December 17

We had a half day today at Wes/Mar. It was cold and overcast with a chance of some precipitation. On my way there I saw some light snow falling but when I pulled up Noel, Matt, and Mike were all there setting up gliders to fly. I got out the Northwing Horizon again and flew it for the second time.

I do like that glider. I think it looks amazing with Red, Yellow and Blue underside and White top. It also feels great in the air. Now that I've been seriously considering buying a glider I've started thinking about how to actually make a decision. I've done some reading on a few different gliders that I figured would be in my skill range and pretty much across the board the reviews are good. I didn't really see much difference in customer reviews between the Northwing Horizion, Airborne Sting, or the Wills Wing Sport 2. And anyways I don't think reading reviews is nearly enough to make a decision. I want to see and feel and fly the glider I'm buying. So I think I've gotten pretty lucky with this Horizon being for sale at the training field. I've gotten the chance to fly the glider and I know exactly what I'm getting. So this has easily brought this glider to the top of my list. Add to that the good looks of the glider and I'm pretty much ready to buy it now. I enjoy flying it and find it easy to handle and land and figure I'll be able to stick with this glider for quite a while.

So I ended up with another 5 tows totaling some 25 minutes! Not much flight time compared to any veteran pilots average day but it was far more than my previous few days averaging only a minute or two per flight. The weather made this day particularly interesting too. It was overcast and cold and even snowing lightly while we were flying! But the air was unstable and there were cumulus clouds showing signs of thermal activity. It might have been a soaring day if any of us had the skill (and luck) to find the good lift. I did find some very light lift that let me make 3 or 4 full 360 degree turns without loosing any altitude at all. I was able to watch the vario and saw myself stay right around 715 feet the whole time (45 seconds or so). I wonder what kind of difference I would have seen if I had made larger radius turns, or tried flying a little slower etc. I think learning how to take full advantage of the invisible and unpredictable currents of rising air is something that will only come with lots of experience but I did get a small taste!

 

I think I've still got some bad habbits with my landing flare. Sometimes my weak or poorly timed flare still results in a decent landing but I find myself off balance or with wings not level. I'll have to work on this better next time I get out there.

I think these videos are also getting a little boring. I'm glad I have them to look over and learn from but as the flight time increases it becomes less and less interesting to include the whole flight in the video. Maybe next time I'll start editing the videos more to show just the highlights or something.

December 10 at Ed Levin Park

I made a visit to California this weekend to visit relatives in the San Fransisco Bay area. After hearing so much about Fort Funston and the Hang Gliding community there in SF I decided to take a day and go flying. Specifically, I wanted to work on foot launching since I have so few hills here in Ohio. I made contact with an instructor via the USHPA website and scheduled a day of lesson on Saturday at Ed Levin Park.

The Park is great because it's got large wide open lawns and a mountainside with established launches at a bunch of different altitudes. So it's perfect for practicing skills. I think it is often soarable but the forecast for Saturday was very light winds and slightly overcast.

I met John Simpson at the park in the morning and we set up and got started working on foot launches from 50 feet. From this launch I practiced executing a strong run downhill in light conditions. John expected the wind to change from south-south-west to more northerly and sure enough it did. I had 4 foot launches by that time and got 2 more after the wind changed. Cross wind launches are interesting because of how far away from your launch direction you have to point the glider. I was running down hill almost directly west, but the wind was 30 degrees off to my right so I had the glider pointed nearly directly into the wind. This exaggerated yawing of the glider into the wind felt bizarre but it does help to ensure a smooth launch. And anyway, as soon as the glider does start flying, it corrects it's yaw back to the direction of the launch run.

In total I had 6 foot launches from 50 feet, and 2 from 300 feet. I think this qualifies me for the foot launch skill, and maybe even the cross wind launch skill however I forgot to get my instructor to sign off on these in my log book, oh well.

I also got to experience how much more work you have to put into learning when you are required to carry the glider up hill each time you launch. I've gotten used to being driven from one end of the field to the other on a golf cart! It's exhausting.

One of the other local pilots there offered to record a short clip of one flight:
I didn't have level wings and was maybe going a little fast for the flare, but I made the spot landing!
This was the second flight from 300', on the first flight I did poorly judging the altitude on final and overshot the spot quite a bit.

And I also recorded my usual tail perspective on the GoPro camera but have had trouble editing it together. And anyways 6 of the flights were 10 seconds or less (from 50 feet) so it doesn't make for a very interested set of clips.

December 3

This Saturday was another relatively warm and sunny day with a gentle breeze to tow in. When I got to the training field John asked what glider I wanted to fly. I haven't had a choice before, I've always just flown the Falcon. Here's what I know about gliders: The Falcon 170 that I am used to flying is a single surface low performance glider that is designed to be exceptionally easy to turn and land. As you increase the performance of the glider, for example by adding a second surface (to the underside of the wing and enclosing the sail frame) you often have to sacrifice in other areas, such as responsiveness in handling or landing characteristics. I often hear people talk about the "flare window" getting smaller for high performance gliders. The flare window is that ideal moment to flare in order to come to a complete stop for a no-step landing. So when John started talking about trying a different glider, I was concerned that a higher performing glider would give me a lot of trouble

We ended up decided to setup and try the Northwing Horizon 180. The Horizon is a double surface glider with VG (Variable Geometry means that the shape of the internal frame of the glider can be changed in flight by pulling on a long cord at the control bar). It's definitely a couple of steps up in performance compared to the Falcon, and I'm on the lighter end of ideal hook in weight for such a large glider (at 185 square feet), but it's given a USHPA rating of H2, so we thought it would be a good glider for me to try out.

After John test flew it, he made an adjustment to the hang point to get a good trim speed and I gave it a go. The flight plan was just to box the field and get a feel for any differences in handling compared to the Falcon that I'm used to. We also had a variometer and an anemometer attached to the glider so that I could start paying attention to airspeed and altitude. For the first flight, the glider was trimmed pretty fast, at around 25 mph, and I certainly felt the speed while flying. The glider responded nicely though and I didn't have any trouble making some turns and setting up a landing. I landed kinda fast though and only flared weekly. We adjusted the trim again, and on the second flight I saw the glider trim to 19 mph. At this trim speed, I felt I had to pull in a bit more on the control bar in order to get a turn to respond quickly, but my landing was a no-stepper.

I still need to work on consistent flares though. I tend to move my hands to shoulder height on the control bar when I turn to final and then keep them there even when I flare for a landing. Instead I should be keeping my hands lower on the down tubes during final for better roll control and then move my hands much higher when I round out to flare. I will work on that the next time I fly.

On my third flight I had a tow line break. It's one of those things that we need to be aware of and know how to respond to when it happens. As the video shows a tow line break causes a sudden dive as the glider stops climbing and picks up speed to start flying again. I think I handled this part well and was able to level the glider and continue on a straight path. The thing that I wasn't immediately aware of was the fact that I still had a tow line dragging behind me. This can be extremely dangerous as a dragging tow line can get caught or tangled on the ground and suddenly pull you in the opposite direction your flying (Think about throwing a tennis ball attached to a string). I only thought of the towline dragging behind me when John called it out on the radio. Later on in the day I had another tow line break and reacted much quicker to disconnect the tow line trailing behind me.

The other thing I tried doing with this glider was slowing it down at altitude. At his point he glider was trimming to 20mph but I was able to slow down to 16 mph before I felt the control bar pushing back against me and the glider wanting to nose down. I think this was only the very begging of a stall though. 

Over all I thought the Northing Horizon 185 was a whole lot of fun to fly. I felt comfortable making turns, speeding up and slowing down, and landing was pretty easy too. From all the descriptions I hear people give of higher performance gliders I expected the Horizon to feel completely foreign to me. Instead I felt great and had no trouble with it at all!

The word is that the glider I flew is for sale too! Maybe I'll have a glider of my own sooner than I thought!

I only recorded 3 flights of the 10 that I got that day. I need to get in the habit of stopping recording when I land, and also turning the camera off while I wait for my next launch in order to save the battery. Oh well, I recorded the line break and my first flights on a high performance glider.

