Cooking with Gas and Electric Ovens

As one who's been known to burn even ice, I'm definitely guessing here, okay? But here goes...

The combustion process in a gas oven leads to much more tubulence overall - and consequently a more even distribution of the heat throughout the oven - than you'd find in an electric oven which depends on convection and (if the upper element is on) thermal radiation. Cooking is more uneven in an electric oven, as well.

OH CRAP!!!

Sorry! Gotta go!!

_{My ice is burning....again!!!}

--Europium

Hey...you sweatin or did yer kid pee on ya?

Ah, my 'avatar'...

I'm doin' all the peein in this shot, Bubba!

Bubba? So now we know you're not from Austin. Right, buddy?

Darn tootin'!

A bit more info.

Ask any decent chef and they will tell you that it's easier to cook in a gas oven than an electric one. Better over-all cooking especially with just about anything. cakes souffle, pasties. Just like most chefs hate cooking on a electric stove. The cooking method is different as you cannot instantly change the temperature. Electic heats up to above the required amount then cools to below the required amount. this is to get an average temperature at which you set the dial.

I hate electric stoves and ovens.

Hey!! I love my electric oven but that's because its a fan assisted oven and I have to reduce the cooking times down by about 20% compared to cooking times for a normal electric oven....

So as everyone has said gas oven have a natural turbulence that distributes the heating much better than a normal electric oven, but not as good as a fan assisted electric oven...

John

aka a convection oven.

It might be called a "convection oven" by the marketing nitwits who never seem to get a grip, but as the oven has a fan to stir things up, the actual mechanism of the process can't really be considered convection in the scientific sense of the word. Fans don't convect, they blow (or suck, depending on which side of the fence you're on).

--Europium

convection –noun 1.

Physics. the transfer of heat by the circulation or movement of the heated parts of a liquid or gas.

i.e, blowing heated air around with a fan.

So, when I sneeze on a cold winter day, is that convection?

--Europium

Absolutely. In fact, you're convecting at this very moment.

My understanding of the word convection has always been one in a meteorological sense, more or less, where heated air rises, and cooler air sinks. Gravity is silently implied.

I am almost certain that this more specialized definition of the word finds its roots in my 8th-grade science class, many years ago (don't ask). I can still see the page in the textbook, with its color photo of an aquarium in which there are two plumes - one hot, red, and ascending, and one cold, blue, and descending - whose vertical motion is the natural result of convention. I don't believe that I was ever once exposed to a more general sense of convection as being simply the transport of energy by means of the movement of the medium itself - with no prime mover or direction implied! My understanding of the term up 'til now (up until you mentioned it today and until I subsequently checked it out by means of various authoritative sources) always involved a vertical displacement of gas or liquid due to motion resulting from a difference in density - and in the presence of gravity. As I seldom use the term myself, I've had little or no exposure to it as a more general concept. Thank you, indeed, for bringing this my attention! I'm quite sure that ne'er-do-well textbook author is long dead by now. Too bad, too. That means no closure for me. No NastyGram for him.

--Europium

The convection which you are referring to is know in the heat transfer realm as natural or free convection. Such convection is called "free" or natural because the actual movement of the air is caused by the change in density as a result of heating. The molecules in the gas become more active and spread apart as a result therefore decreasing in density. The heated molecules rise and cooler molecules move in to replace them and continue the process.

This is only one form of convection and is generally considered negligable in convective heat transfer. The truely consequensial form of convection is when air for example is moving across a surface of a different temperature. This will cause heat transfer between the air and the surface by means of convection. That air can be the cause of a fan or the wind or by the movement of the surface itself, or all of the above.

Convection occurs naturally but can also occur by the methods described above but is not limited to natural or free convection of which you speak

Yes, I can see that now, but when I was introduced to the concept/word years past, there was no modifier on the word convection, nor were there any additional examples illustrating different forms of convection. The concept was not explained as natural convection, but simply as convection. I'm certain that if the modifier natural had been prepended, its presence alone would have implied to me that the modifier was necessary to distinguish that form of convection from other forms of convection; each having its own distinctive modifier, and each necessarily existing under an umbrella of a more general term convection.

So, all this time, I have been walking around with this word lodged somewhere in my brain, blissfully unaware that my understanding of it was incomplete. Naturally, this makes me wonder...

What else is in there?

