thermals over GEYSERS?!?

[trashmanf]

I was watching discovery and they were covering yellowstone, I remembered going there a couple years ago, the geysers were always going off at the park, also we flew over it in my parent's 182 and as we were circling over "old faithful" my sister barfed, seriously, it was classic. but that brings me to my question, could you thermal out a geyser ?? it seems like there's a large amount of hot air being released, even if you got caught a bit in the water, that's going up too... anyways has anyone thought of / done something like this before"? would it work?

FBZ

[tomi]

I would think it works. The closest to geysers I've flown is Chimenies. They work great!

[JimNM]

The turbulance around the plumes would be horrible - not to mention the reaction of the Parkies and the eco-terrorist crowd.

Fires, BBQ pits and other sources of extremely localized heat do create up drafts - but the small scale compared to real life thermals means that the rising air cools much quicker and the lift tapers off at a much lower altitude than "real" thermals. On the big scale, the air temp differential is little more than 5-10 degrees between the lifting portion of a thermal and the cooler air around it. For these small scale heat sources - you are looking at 100's of degrees difference. The associated turbulance with the small scale heat sources would make for some really hard flying conditions.

Possible - yes
Fun and easy - I don't think so.

I'm wrong at least twice a day, and it' still early ;)
JimNM

[rscarawa]

The turbulance around the plumes would be horrible - not to mention the reaction of the Parkies and the eco-terrorist crowd.

Fires, BBQ pits and other sources of extremely localized heat do create up drafts - but the small scale compared to real life thermals means that the rising air cools much quicker and the lift tapers off at a much lower altitude than "real" thermals. On the big scale, the air temp differential is little more than 5-10 degrees between the lifting portion of a thermal and the cooler air around it. For these small scale heat sources - you are looking at 100's of degrees difference. The associated turbulance with the small scale heat sources would make for some really hard flying conditions.

Possible - yes
Fun and easy - I don't think so.

I'm wrong at least twice a day, and it' still early ;)
JimNM

What you are saying is true when you are close to the heat source. When I went out in a 152 a few months back, I saw someone buring wood in their yard and it made a smoke plume that rose about 2500'. I throttled back the Cessna and circled and had the vario pegged. The plume widened as it rose making flying in it easier.

My guess would be if you create a thermal source, you will not be able to hand launch into it to easily, you will need it hit the thermal at a 100' to so if the turbulance is too great close to the ground.