My path to Pilot

This weekend is the last before the Team Challenge starts at Hensons Gap. I wanted to get some landing practice in and take my Hang 3 written test, which would be the last requirement to earn the certification. This would be necessary to attend the Team Challenge as a competitor and not just a free flyer. The landing practice went great, and on each tow I tried pretty hard to find a bit of lift to get up, but I never managed it. Larry W. and Dan both got flights longer than 20 minutes. Larry's might have been closer to an hour, but it could have been one of those days where you needed both precise flying and some good luck to launch in time to catch a rare thermal that was well defined and workable below 600 feet. On my 4th tow I had a failure of the dangle angle limiter on my harness. This is the cord that attaches between the carabiner at the hang point and the harness right at the back of the neck. The point is to keep the harness from tipping head down past the prone positi...

This post is quite late, but I have recently gotten the inspiration to re-continue this effort. So I'll try to catch up on what I've done so far this year. Date: March 2013 I didn't fly at all in the winter. After the season ended in November the winter began setting in and no training took place. I was happy doing lots of other things in the cold weather. But once March hit and things began warming up, I did get back out for some scooter towing. In fact that first day was surprisingly good! I had 5 tows that day, the first 4 of which were good landing practice and short flights. I quickly realized the effect that even four months can have on your landing abilities. I had one real bad landing that was a belly landing and a sudden whack that resulted in a slightly sprained elbow. Despite that, I quickly gained some confidence back and on the 5th flight, I found some nicely workable lift and ended up soaring for over an hour! I climbed in a few separate thermals and enjoy...