November 20

There was strong weather on Saturday, but Sunday looked good for towing (at least until the rain was supposed to show up).

After sharing my earlier videos with some other pilots online they had a bunch of criticisms for me. Some of the concerns they had included flying without wheels on the glider, how slowly I seemed to be flying, how I didn't seem to ever have a flight plan, how I was progressing too quickly, and how I didn't have the fundamentals down and was being reckless. I was kinda blown away. Personally, I've felt comfortable, in control, and I've been having a huge amount of fun.

In any case, if an experienced pilot gives me feedback I'm going to carefully consider it. So I went to the training field with a number of these things in mind to work on. First was experiencing a wider range of speed in the glider. If I have been flying too slowly I want to be able to recognize that for myself. So I want to become familiar with all the different speeds. Flying faster is straight forward, but I'll have to discuss stalling with my instructor before I try slowing down intentionally. As for planning flights, I was just going to try to have a good idea of where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to land before I got on tow each time.

In the end I ran into the situation where I should have deviated from my planned flight for safety. Each of my flights was going to be some variation of the following: At the end of my tow, when I had the most altitude, I would practice a maneuver (a 360 degree turn, 180's, or something similar), and then fly back to the end of the field I started on to set up for a landing. On one tow, just like the tow before, I practiced doing a 360 turn with some speed and then flew down field to setup and land. But I had significantly less height than I did on the tow before and ended up making a very low to the ground turn to final. Nearly touching a wing to the ground mid turn. I have lots to learn about judging the altitude lost during a strait glide and the altitude lost during a turn and how to anticipate whether or not I have the altitude required for the flight I had planned.

We kept towing when it started drizzling lightly and only stopped when it started raining properly. In total I got 10 tows and feel I made a little more progress but uncovered a few more things to work on. To summarize, I certainly did fly faster, and spent quite a bit of time pulling in from trim, and also made a better effort to plan out my flights. The next thing I will have to work on are my turns. I am still not coordinating my turns quite right and end up stopping and having to re-initiate the turn before I'm heading the direction I intended. I think this is from over correcting after I initiate the turn instead of just centering myself on the control bar but it could also be from pushing out too much during the turn and causing the lowered wing to stall. I did manage a couple of good constant speed 360's though so I just have to work on being consistent.

Although the flights were nothing but sled rides from the top of tow to the landing, I did get a chance to work on some little things and hope to get many more training days like this before the real winter gets here.

November 12

    The weather forecast clearly showed winds that would be too strong to tow in, but they were nearly perfect (strength and direction) for the local ridge soaring site. So the plan was to spend the day at the ridge, and look for an opportunity for a few of us students to do our first foot launch/ridge soaring flight. Greg and Noel, both recent H2's, were here for their first ridge flights too.

    We met at Wesmar (the training field) and packed up the gliders to take to the ridge. On the way to the ridge, I took the Hang 2 written test. I passed! I primarily missed questions about airspace and sectional maps, but also a question about how quickly high performance gliders turn when compared to beginner/intermediate gliders. I will submit my paperwork to USHPA this week to officially become a Novice Hang Glider pilot.

     Once we got to the ridge the conditions really did look perfect. They were a little bit stronger than I had ever flow during scooter tow training, but that's expected. The strong wind is desirable at the ridge site since it is required in order to have a decent band of ridge lift. The air moves across the farmland in the valley below and is forced up and over the ridge, creating a band of air at the face of the ridge and often extending hundreds of feet above it that a glider can use to gain altitude.

     We spent some time at the bottom of the hill identifying all the potential landing zones and assessing conditions. It's mostly farmland below the hill so we had recently harvested corn fields and newly planted winter wheat fields all around.

The view from the LZ. The Launch is the bald patch below the cell phone tower.

     We setup immediately since the direction of the wind was perfect for the site and the strength of the wind was still close to ideal. There were 2 other experienced pilots there besides the instructor that were planning on flying too. We watched them launch and began suiting up for our launches.

     At around 12:30, the first student to launch, Greg, had a slightly shaky start but we watched him climb about 50 feet in his first few turns, it looked great! 10 minutes or so later when the second student was getting setup on launch we realized that Greg was in a little bit of trouble, the other 2 experienced pilots were 250 feet above the hill (they had been in the air 25 minutes or more by that time), and were radioing down that the conditions were getting stronger. Greg was about at the same height as launch but had drifted to the right, down the ridge, and had gotten into a saddle area where a venturi effect can be found. In the saddle, the wind moving up the hill speeds up, and Greg was no longer able to make any forward progress away from the ridge. We watched him struggle under the turbulence for a few minutes and eventually saw him disappear below the tops of the tree. The road that brings you to the top of the launch site makes a bend at that saddle and gave Greg an open area to shoot for for an emergency landing. He clipped his control bar and the right down tube on a insubstantial branch at the top of a small tree and crashed the glider into the leaves and tall grass at the edge of the clearing. The pilot sustained some kind of ligament damage in his shoulder but no other injuries. The only damage to the glider was a bent downtube.

     Greg spent the rest of the day at the Hospital making sure he didn't break anything while we waited to see if the conditions would relax as they typically do in the evenings. At about 4:30 we decided that the winds were clearly backing off while still blowing strait into the launch and would be ideal for the other 2 of us new pilots to do our first foot launch. Noel went first and made 3 or 4 turns before heading away from the ridge to setup for his landing. I set up on launch and observed the slow cycles of faster then slower wind. The idea is to time your launch in the cycles when conditions are smoothest. When conditions were just right, I announced my launch with "clear, clear, clear" and ran downhill. I guess it's more like leaned downhill though since it only took a step or two before the glider started flying and lifted me up into the air. As planned once I was far enough out from launch I started making a few figure 8 turns (making passes up and down the ridge and always making turns away from the ridge) just to feel the ridge lift. And eventually pointed away from the ridge and headed out to setup my landing.

     My first foot launch/first ridge soaring flight went fantastically. However, watching another novice pilot crash their glider right before I was supposed to launch gave me a harsh reminder that the sport is dangerous and that I will have to be constantly focused on all the conditions around me (weather, terrain, equipment, ...) in order to minimize the chance of an accident happening. I will also have to give myself healthy safety margins in order to keep myself flying in conditions that are well within my ability.

The GPS track of my 5:50 second flight. Also shown at the beginning of the video.

     My 5 minute and 50 second flight left me wanting more! After watching the other pilots soaring the ridge, I'm sure I still have a lot of work to do. I'm still over controlling and making inefficient turns. The experienced pilots look so graceful and slow moving, while I felt like I was darting all over the place and couldn't stay in one place to take advantage of the lift. I really want a few more good weekends scooter towing where I feel most comfortable and the conditions are appropriate to work on specific maneuvers.

November 5 and 6

Another excellent weekend weather forecast!

I showed up Saturday morning with some good ideas about what I wanted to work on: Landings, and smooth control. I think the calm conditions helped quite a bit in the smooth control department so I had a bunch of what I thought were gentle and controlled flights. Occasionally though, I would get a little bit of rough air and I would find myself over correcting and oscillating again. As for landings I think I made a huge improvement by the end of the day on Saturday. I'm more reliably rounding off the approach and timing an aggressive flair in order to put my feet down with minimal ground speed. Landing into a nice steady breeze helped too though!

I was also able to progress from straight flights to boxing the field (making a series of 90 degree turns to fly around the perimeter of the field) and setup for a landing into the wind. Once though, I misinterpreted the wind-Tee and thought that it was pointing in the direction the wind was blowing, so I had to run out a down wind landing. I now know that the wind-Tee points into the wind! I was also getting longer and higher tows and have been racking up the flight time at a minute or more each flight! This also gave me the chance to try a more intermediate maneuver, a 360 degree turn. I also took the Hang 1 written test on Saturday and missed 3 of the 48 questions. I have a few concepts to study up on but I have a good enough understanding of the topics to qualify for a Beginner rating.

