For example this little excursion - amazing!
That video is at least 8 years old but still looks like great fun!
Amazing.. I admire the guy for getting a lot out of life doing such things. I hope and assume that he evaluates all risks involved. Bit of a bummer if for instance for some mechanical reason you can't take off again.. Interesting that at that altitude the aircraft still had sufficient power and sufficiently low ground speed, or was he flying into a heavy headwind? If so, not turbulent..
You can't even do these things at that altitude with many helicopters I guess!
Met him at the Backcountry Fly-In at Johnson Creek in Idaho last year. He's a bit of a legend there. Nicest guy. Pops Dory. He's also got a clip where he catches some thermals in his old Taylorcraft and keeps on climbing with the engine off:
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I've caught wave in our Auster that resulted in a nearly 1000fpm climb with the engine at idle (the Auster is pretty similar to a Taylorcraft, including being designed by the same man - Clarence Taylor, who I thought was American but it turns out he was actually from Nottingham). However, I didn't have the guts to turn the engine off, despite being a glider pilot!
I've also ridge soared a Grumman Cheetah (also at idle power).
When I lived in the US, when flying our C140 (which had a cruise prop and a C85 engine) in mountainous terrain, I would always take advantage of thermals and other lift sources to get the climb rate something greater than "painfully slow".
