IO540 wrote:
"I like flying VMC on top. Exactly zero chance, I would think, of meeting a glider there - no updraughts.
One is extremely unlikely to encounter any other traffic there, for that matter."
"No updraughts" - oh, yes there are! Best stay in blistful ignorance....! Because despite this long debate about gliders in clouds - implying thermalling up in cumulus, as distinct from close to the base of clouds - in reality and in my experience, this practice is far less frequent nowadays than, say, 40 years ago because modern gliders have so much better glide angle performance and therefore do not require the same absolute height to reach the next thermal as with poorer performance gliders. However...
as I was saying...blistful ignorance....in fact you will find gliders VMC on top in certain areas of the country when there are wave conditions. Modern gliding knowledge and met foreacsting (for this purpose) is so much greater now, and the equipment so much better, that the frequency of using wave lift has increased dramatically. So you will find (if not see!) gliders above cloud, usually riding the wave bars. For power guys who have never experienced this, you are really missing a magical world where the air is laminar smooth and the lift is creamy.
To get into the wave it is often necessary to take a short cloud climb under the leading edge of the wave bar. By short I mean perhaps 1 or 2 minutes, which gives the extra 200-400 ft to contact the wave lift. This sort of flying is no problem for glider pilots and represents an infitessimal risk to others (and self) if one does the calculation of time lapse / occassions / sky space, vertical and horizontal etc. And it is not in CAS. The rewards to the glider pilot are worth that tiny risk. And the fact is that when doing this sort of flying we exercise the sharp look out principle as well as comms on 130.4 to avoid other gliders searching for that elusive lift.
There is a lot of useful - mostly - debate here, but please remember glider flying in IMC, within the constraints quoted earlier, is legal and does not require transponders. And, to answer a question earlier about the rest of Europe, yes, it is legal in several (but not all) EU countries also.