Searching For Lift
Imagine you're safely aloft, but in need of lift as the one thing you have in your favor – altitude – gradually disappears. First, determine the position and height you will need at the end of your search if it fails. Now estimate how far the remainder will allow you to glide, descending, during the search – and don’t forget to factor in the wind! Then examine the area for possibilities, using every kind of information (clouds, terrain features, previous experience), and try to devise the most efficient sequence for linking together possible locations of lift in a long, exploratory glide.
Weigh your priorities before deciding what kind of search pattern to fly. If low altitude is not an immediate problem, you can start with the most promising area and save the least promising for last, but other particulars might complicate this issue.
Proximity to the surface is a crucial factor in developing an effective search pattern. When you’re well above the low ground, but near high terrain, start at the highest promising hilltops within reach and work your way down to successively lower ones, saving the bottomland for last. (If instead you searched high above a low hill and found nothing, you might then be too low to reach the higher ground.) Later, even while gliding across the flats toward a possible landing, continue to ‘connect the dots’ of potential lift sources in the most logical manner, all the way down to arrival at pattern height. If you find nothing and have to land, at least you’ll know you did all you could. What could be more frustrating than landing before you wanted to and then seeing a cumulus form above the thermal source you failed to inspect? (This strategy of flying searching above highest terrain within reach functions in reverse, as well. At the beginning of a mountain flight, the quickest way to the top often consists of moving from each momentary climb to the next highest place nearby.)
When wind is a major factor, it can influence decision-making in more than one way. With several thousand feet of altitude to use, it might be best to search downwind early, while you’re still high enough to get back. If you are already low, maybe sniff in the windward direction first, so that if you find nothing a return the other way will be easy. Staying upwind also will allow more liberty to search on either side while running downwind to the landing site.