Cross-Country Soaring 2004
User Guide 
7. Real-World & CCS Soaring
Any aircraft can take off and land, but not every aircraft (or pilot) can stay in the air for a prolonged period of time without an engine. The magic of sailplanes/gliders is not in their ability to take off, maneuver, or land; it’s in their ability to stay aloft using only naturally occurring updrafts of air. It’s this act of defeating gravity using nature’s forces alone that’s referred to as “soaring”. Even in a glider race, where the fastest pilot to complete the course wins, you’ll never win without being skilled at finding and climbing in lift. Mastery of your flight computer and GPS gain you very little, if you can’t stay aloft long enough to make it to goal.
Virtually all soaring pilots fly with an instrument called a variometer (commonly called a "vario"), or vertical speed indicator. Unlike the varios in most powered aircraft, varios in gliders typically have audio output (in addition to a visual display). The vario beeps as the aircraft climbs, emitting higher-pitched tones at higher climb rates. This lets the pilot know his relative climb rate without having to look down at the instrument panel. It also makes it easier to detect light lift, which might otherwise go unnoticed. Most glider varios even beep an obnoxious low tone when the glider is sinking at a rate somewhat higher than the normal cruising sink rate. The Schweizer glider included in FS 2004 does not have an audio vario, but some add-on aircraft available for free download from the internet do. (See the Cross-Country Soaring web site for links to sites from which you can download these audio vario-equipped gliders.)
Choose your aircraft, location, starting altitude, time of day, weather conditions, etc., and Cross-Country Soaring (CCS) will generate the soaring conditions. CCS offers the two most abundant, common types of lift found in nature – thermals and slope lift. Thermals are heated (thus the name “thermals”) masses of air that rise like invisible elevators in the sky. Slope lift is air that is deflected upwards as wind flows over a slope. The following sub-chapters discuss these two types of lift in more detail and discuss the concept of “cross-country” soaring: