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.