When I came back on Sunday morning we had a slow start while I found a prone harness that would fit me. The conditions were a bit windier than the day before. I took one flight before noon and found it to be somewhat rough or at least stronger than I had flown in before. I made no attempt to get prone, and touched the control bar just for a second, just to see how it would feel. One of the other beginner students with a few days less experience than me had too much trouble with the strong and somewhat variable conditions, so he called it after a couple attempts at tows. After a flight each we decided to wait around in the hope that conditions would improve. I almost drove home, but decided to just relax for a bit and wait. Boy am I glad I did wait.

Around 1:30pm it improved slightly and we decided to try flying again. But there were only 2 of us students left at that point. So He (a new H2 pilot) and I traded long tows into somewhat buoyant conditions (there was lift occasionally!). I'm absolutely loving the longer flights. I think my longest was more than 3 minutes! I got to work more on longer and faster turns both 180 and 360 degrees. The faster turns are a skill that will be necessary to stay in columns of thermal lift or to use in order to loose altitude before setting up to land. I'm now getting my feet into the pod harness (a harness that looks something like a sleeping bag in that it encloses you up to the chest.) and using the control bar instead of the down tubes during flight. I'm also getting more consistent with landings, repeating Saturdays good landings and even achieving a few no-step landings.

The final achievement for me this weekend was learning to cart launch. Instead of running the glider into the air when the winch starts pulling, the wheeled cart lets you set up the glider and start off prone, this way, when the winch starts pulling at full tension, you roll along the ground until the glider flies off the cart. This is how aero-towing is accomplished since you couldn't possible run along the ground far enough and fast enough for an airplane to take off while pulling you along. I had 5 cart launches before the end of the day but only recorded the first of them on video.

Despite the fact that this is the longest video so far, I still didn't manage to capture all my flights. Another student had a similar camera to mine, so we were able to record ourselves from 2 different angles. Both of our cameras ran our of batteries before the end of the day on Saturday and Sunday. I especially regret this because some of my last flights at the end of the day on Sunday were fantastic.

Here's my video, it's lengthy this time since I ended up getting so many flights but check it out. I think the most interesting flights are on the second day at 13:37

October 30

     The weather for this weekend looked great, but I decided to split my time between Climbing rock in Kentucky and flying the glider in Ohio so I only got 1 day this weekend. It was a real good day and John had a 6 tandem flights scheduled so a bunch of local pilots came out to get aero-tows too. Best flight was 3 hours or more and at one point there were 4 gliders working the same lift (another awesome sight for a beginner like me and also excellent motivation to keep the training sessions frequent). Some day I hope to add myself to the gaggle of gliders on a soaring day.

     My training flights were good. After looking at last weeks video and taking the advice of my instructor and a couple of other pilots my goal was to focus on only making small corrections in order to avoid the oscillations I was getting last time from making large corrections repeatedly. I also wanted to work on my approach and landing. I still tend to approach at near trim speed so if the conditions aren't just right I loose the ability to continue making corrections and sometimes land off balance or let myself get turned into or downwind slightly. I want to be able to pull in a little bit and "fly the glider into ground effect" as my instructor put it. Besides giving me more control, this will let me round off the approach down low and gradually loose speed in order to better time an aggressive flair for a slow and gentle landing.

     I had 4 flights in the morning and 2 in the evening. I felt significantly more comfortable on my first few flights and even had one real good landing. My first flight in the evening felt great but apparently the tow line wrapped around the axle of the scooter and resulted in a bad tangle which cut the evening training time short. I think I did make progress with my gentle corrections and straight flight, but I still didn't get consistent landings. I have a bad habit that is sometimes interfering with an otherwise decent landing. In snowboarding, all of the your control over speed comes from your feet and the angle at which you hold the snowboard with respect to the snow. An aggressive stop requires a large angle and means that you have to lean up hill quite a bit to achieve the high angle. So when I round out my glide a little low with my feet within reach of the ground I have the instinct to put my feet out in front of me and slow myself down by sliding over the grass (like a water skier). Besides being a little bit dangerous (I might end up twisting or jamming my ankle on the uneven ground or tufts of grass) it accomplishes the exact opposite of what I need to do in order to execute an aggressive flair and reduce my ground speed for a slow landing, i.e. move my center of mas away from the control bar and increasing the angle of attack of the glider. The one time I actively tried to avoid doing this water skier stop I forgot to put my hands up high on the control bad and wasn't able to make a good flair. So I set the glider down on the wheels and slid across the ground on my belly.

