fly just under the cloudbase, so do we. IMO the logic about the thermal height and cloud-size/potential for geing sucked is flawed. The actual potential of being sucked is mostly related to the thermal strenght and the risk of being sucked deep in the cloud is mostly related to inversion levels and current cloud state, one could also take into account CAPE. Hence, assesment of the risk should be mostly based on the current average climb in the area, height of the cloud and observation of surrounding clouds. Even if one could prove some correlation between those an thermals height, it just all breaks in the mountains. A huge congestus can be generated 200m above a slope and beautiful, isolated cumuluses, can float 3000m above the valley causing no cloud suck risk at all.
Hi Ari, there was a great web session on Stubaicup 2021 Théo de Blic (acro pilot in Europe) from NOVA Paragliders: th-cam.com/video/FE9yle-1RNw/w-d-xo.html where he explains a lot of rapid descent techniques that really opened my eyes and showed me techniques I would not have thought of. Addresses your point of do not spiral he points out a better way of pulling a 50% collaps and spiral to the other side of the collaps. Thanks for you content and keep up the great work!
Cloud suck is the gift that keeps on giving even when you had enough... So much fun to fly under them bad boys, but always be on the lookout. Generally when you don't see the sun anymore it's time to go for the edge of the cloud for us beginners.
I think you have some errors at the beginning. The rising air cools not because of the atmosphere, it cools because it's expanding. Also, it's not inherently humid at the ground as it warms up. It's just that the relative humidity keeps increasing as it rises due to temperature getting lower.
Otherwise, thanks for your videos!
Love the time taken to explain these phenomenons so thoroughly, great job Ari :)
Glad you enjoyed it!
I will never fly in my lifetime , but, amazing explanation. Scary and thrilling at the same time. I wish I were younger.
Thanks!! Great explanation!! Clouds and especially cloud suck is a pretty scary thing to think about, but I would love to get the opportunity to fly around small wispy clouds, just definitely want to stay out of them.
You're welcome! Glad it was helpful
Good stuff! Prevention first. I did the deep spiral when at the Owens and Crestline.
One tip I can add from experience. If you're in the situation of being inside that 45 degree cone under the cloud and cloud suck is apparent, do a 180. Back out and find a way around that's safe.
We often think of pressing on with our original plan so doing a 180 doesn't come to mind very often but there could be way more life up ahead. At least you know the lift you've just flown through.
Like you said Ari, prevention is way better than managing it once you're in deep. At the point of 20+m/s lift AND sink it is hardly possible to fly on a heading or keep big ears in at all.
not really, in a strong lift, when you turn 180 degrees, even assuming you do a perfect 180 degree,. you're in no way covering the same route as you did before, you're much higher with much stronger lift and the cloud keeps changing too. Plus if you were flying downwind, now you fly against it.
Simply, if you're traversing a cloud, and getting close to the edge, there is no way that turning 180 degrees, back through the center of cloud is going to do any good to you. Not to mention that you are much more likely to lose orientation. What actually matters whe is: where is the closest opening, in which direction the cloud grows, what is the wind direction. Ideally you'd not be escaping against the wind and you definitely want to move towards the closest opening.
Good job Ari , happened to me a week ago to fly for a couple of minutes in the 'white room' really scary...
Its not that cool, eh! Whispy cloud kisses are great, white room sucks lol
Excellent pal. Keep on!!!
Hello Ari. I flew from Mount Leinster in the south east of Ireland. Second thermal took me into cloud for thirthy minutes. I followed my cheap ball compass to the east towards the sea. Big ears speed bar did nothing. Sea breeze saved me. I landed next to a church and kissed the ground when I landed. It was terrifying and turbulent but still an amazing experience. I flew into cloud again in Italy and it didn't bother me. I dont launch on black cloud days. Rather be on the ground looking up. Thanks
Woah! Careful! Thanks for sharing
Thanks for the mention
Hell yeah brother! Thanks for all the great information! Would love to have you on the channel!!! Would you be interesting in doing a video with me? ariintheair@gmail.com
Very useful info. Thank you!
Great stuff, Ari! I'm looking forward to taking my paramotor experience and turning it into paragliding at some point in life. I'll be in Bend, OR at the end of July, I'd love to meet up and learn what it takes!
