Flying for free

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.

• Martin Ling