     I'm getting close to moving on to prone flying (that is, IF I can get my landing habits right) so John had me try on a few prone harnesses in the simulator in the hanger just to get a size estimate. I'm also about ready to take the Hang 1 written test. Progress is being made!

Here's is the video from day 4:

I think I've made progress controlling the glider and feel a little more confident on landings. Although I still have work to do!

October 22-23

    The forecast for this weekend looked great and John expected to get 2 good days of weather to train in. Since the training field is an hour and twenty minute drive I have to get up at 6:00 am in order to be there at the field ready to go at 8. But on Saturday morning, I didn't wake up until 8:00 am. Apparently I set my alarm for 6:00 pm instead of 6:00 am. Oh well, I got a slightly late start but it turns out I wasn't the only one running late.
     The first few flights of the day I took on the 220 Condor, the Wills Wing training glider I used on day 1. It's large and slow and responds slowly to pilot input which makes it perfect for beginners. My first few flights were really painful though. I used the same training harness I did on day 1, but this time it felt awful, the leg straps didn't fit right and there was a stiff seam right at my belt line that was pressing hard on my stomach when I hung in it. So I don't remember too much about the first flight except that it hurt a lot and I think I had a poor landing. However I did bring my Go Pro helmet camera with me so I did get the flight on camera (Check the video out at the bottom of the post or in the sidebar). I was able to make some small adjustments to the harness and eventually did get a few comfortable flights in. It may have just been the steady and gentle breeze but I had an easy time keeping the glider on a straight path. At noon, John had 2 tandem customers to take on flights and there were a number of other glider pilots here to take aero tows, so the beginners training session ended around noon and we watched the Dragonfly ultralight aircraft tow the hang gliders into the air.
     One of the experienced pilots there had a top of the line performance glider (Wills Wing T2C) and John talked with us beginners about the difference between a glider like that and our training gliders. Shape, drag reduction, handling characteristics, and more. It was very interesting. We also got a chance to help some other pilots cart launch for full length tows. When the winch is pulling a glider into the air with max tension on the line, the glider climbs amazingly fast. That must a ride.
     When we resumed training John gave me the task of manually releasing myself from the tow. I would have to make sure the glider was steady and flying straight before I did and maintain control afterwards. I would tow up to a certain height and pull the barrel release on my bridal then glide down to the ground and make a landing. I had a few poor landings where I either flared late or didn't get my feet running under me so I had to land on the wheels of the glider. On the other hand I also had a few that I felt were good, they weren't no step landings but I came in straight and steady and landed running on my feet and caught the glider on my shoulders. I think in all I had 6 flights on Saturday.

     On Sunday, I had a good early start and met Adam and Mike when I pulled up. The three of us started flying right away after getting harnesses and warming up. Again, I was flying the 220 Condor. The breeze was slightly stronger on Sunday than it was on Saturday but it was steady. My first flight was straight and comfortable and I even had a pretty good landing. The second flight was similar and John put targets out there for me to shoot for. On one of these spot landing attempts I was focusing on aiming and forgot to release, that meant that I overshot the landing targets by 25 feet or so but otherwise I flew directly over it. Also, since I was showing consistently straight flights and landing under control, John said I should start using the 170 Falcon. It's a smaller wing, so it flies faster but it's significantly more responsive and "behaves the way a glider should behave".
     The biggest difference I noticed on the Falcon was that the control bar is a slightly different shape and sits farther away from me. So it felt completely different. I also noticed that the small movements I made actually mattered in this glider. It turned sharper and needed more constant (or more precise) handling. After trying to land at trim speed and coming in slow and mushy, stumbling, and then nose bonking. John said that I should start working on intentionally speeding up as I approached the ground. Trim speed is only slightly faster than stall speed and isn't the right speed to be landing at. So if I pull in slightly and then "round out" by relaxing to trim only when I get to 2 feet off the ground, then fly parallel to the ground and let the glider slowly loose speed, I'll have much better control when landing. I think in the training glider I've been approaching the ground at a steady angle from 25 feet up, and then flaring when my feet are within reach of the ground. So the "rounding out" part is something important to work on.
     I think in total I had 7 tows on Sunday. But Sunday ended up being a short day, we only trained until 3:00pm!