Hit me up man! ariintheair@gmail.com
Sucked into cloud near Chabre/Laragne last year, tried spiraling out but because of some stupid deep pull on the brake got into SAT alike configuration. Cost me a few days to really get over it. Now I follow the 45 rule ….
thanks for explaining all of this, very informative. I especially enjoyed when you tossed the paper when talking about the FFA rules...not sure if that was intentional or not....lol
I agree Ari, flying in Clouds looks cool the first 20 second then trying to maintain level flight with no horizon to work from is difficult I’ve been through enough clouds in my paramotor to say it’s not worth the risk I usually stay in the lower atmosphere around 2000 feet I’ve had very little experience with cloud suck of course I’m loaded with my para motor and my weight around 310 pounds plus I have a motor to push me in the direction I need to get to. Nice informational video 👋
Thanks Chris!!! Check me out on Patreon! www.patreon.com/ariintheair
Thank you for pointing out how different other places can be, as in your Mexico/Midwest example. My paragliding school’s adage “If you know the meteorology here well, you can fly anywhere” is nonsense. Continents, areas and sites are vastly different.
I once got into cloud suck in SoCal under a fairly small cloud that would not be worth worrying about in the Alps/Europe. But the Alps don’t have the bone-dry desert air and the rock solid pacific air inversion.
Different areas are different, and I can only encourage everyone to ask fundamental, embarrassingly stupid questions when showing up on a new area.
With that advice, you might be able to 'fly' anywhere, but being confident about how the clouds might develop so you can fly close to them will take specific experience with the area that you're in. Totally agree! Thanks for watching!
It would appear to me analyzing this entire video discourse that if you want to go streaking through the sky try to find yourself a big huge area of crop clouds with a big huge sink next to it then fly a line that keeps you 45 degrees under that cloud not anymore so you can't get caught but if you're under that 45° rim there and you look for other big spots of sink you might be able to kind of shoot straight along that edge would seem to me. I've been watching the sky here for decades. For years a little dark cloud followed me and rained on my parade and I had terrible luck. I've taken an interest in pair of gliding and I find the sky is clear about me and there's a big ring of pretty cotton candy clouds around me everywhere I go
Thanks Ari. That helped me understand. Great explanations.
Glad it was helpful!
I'd like to add that a B-line stall is also a very good and safe way to get out of a cloud if the cloud suck is not too crazy (below 8 m/s). That's also actually the only situation where I would use a B-line stall.
Big Ears and Speedbar are mentioned here as good maneuvers to take if you find yourself in a cloud, and spirals are discouraged. How about wing-overs?
Wingovers aren't good for descending. You want to stall. That's your best bet. If you're not experienced with that, try a B-line stall first. If that doesn't slow you down enough you may have to full stall. If that doesn't help, maybe disconnect your paraglider. And pull your reserve only AFTER you're well below the lift. If that doesn't help, RIP
@@DrAElemayodisconnect your glider? How you would even manage to do that? Then throwing your reserve at free fall speed? It’s not a skydiving rig with delayed opening
great Content dude! thanks
Awesome video Ari!
Thanks for the visit
Wow you are my favourite meteorologist Ari. I really like the cool sound effects. Bee boo bee boo = up lol.
Hahaha Glad you like them!
You just said a couple things that are bad news if you get in that cloud you get wet or ice just like you said and then that wet glider is prone to collapse doesn't want to open easy and a lot of other things and those more maneuverish things that you suggested may cause a full collapse that doesn't recover very easily. Stay out of them clouds because they're wet and when the wind gets wet it doesn't want to fly very well
Hi Ari, Ewa Wisnierska is a polish (not Belgium 🇧🇪) pilot but lives and competes for Germany 🇩🇪 😉. Don’t fly close to the clouds if you don’t know how to avoid be sucking, is not funny and can be extremely dangerous.
Hey man! I had a thought while watching this video, thought I'd bounce it off you and see what you think. When you mentioned picking a heading to exit the white room, ideally with GPS help, to not change that heading. It got me thinking, if there were changes in your vertical acceleration, do you think that could be an indicator of where to go to get out of the cloud? For example, if we're in a big ol nimbus, just totally ass over tea kettle with no idea where to go, and we pick and heading and go in full speed bar but we start climbing faster, would a 180° turn to lower lift be a good idea? I'm sure it's super condition dependant, but I was just curious what you think. Ideally just stay out of papa cloud, but just a thought. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge man! Very appreciated, helping keep the community safe is quite metal🤘
Once in the cloud, I think I'm more concerned with getting out, than really controlling my height. I'd rather pop out hypoxic than dink around in the cloud looking for less lift and spend more time in the white room
17:10 - 17:16 well said! 🤣 🤣 🤣
I really like ur videos but i have to disagree about not spiraling. It´s our best option to lose altitude. Quite frankly it´s the only thing I ever do when I have to get lower. In the example you´ve given about the time you where sucked in you could have easily had a sink rate of 6-8m/s in a spiral. I´m flying a BGD Cure which has relatively long lines and I can safely sustain a sink rate of 15-18m/s for prolonged times.