--Europium

There is natural convection - the air rising from a candle, and forced convection...

from wiki:

The basic premise behind free convection is that heated fluid becomes more buoyant and "rises," while cooler fluid "sinks." Free convection occurs in any liquid or gas which expands or contracts in response to changing temperatures when it is exposed to multiple temperatures in an acceleration field such as gravity or a centrifuge. The local changes in density results in buoyancy forces that cause currents in the fluid. In zero gravity, because buoyancy no longer becomes a factor, free convection does not occur.

Forced convection happens when motion of the fluid is imposed externally (such as by a pump or fan). Example: a fan-powered heater, where a fan blows cool air past a heating element, heating the air. A person blowing on their food to cool it is using forced convection.

This is an issue in some work at NASA - in designing a small cabinet to be used as a sleeping station, fans are required to blow fresh air, since natural convection can't be relied on to move the heated exhaled air away from the sleeper.

Bhankiii writes: "This is an issue in some work at NASA - in designing a small cabinet to be used as a sleeping station, fans are required to blow fresh air, since natural convection can't be relied on to move the heated exhaled air away from the sleeper."

---

I don't buy it. This is just another example of your typical NASA approach to solving problems: throw as much hardware as you can at the problem until the problem goes away on its own and before the next election.

Okay, so we're talking about a couple of fans here. But if you don't really need them, then why buy them? And you can bet your bottom dollar that they're gonna be expensive - no matter what, and no matter that the subcontractor actually bought them at The Shack last weekend, threw away the receipts, and almost forgot to peel off the telltale labels so nobody'd know. But who needs it?

Incredibly, this convection problem can be solved without throwing more hardware at it. It's really a matter of proper training.

The fact is, no astronaut - not once in the entire history of the U.S. Space Program - has ever been trained to snore properly. Really! It's really quite simple and, yes, there is a right way to snore, a wrong way to snore, an Army way to snore (bless their hearts), but there is no NASA way to snore. Not even in the 21st Century.

This a travesty.

Look, Bhankiii, these folks don't need more junk in that cramped little Shuttle cockpit. More stuff to bump their heads on, trip over, or run into because, Lord knows, they've got enough junk like that stickin' out all over the place already! And so what does NASA propose? More junk. Fans, in this case. Ever tried to sleep with a whole shitload of fans blowin' on your face? Does this sound comfortable to you? Does this make you wanna be an astronaut? (Owww Baaaaby, Where Do I Sign?)

The fact is, our astronauts can be trained to do all the blowin' themselves - and in their sleep! It's really quite simple, and we don't need any fans. But before any of this can happen, NASA must institute a program that to train our folks to do it right - The NASA Way. And, as everybody knows, of course, a training program needs a trainer. Luckily for NASA, I've got just the one:

My ex.

Ever tried sleepin' next to a running chainsaw? You know, the big industrial kind? The kind that takes two lumberjacks just to hold it still? 'Cept this time no one told 'em the tank is filled with nitromethane instead of gas, but just before the damn thing blows itself to bits they throw it in the bed right next to you and then run screaming into the woods? That kind of trainer.

And boy does she know her convection.

muiporuE--

Actually there have been both problems and benefits of the lack of convection is space. There have been dangerous levels of C0₂ building up around sleeping astronauts in the past hence the fans. Secondly and to the advantage of astronauts, fires tend to try and extinguish themselves due to the lack of convection, no convection means they eventually run out of oxygen. Just ask the astronauts/cosmonauts from Mir about what happens during a fire. Luckily it wasn't as bad as it would have been if there was convection.

Years ago I saw a demonstration of this effect. The 'experimenter' struck a match in a weightless environment. I don't remember whether it was in orbit (remember Skylab?) or in the famous airborne Vomit Comet.

Once the matchhead material was consumed, the flame immediately went out. The matchhead material provides its own oxidizer and does not need an external source of oxygen to burn (For this reason I suspect a matchead will burn in the vacuum of space as does rocket fuel). Once the oxidizer was consumed, the flame blocked any external oxygen from reaching the matchstick and extinguished itself.

Also notable during the demo was the shape of the flame around the matchead. The flame seemed nearly spherical in the weightless environment, as there was no natural convection going on in the usual sense of "hot air rising."

--Europium

Presumably, dangerous levels of (NH₄)₂S as well...

"convection –noun 1.

Physics. the transfer of heat by the circulation or movement of the heated parts of a liquid or gas."

