Originally Posted by
pattern_is_full
An increasing headwind will have to
keep increasing to infinite speed to do much good for more than a few seconds. Pretty rapidly, the inertia of the aircraft is overcome, and it is just drifting backwards with the headwind. No more relative headwind at the wing's leading edge, and a decrease in ground speed. Either of which will make achieving "long distances" - ummm -
challenging.
This is more or less just a restating of the "turn into the wind" question - unless an aircraft is fixed in position (tied down on the ground), the external wind has no effect on
airspeed - which is what produces lift. Except for very brief moments (gusty turbulence or shear) where a gust may act faster than inertia can be overcome.
You fly into the increasing headwind along the edge of the jet stream, and maybe gain a few seconds of extra lift and a bit of altitude. And you fly a little further into the shear and gain a few more feet, but soon you will be in the core of the jetstream, with no more shear, just a steady headwind. What do you do? If you fly out towards the edge of the jet, you now have a
decreasing headwind/shear and will lose altitude again. TANSTAAFL ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.")
You don't understand dynamic soaring. Albatrosses cross oceans using it, and modelers have achieved speeds, with gliders, of 500MPH plus.
Yes, the climb in an increasing headwind is finite- though the acceleration from say, 40 knots outside a Jetstream to 150 in the core, over several thousand feet, would supply more than a few seconds of climb.
But how DS works is you then reverse course and descend on the reciprocal- which now means you are descending into a reducing tailwind- that is to say ALSO an over-shoot shear, which would allow you to gain a lot of speed- sufficient, in an efficient glider- to reverse course again and start the process over.
Even if you just circle as such, you would still make progress at the same velocity as the jet- do it long enough and you could be in record breaking territory.