I´d say its the one an absolutely essential skill that we need in paragliding if we wanna fly XC in a save manner.
With that beeing said keep up the work there´re some really good videos on ur channel
Greetings from Austria ;)
I like this comment. In general, I agree with you - spiraling is the fastest decent technique and is something that every xc pilot should be comfortable with. But, not everyone is and I don't want to tell anyone who is not very practiced with spirals, to try them in an emergency situation, I've seen that go really wrong. I have also found myself in positions, on long flights, tired and hungry, where spiraling will make me dizzy very quickly, especially on a racing 2-liner. So, yeah, spiraling is great, but it isn't for everyone, and it can't be the only trick you have in your book. Thanks for the comment.
If you find yourself in the white room without a compass, head towards the light. If any direction seems brighter than another one, lock onto that and go in that direction.
hmmm interesting
What about stalling your glider and you still have a reserve if you cant fly it again after you stall out of the cloud
I talked about this, no?
@@AriintheAir you used the term backflying which i was unfamiliar with but I bet it would work better at making you go straight down than big ears, also o wonder if spiral dives would be the best, provided you dont pass out
@@AriintheAir because in a spiral dive the bottom of your wing is not facing the updraft thag you are trying to escape but it is diving into it in a screwing motion, ill bet it would be always the most effective way to loose altitude fast because the wing woulf be more perpendicular to the rising air
Thats why your big ears didnt do much because your wing was still parallel to a "ripping thermal"
Full stall has relatively low sink values, comparing to e.g. spiral, plus if you have ever stalled your wing in stable conditions you'll not want to do in heavily turbulent area, not to mention difficulty of controlling it without proper reference point. And on top of that it inherits the main issue of the spiral -> you don't horizontally move out of the cloud. So it mixes the worst of all words. You won't escape and are likely to mess up your wing. Reserve is not what you want to use in the cloud either.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!! This has been a huge fear of mine, education makes me feel more safe
So happy to hear that this was helpful!
How do genuine birds deal with cloud suck?
I love this question, and the answer is quite simple; they pull their wings in. All soaring birds have the ability to turn themselves into an incredibly aerodynamic football shape. Some falcons can do 200mph downwards. Thanks for watching!
@@AriintheAir You're welcome - and thanks for replying too, and for these videos! I'll go back and remind myself how to contribute. Very interesting, and makes sense.
The answer to question: 'What clouds you can fly in' is actually very simple. NONE. There is just no discussion about it. It's neither legal, nor safe and it's far too common. It's generally acceptable to fly through cloud edges or thin cloud layers, but even then an encounter with a fast approaching glider or another pilot with the same idea can be lethal. And gliders love to fly just under the cloudbase, so do we.
IMO the logic about the thermal height and cloud-size/potential for geing sucked is flawed. The actual potential of being sucked is mostly related to the thermal strenght and the risk of being sucked deep in the cloud is mostly related to inversion levels and current cloud state, one could also take into account CAPE. Hence, assesment of the risk should be mostly based on the current average climb in the area, height of the cloud and observation of surrounding clouds. Even if one could prove some correlation between those an thermals height, it just all breaks in the mountains. A huge congestus can be generated 200m above a slope and beautiful, isolated cumuluses, can float 3000m above the valley causing no cloud suck risk at all.
Hi Ari, there was a great web session on Stubaicup 2021 Théo de Blic (acro pilot in Europe) from NOVA Paragliders: th-cam.com/video/FE9yle-1RNw/w-d-xo.html where he explains a lot of rapid descent techniques that really opened my eyes and showed me techniques I would not have thought of. Addresses your point of do not spiral he points out a better way of pulling a 50% collaps and spiral to the other side of the collaps. Thanks for you content and keep up the great work!
Thanks Tobias! I've been thinking about a descent technique video for a while now!
If the clouds are not to high (300-700m) stay cool and use the gps compass to fly out.
th-cam.com/video/NOaKCR6PhPk/w-d-xo.html&si=8a9A_XEZQuYDvknB
It is illegal to fly in the clouds
@K a e y t o the piece of shīt in the usa it is unless your a class A aircraft; some kind of jet
Cloud suck is the gift that keeps on giving even when you had enough... So much fun to fly under them bad boys, but always be on the lookout. Generally when you don't see the sun anymore it's time to go for the edge of the cloud for us beginners.
The gift that keeps on givin!!!