The key words are "the heated parts" and those heated parts (of the liquid or gass) are only found in contact with the heat producing element. A fan moves the un-heated liquid or gas across the surface of the heat producing element causing the liquid or gas to be heated by its contact with said element. I believe, when I learned about convection in science class many years ago, that the defining piece was that the medium to be heated was experience CONTACT with the heat producing component and that the lessened density of said gas or liquid resulted in circulation of said medium. There is no explicit implication in the definition to indicate a separate moving device. The heated parts are the active agent to which the resultant movement is attributable, as the definition is written. I think that attempting to infer an external means of movement simply because the word movement is in the definition is reading into the definition something that is not definitively indicated nor required. It is as important to know what is not stated as it is to know what is.

In the UK they're called 'fan assisted ovens' not convection ovens...

I think Ms Joe Public wouldn't know what the difference was between a convection oven and a normal one!!

John.

Over here in the USA, I'd bet that if you limited your discussion to how a convection oven works, but without referring to how it is called, Ms. Joe Public might quickly become confused and believe you had a particular politician in mind.

--Europium

You'd be surprised. Women generally know a lot more than men believe they do - and most of the women of my acquaintance (well those over 40 anyway as many of those under 25 don't know one end of cooker from the other - if it doesn't go ping how do you know your food is cooked?) can expound on the relative merits of a convection oven vs a normal one. That's because back in the 1970's (I don't remenber much before then!) when convection ovens were becoming quite commonplace, there was a lot of advertising aimed at the good ol' housewife - along with articles in women's magazines and advice from cooks Zena Skinner and Delia (see: http://www.stalbansobserver.co.uk/archive/display.var.47221.0.0.html)

So careful - don't assume the housewife knows nothing - she often knows better than the designer how something actually works!

GULP!!!

Hi English Rose.... I used to live in St Albans for 10 years!

I shall consider myself corrected... But I would have thought that a 'normal' electric oven would be called a convection oven, as it just relies on the heated air circulating by itself i.e. by convection currents.

Whereas the fan assisted ovens are forced convection ovens...

Anyway, I like fan assisted ovens as not only are they quiker at cooking but they also heat up quicker, in the sense that the air reaches the cooking temperature within minutes without having to wait ages for circulating hot air to warm up the whole oven...

John (Chief cook in this house!)

Do you know why most womens' feet are smaller than mens? It's an evolutionary theory. So they can get closer to the stove.

Most kitchen appliances are white, especially so on wedding day...

Oh yeah!

For many years I designed graphical user interfaces, or GUIs, for various complex and sophisticated applications. These apps included electron microscopes, mass spectrometers, commercial demographic databases, and even a language-independent, fully-interactive, graphical information kiosk for cartographically-challenged tourists who wanted to know, for instance, why their being in Waterford, Ireland wasn't quite equivalent to being in Dublin, Ireland, their destination.

By far my best testers were women. My women testers seemed to have an uncanny ability to make my software do things that surprised even The Lord. And they could break it, too, which was great, in a perverse sort of way, because this revealed the flaws in my design and implementation. It was the whole objective in testing it. My guess is that my testers tended to approach the task with few preconceptions about how it was 'supposed' to work, and just used it according to their own particular brand of pretzel logic.

A female friend in Cleveland, Ohio has the most remarkable ability to get ATMs and voice-menu systems to do her bidding - even when they're busted. She always gets her money from her shitty little bank's drive-thru ATM that always seems to be out of cash. I don't know how she does it, but it's out of cash just so long as someone else is trying to use it. (I personally believe she has the ability to consciously suspend the Laws of Nature when they don't happen to suit her immediate objectives.) She always gets her money, and she always gets to talk to a real human being at the other end of that damn voice-menu system - while everyone else is still punching '1' for inglés.

--Europium

That might have been true at one time but I don't think so anymore. Granted that eateries, institutions, food manufacturers and such would tend to use burner-type ovens (because of lower operating cost), but the most prized ranges are ones with open flame (gas) burners on top and electric ovens below. And for precisely the reasons--even-ness of heat and precise temp control (except in the opposite way)--stated above. (I would suppose that the radiant heating would be seen as another advantage?) A quick look at any top-line appliance outlet (even Sears) should convince...that the most prized (and most respected and expensive) ranges are burners on top, elements below. This range configuration seems to be the consensus (and consistent recommendation) among TV cooking personalities/celebrities as well.

