Hacking the Atmosphere

An interesting talk given at the CCC Chaos Computer Club Congress in 2008 by Martin Ling about soaring.

From the web site:

Birds, glider pilots, and recently UAVs can exploit a variety of weather effects in order to gain altitude, remain airborne and travel long distances all with no power input – effectively, hacking the atmosphere to fly for free. This talk will explain the aircraft, techniques, meteorology, hardware and software that we use to achieve this. In the process I will show why the sport of gliding may be of interest to hackers, and explain how you too can get involved in this highly rewarding and low-cost form of flying.

Link to the video: http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2008/25c3-2940-en-flying_for_free.html