Check out the video of this weekend:

October 15-16

This weekend was supposed to be my second training session but the sunny, calm, and clear weather we had last week apparently isn't the norm in Ohio so Saturday ended up being too windy to train. According to John, my instructor, the weather on Sunday looked promising for some new novice (H2) pilots to get a chance to do their first foot launch from the local ridge at Richmond Dales. I thought it would be cool to meet some of the experienced pilots and watch them fly so I went down too. Even with an early start, the wind was pretty gusty and wasn't blowing strait into the launch which would make a foot launch more difficult. One pilot did find a calm enough window to launch in and around noon he had a 15 minute flight on the ridge. It was my first time watching someone foot launch in person and he made it look easy. Although, I was later told he was one of the local legends and pretty much everything he did would look easy. While I didn't get to touch a hang glider today, I enjoyed seeing how the local pilots do their thing at the ridge and I did get to meet a number of them. I'm eager to get some solid consecutive training weekends in so that I can progress enough to join them for these ridge sessions.

October 9

     The school nearest me is Wings to Fly ltd which conducts training at a grass airfield about an hour and half away from Dayton. My first day of Training was Sunday, Oct. 9. There were other students already at the airfield when I arrived at 8:00am. One of whom was camping out between weekend training days. In the future I'll probably try to use both days during the weekend for training and maybe I'll start camping out too!
     After some paperwork and choosing a training harness John Alden, the instructor, immediately jumped in with a bunch of information for me in order to bring me up to speed. He talked about the gliders, how they work, and how they are controlled. There were 2 training hang gliders which are designed to be easiest for a beginner to use: The Wills Wing Condor 330 and the Condor 225 (330, and 225 square feet of surface are). Since that morning had essential zero wind, John had me use the 330 since its enormous surface area would be ideal for a beginner in zero wind. Some head wind is desirable since lift is dependent on the speed of the air over the wings and not the speed of the glider over the ground. When there is a head wind, I wont have to run as fast along the ground to get enough air speed to feel the glider lift up off my shoulders. But in this case, zero wind meant the larger glider would be better (since lift also depends on the size of the wing).
     The first exercise was just what I mentioned above, lifting the glider up and supporting it's weight on my shoulders and running along the ground. As I ran, the air moving over the wing lifted it up and off my shoulders.
     The next step in my training was just a more powerful version of the running-along-the-ground-exercise. This time instead of my legs generating the air speed needed to lift the glider wing, a winch generates the air speed necessary to lift the glider plus me by pulling a cable attached to the front of my harness. In this way John was able to pull me along at just the right speed to generate lift and keep me 5-10 feet off the ground. This gave me the chance to start learning to steer the glider left and right and speeding up and slowing down. And as I made progress each flight, the winch would pull harder and faster generating more lift and taking me higher in to the sky. By the end of the day I might have been 60 feet in the air and gliding a few hundred feet.
    These tow exercises introduced me to foot launching (to some degree), steering by properly shifting my center of mass, loosing speed and altitude by controlling the angle of attack of the glider, and also landing. My first few short and low tows I felt like I landed great. I stayed on my feet and caught the glider on my shoulders and set it down on the ground gently. But as the tows increased in height and length and I started moving faster I had to learn to loose all that speed before I landed. Sometimes I had to resort to landing on the wheels of the glider and sliding for some distance before coming to a stop.
     My unconscious reaction while flying was to grip the down-tubes tightly and pull them in close to my chest. This meant that I was almost always causing the glider to fly downward which means I'm gaining speed as I try to land. It was very difficult for me to get myself to relax in the air. The gliders are engineered to be stable in pitch and pretty much fly themselves. If I relaxed and let the glider fly with the angle of attack it wanted, I would slow down (or climb higher if the tow winch was still pulling on me). Instead I was pulling in on the control bar forcing the glider to fly faster and forcing John (using the winch) to pull on me harder in order to force me to gain altitude.
     There were three of us students working on these exercises and one other that was more advanced and was working on much longer solo flights at a higher altitude. For his launches, he would be set up on a cart in flight position and would be towed much faster along the ground so that he climbed hundreds of feet up. I can't wait until I get to that level, but I've got a lot to learn about controlling my flights and landings first.
     During lunch we watched the advanced student, the instructor, and also an experience pilot take full length tows. One was able to find enough lift in the somewhat turbulent air to get his flight to last for 10 minutes or so. It was the best flight of the day. Since us beginners weren't experienced enough to fly in the stronger wind conditions of midday we helped with the ground handling, setup, and launch of the other pilots just as they helped us setup and prepare for our low tows. There is plenty to learn about ground handling, launch procedures, and safe practices, so watching the experienced pilots was still a good use of time.
     I got 6 winch tows before lunch some of which were good straight flights, a few of them had good, soft, controlled landings too. After lunch it was down to just 1 other student and me. We took turns taking flights and must have gotten 8-10 flights before we had to close down at around 6:00 pm. It was a fantastic time. I've gotten a very small taste of the hang gliding experience I want. And I now have a clear direction to pursue it.
     I'm going to try to get back to the training field for at least 1 day each weekend in order to keep building my piloting skills and learn more about hang gliding.