"The combustion process in a gas oven leads to much more tubulence overall - and consequently a more even distribution of the heat throughout the oven - than you'd find in an electric oven which depends on convection,,,"

And that explains why you can buy counter top electric convection ovens with a fan to create that turbulence. Or better yet a turbo oven with lots of turbulence.

It's a very interesting question but the answer is not so straight forward. I think the right one is "it depends".

It depends of what are you cooking? Because cooking is a physical-chemical phenomena that needs some amount of energy to happens. This energy has to be delivery to the food through some mechanism (radiation, conduction or convection - natural or forced) and, as these mechanisms are different, the results at the food are different as well.

For example, for cooking a cake we need convection. The meat we use aluminum paper to avoid the radiation during the cooking period and left it wide exposed to the radiation at the end to get some "color".

The "regular" oven uses a lot of energy with the convection heat transfer, but as the oven is warm its inside walls radiates to the food some energy as well. So it has a greatest part of energy transport due the convection than the radiation. The electrical oven (without fan) has the opposite. The radiation part of heat transfer is many times bigger than the convection ones. That's why they install fans on it, to make the electrical oven more equal to the regular one.

(Sorry about any english mistake at the above text).

walber writes: "(Sorry about any english mistake at the above text)."

O seu inglês é muito melhor do que o meu português brasileiro!

--Europium

I note that you are in (possibly from) Texas, so I'm curious. Your screen name, Europium. Is that pronounced:

your opium?

or

your o pee-um?

Thanks

Come to mention it, I'm curious too!

--Euro Pee'in

Europium,you write very well in Brazilian Portuguese Language and I have the same opinion about of the very good skills to write that Walber get.I'm practice a lot to achieve a very good level in writing and spoken English(Im Brazilian,too).I found the explanation that Walber gave, very interesting and it can decrease some unknowledges about this subject.

Obrigado!

--E

Errrrrm...... Pardon!?

John

Brazilian Portuguese.

--E

In general, gas and electric ovens should be controlled to the temperature. The setting of the oven cavity temperature by the controller should hit the indicated temperature. Oven manufacturers work diligently to achieve good cooking results by adjusting their oven design to get proper browning on baked goods everywhere possible within the oven cooking volume according to the baked goods' recipes. If adjustments are required, they are normally made to the recipes and cooking instructions.

Gas ovens produce oxides of nitrogen (NOx), one of which can react with the flesh of poultry and keep the flesh pink in color. This can make the cooked poultry (chicken especially) look uncooked. Electric ovens do not produce NOx in the heating process and so produce cooked poultry without the pink.

Top end stove manufacturers produce all gas, all electric, and gas cooktop / electric oven type ranges to serve the marketplace. Electric ovens are easier to control, can broil well, commonly have forced convection (fan assisted) heating (usually with an extra heating element to keep the oven hot after the inital heat-up), and were first with self-cleaning features. Gas ovens usually heat a bit quicker, cost more to produce so cost more in the market, are a bit more difficult to control, and came late to the self-cleaning technologies.

Which is better? You can only decide for yourself. My choice was a gas cooktop / electric oven range. I made that decision after a number of years working in the cooking appliance industry.

Steve

Speaking from experience and I have a fair degree of experience in the kitchen. My dinner parties are legendary, 7 courses with choices for entrée, main and dissert for 30 people. In Australia they tend to call a standard oven a NORMAL CONVECTION OVEN and the ones with fans FAN FORCED OVENS.

The guest in post #21 is correct about gas ovens, they can contaminate the food but they generally heat up faster and have a better temperature distribution than an ordinary electric oven however in most cases an electric oven offers better temperature control than a gas oven. So the main reason that you need to turn down the gas is better temperature distribution but less accurate regulation also plays a part.

Personally I prefer electric ovens but a gas range is defiantly the way to go. In my kitchen I have 2 electric ovens that I purchased from a restaurant that went bust. Each oven has 4 elements 2 at the top an 2 at the bottom that can be individually selected and are then controlled by a thermostat that I calibrated myself so I know when I want 150ºC that's what I get. As for the fan forced ovens I have used them but if you are trying to do something difficult like a soufflé forget it stick with the ordinary electric oven.

I always thought the best cooker, for cooks, was the AGA concept. But maybe that is a historical viewpoint.

The content of the atmosphere surely has an influence? Atmospheric O₂ must be lower and CO₂ must be higher in a gas oven compared to an electric, as well as the H₂O levels. So there must be a reduced potential for burning the food, as one part of the fire triangle is seriously reduced, despite the food being closer to its autoignition temperature when in an oven than on the worktop.

Some people use a timer to determine when foor is cooked. Others use a smoke alarm...

The idea that the electric oven is somehow hotter than gas oven just won't wash! Yes, the temperature does fluctuate, with the element turning off at a high point and back on at a low point. However, the average temperature of a well-calibrated oven should be the same, and average temperature of two ovens should give the same results in how high the internal temperature of the food being cooked rises during the cooking time and how long it remains at that temperature.

The real difference, which no one has yet touched on here, is that the gas oven is a drier environment than than the electric oven, because it has an exhaust (whether fan assisted or by natural free convection) for the combustion products (NO₂, CO₂, H₂O vapor,and possibly CO, if there is any incomplete combustion). This exhaust will also carry out additional water vapor from the food source (especially meat and baking products) causing it to dry out faster on its surface and possibly burn at a lower temperature. Therefore, many cooks will "turn down" the temperature of a gas oven and compensate with a slightly longer cooking time.

The electric oven on the other hand, has no direct exhaust. Most home kitchens have an exhaust hood installed over the stove/oven combo, but that has very little effect on cooking in the electric oven. The warm moist air remains mostly inside the oven, giving it a somewhat higher humidity thant the gas-fired oven. Not that

I grew up learning cooking from my Mom in her all electric kitchen. However, I much prefer my gas stove burners to electric ones (except for safety issues with the flames) and my gas oven gets hardly any use. I find that most of my "cooking" these days consists of re-heating pre-cooked food, and the microwave does the fastest, if not the best, job of that. And unless it is very large, cooked items that need to be (or taste better to me) crisped, especially on top, get popped into the $25 toaster oven, that heats up and cools down extremely fast!

BTW way the whole "Convection Oven" vs. "Forced Air Oven" debate kept me in stitches! Although the source of the original quote is in some doubt/debate, whether it be Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Georger Bernard Shaw, or Winston Churchill, it is SO true that "British (and Aussies) and Americans (and Canadians) are two (or more) peoples, separated by a common language."

This could be a whole thread unto itself!

In theory a gas oven should have a more stable temperature than an electric oven since the gas oven uses a proportional control loop while in an electric oven it's a simple on off control loop with a dead band. In reality however most manufacturers skimp and you end up with the gas ovens being worse at regulating the temperature than the electric ovens. That's why I calibrated the thermostat in my ovens myself so I knew what I was getting.

You are correct about the moisture content and the venting in most cases but good electric ovens also have vent holes. The ovens I have have a vent hole at the back with an S trap to minimize the temperature loss but they are commercial ovens. Even so the humidity inside would be greater than a gas oven as there is no volumetric input like there would be with a gas oven.

As for one people separated by a common language I agree 100%.. That's why I started the CRIMINAL (Confused Regional Interpretation of Multilingual Interpretive Nomenclature and Acronymic Language) thread some time ago. Lets face it the SNAFU status usually applies and there is no way to get around it being FUBAR.

I am the GUEST that posted #21. Electric ovens sold in the US for residential use do have a small direct vent to the outside. Otherwise, the heating process in the oven cavity would force the door open to vent the heated internal atmosphere. These vents also vent the vapors produced during cooking. However, there is much less flow through an electric oven than a gas oven due to the combustion process in the gas oven. Air is needed for the flames and for removing products of combustion. Drier? Maybe but definitely more through flow.

Steam ovens are becoming a big thing in the high end residential market so the water vapor not removed from an electric oven may be a good thing.

BTW, the vents in self-cleaning (another misnomer) ovens have a catalyst to help reduce odors and noxious gases evolved during the pyrolytic destruction of baked-on foods.

Electric ovens and hobs have slower reactions than gas ones. They take longer to heat up and longer to cool down.
In case no-one had noticed: gas ovens rely on convection. This results in more efficient transfer of heat than in non-fan-assisted electric ovens as the hot air is constantly flowing past the food instead of lingering after it has lost some of its heat

I stole an autoclave from work and gave it to my wife, I have her convinced it is the latest thing in cooking. Saved me a ton o money!