Introduction

     While I do find my work interesting and really get immense satisfaction from the task of engineering solutions to complicated problems, and also plan on being an Engineer for life, I sort of think of work as a means to an end. There are many different things that I dream about doing and feel the only way I'll be able to do them all is to keep a good job that will give me the opportunities. I wish I was a Shaun White, or a Tony Hawk, or a Tiger Woods and was talented enough to pursue the one thing I loved above all others. But I feel I don't have the skill (or maybe the courage to try) to do that. Instead I decided I could use my interest in math and the sciences to enable me to pursue my favorite pastimes.
     Anyway, after recently starting this new job and leaving behind my friends and family and moving from the deserts of New Mexico to the humid continental zones of Ohio I decided to use some of my free time to pursue a new interest. Aviation. This makes sense since I am now living in Dayton, Ohio where the Wright brothers grew up and even developed many of the designs that eventually led to the first powered flight in North Carolina. But Aviation is often (and certainly was to me) associated with high costs and a lots of training. And this is for good reason. But there are lots of different forms of aviation and one in particular that looked like the best option for me: Hang gliding. Defined as foot launched personal powerless aviation, hang gliding is often described as the closest thing to flying like a bird. Since you are hanging in a strong harness beneath a flexible wing and every movement you make effects the flight of the glider you don't get the mechanical feeling of steering something through the sky like you would sitting in a cockpit, instead it’s as if you have wings attached to your back (Or so they say. I haven't experienced it quite yet).
     Although I've never written a blog before, I hope to keep this updated (mostly for personal reasons) while I pursue my ambitions to become a hang gliding pilot and describe how I went from dreamer on the ground to qualified pilot. I also have some long term goals that I plan on pursuing. I want to return home to New Mexico and see some of the world class soaring sites over the deserts that I grew up in. There's Dry Canyon in Alamogordo, Windy Point outside of Ruidoso, Sandia Crest in Albuquerque, and even a few places I've hiked, driven, and snowboarded through in Colorado. Eventually with the right training and development of my skills I hope to be qualified to fly at some of these difficult but beautiful sites. Based on my conversations with the instructor, these goals I've set for myself are likely to take a year or more if I'm able to fly regularly. If I can't fly regularly it's likely to take much longer. So this will be a test of my determination to accomplish something completely new to me.