I used to hear of cooking your lunch on the exhaust manifold of a car or truck, whule motoring down the road, anyone ever tried this?

No, but I have fried (and eaten) an egg cooked on the bottom of an inverted coffee can with a small tinder fire underneath. The coffee can also had air holes punched into the side at both ends for good draft.

The old steam train 'engineers' used to have breakfast off of the shovel they used to shift the coal into the engine...

I'm informed it was by far the tastiest meal of the day... don't know what their wives thought of that though!!!

John.

They probably heated that shovel until it was red hot, and burned away any impurities that might have affected the taste of their food, or their health for that matter.

A travelling breakfast in yesteryear might likely have been composed of some type of biscuits or bread rolls, a bit of jam or preserves, a little butter and /or cheese packed in a small crock, and a few smoked sausages (no refrigeration) and possibly a piece of fresh fruit (if in season), so "cooking breakfast" probably was nothing more than re-heating the biscuits and sausages. So, after giving the shovel a good heat cleaning, throwing the biscuits and sausages on the hot shovel was probably as good as today microwave!

STL, 'yesteryear' was only a few decades ago...

In the UK we have many steam train enthusiasts, the main line steam engines were replaced by the mid 60's but film and talks by old engine drivers about there ways still goes on...

As you rightly say it was standard practice to shovel enough coal to get the fire going and then to wait for steam to build up and it was in those waits, they would super heat the shovel to clean it as well as use a steel brush and boiling water, then usually it was something like fried egg with bacon or sausage, although in latter years they talked about a homemade beefburger etc...

When the steam had built up, they were fed and ready...!!

John.

The word "beefburger" had not been invented when diesels replaced steam engines in the UK. "Wimpy the pure beef hamburger" came in after diesels and "beefburger" came even later. I find it difficult to imagine any stoker talking about "beefburgers".
There is a lot of nostalgia for steam engines but this is confused with nostalgia for the quality of railways in the steam engine era which was not a function of the engine but of the ethos/culture of the train operators

John77, I was talking about the enthusiasts of today who run these independant volunteer steam railways...

There's one just down the road from me in Leighton Buzzard, its a regular local attraction, as are hundreds of others around the UK.

Wimpy's were around early 60's along with the Lyons corner tea shops.

John.

Wimpy's were around early 60's along with the Lyons corner tea shops.

Exactly. I remember diesels being introduced in the mid- to late-50s, to my boyish chagrin
The word beefburger was invented later (I've have always assumed that it was by one of the copycat chains that wanted to avoid charges of infringement of Wimpy's copyright)

John77, are you in the UK?

Maybe on the main lines they changed to diesel earlier, but on the train line I used to go to school on it was the mid 60's before they got around to changing...

I still like the old steam engines though, each with its own peculiarity!

John.

My apologies - I stand corrected

I was born in Stockton-on-Tees and I seem to remember diesels on our local branch line before BR brought them in for the London-Darlington-Edinburgh main line.

I had assumed that BR introduced them everywhere but maybe we had diesels imposed on us first because our tracks or engines were older.
I've done the Leighton Buzzard 10 a couple of times, but hadn't noticed the railway

For your steam buffs you might find this interesting. Some years back they brought the Flying Scotsman steam locomotive to Australia and while it was in South Australia the managed to organize a race between it and another engine. Fortunately the route took it past the airfield where I flew gliders and I managed to chase the two of them in my glider for a while. Well at least till I caught up with them and ran out of airspace. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me but it was still great fun.

How do you run out of airspace? Did you "impact terrain"? Or "impact train"?

Which won? Despite being over 60 years old by then "Flying Scotsman" could show most moderrn engines a clean pair of (w)heels
BR eventually got one of their diesel-electric trains to do the London-Edinburgh run faster than the Flying Scotsman using the steam-powered "Mallard" but only after they had improved the line twice to make it faster ("Flying Scotsman" was the name of the express train although there was one engine designed specifically for that train which was given the same name)

In answer to your questions firstly the area where I was flying is not that far from a major airport and there are restrictions on where and how high you can fly and I was approaching a restricted are. Secondly as to who won it was me followed by the Flying Scotsman. The glider I was flying has a VNE of 135Kts or 250KPH something that the even the Flying Scotsman would find difficult to maintain on ordinary tracks.

A Coal Oven, then?

They are probably all dead.

.