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Hangola June 8-11, 2000

I'll post my report for Thursday, then Steve can tell us what it was like on Friday.

Pete Schumann and I went out Thursday, with lift forecast to 8000'! But someone forgot to tell the lift!

It was blowing in great, even strong for Dickey Ridge (normal seems to be 0 - 5 mph). But of course by the time we finished setting up, it started to die down, and a big high level cloud shaded the valley for 30 - 45 minutes.

Pete launched first, an on his first pass was well below launch. But he struggled up and spent most of his time 50' to 100' up. I didn't want to crowd him on the ridge, and he had another 3 low saves. Each time it started looking better and I thought about launching, he would come back down to, or below launch level.

Finally a good cycle came, and he got 800' over, and I got a couple hundred over. Then I slowly worked my way back to the LZ. Pete was only 100' above me on the way out, and being the nice guy that I am, I pointed out some birds at my altitude to the north. Which he went to check out and got back up over launch! Darn.

I got 15 minutes and 2 deer ticks. Pete got 2 hours of very tense flying and 2 dog ticks.

-Mike Balk

I trust that someone more ambitious than I will attempt a summary. The Saturday highlights for me began with getting sick from the heat while setting up my glider. A few minutes in the shower stopped things from spinning. Then there was thermaling with Dale and Steve T -- when one of us lost it some else promptly found it; we had a system. That thermal was not escaping. And did I mention my massive 17.3 mile XC?. More important than the miles was the hour and 40 up in the air conditioning. I was not coming down if I could help it. (Steve Crichton took the theory to extremes by taking 2 and 1/2 hours to go 13 miles. I think he must have fallen asleep or gotten lost or something. Mike C and Fred landed in the same general vicinity that I did. Doug Rogers blew us all away by making it all the way to the water). And there was Good Pig and beer and company in the evening. Sunday I provided some entertainment by trying to fly the Stealth 3. Despite being told by GW to keep the corrections small I made a big muscle memory induced lunge when a wing came up. I knew instantly that it was too much. Sure is tough to get it back once it's gone. Eventually got it under control but they coulda sold tickets. Called it a day early in hopes of beating the traffic across the bridge. Joe Gregor was still up and Tom Mcg was gone.
Great time! Do it again! Cooler!

Manquin, VA - Almost a dozen hang pilots spent their Saturday afternoon scratching and sniffing at the flight park in search of thermal relief from summer/s early sizzle. Mellow flight conditions prevailed throughout the day with a light, poofy wind straight down the main runway and a light southerly flow aloft.

About 12 o/clock, the field temperature had reached 86 degrees. Terry took two truck tows to test the air for thermals, however since the day/s forecast trigger temperature was 90 degrees, he found himself back on the ground in short order.

Rawling had also just returned to the LZ and reported decent thermal activity and circling birds over the brown wheat stubble to the right of the reservoir. Once the LZ had warmed to 90 degrees, I was first in line to aerotow. Roland gave me the usual gentle tug through an unusually thick haze. Upwind of the field and off tow at 2800', I spied a small, yet rather broad kettle of TVs circling up about a half mile away, right where Rawling had observed them. I spent about 500' getting to the birds and was handsomely rewarded with some measly 100'/" lift that I managed to work up to about 2800' before it petered out. The drift had taken me about a mile downwind so I vectored a return path to LZ where I again found the TVs doing what TVs do - circling in lift. This thermal took me to 3200' before the fat lady sang my swan song, calling me back to the LZ after 45 minutes.

The latest numerical weather forecast data had suggested the five mile per hour surface wind would increase to 10 -15 mph about 3 p.m., so I had planned to fly early and get home early for a change. What I hadn/t planned was seeing crispy cumulus form, so I quickly devised another plan. The wind had increased in speed, as advertised, and I was back on the end of the tow rope shortly after 3 p.m. Roland tried to drop me off under a nearby cloud, but it completely evaporated the moment we approached. I shot a glance at my instrument deck and saw its readout: 'Game Over - Return to LZ Immediately.'

The time was now about 3:30 p.m. and the visibility had dramatically improved from a murky four miles during the first flight to about 20 miles, which was indicative of stronger mixing from better thermals. Hard, yet low topped cumuli were becoming more plentiful, which conspired to put the kabosch on my earlier plans to make it home in time for dinner. Since no one else was in the launch queue, the wait for the tug was customarily short. Roland returned me to the scene of my earlier soaring flight, but by now the wind aloft had shifted from the SSE to the SSW. I tooled around to the downwind side of the LZ where I spied a narrow spot along the tree line that was vigorously swaying and shaking. After briefly flying a tight cloverleaf search pattern downwind from the tree line, my one wing was slapped by the outer edge of a fat 300'/" thermal that took me promptly from 1000' to 4000' where the cool, 70 degree temperature was absolutely luscious. The LZ was producing a continuous thermal plume which I rode back to 4000' twice more during my one hour flight. I landed after serenading everyone with several choruses of my aerial rendition of 'Mr. Lonely (http://www.tpointts.force9.co.uk/mbox/mb04t28.htm) ', a lilting tune made popular in 1964 by Mr. Bobby Vinton'

Pilots du Deltaplane: Terry, Billy, Jim (CHGA), Steve, Joe, Ray, Roland, a couple Blue Sky scooter-tow students, and a couple others.

Jim Keller

Had a nice day at Ridgely Sunday. Did a number of tows to get used to the Litespeed. Took two early mornings sleds, one hour flight, another sled. At that point I was ready to go home, but out of no where around 3:00, a cummie formed, then another and another. Needless to say, I went back for one more flight that lasted about an hour with 19 miles XC in the direction of Bowers Beach topping out at 4,000' agl.

Tom

Congratulations to Highland Aerosports for a fantastic fly-in! If only they could have had some influence over the heat and humidity :-(

I foolishly encouraged my friends from Cleveland, Laura and Claudia, to join Mark and I for the weekend since they'd been wanting to see me fly. I figured it would be less intense than the mountains. After Judy flew my Ultrasport and encouraged me to fly it rather than my Pulse first since there was no difference - I had two tows on the UltraSport on Saturday. Enjoyed both and was very happy with my US on tow. Camped out overnight and enjoyed the comrarderie and bonfire (huge!) It started heating up as soon as the sun was up Sunday so I decided to take one early tow and call it a day. Had a great tow but unfortunately a really crappy landing (I think my second worst) when I got hit by a gust while transitioning and cartwheeled on the asphalt at the end of the runway. Road-rash on me and my glider (ouch) - but other than that okay. Mark didn't tow but drove retrieve Saturday. Headed out by 11:30 Sunday - looks like I missed the best of the flying. Congratulations to the XC'ers! Claudia and Laura enjoyed talking with everyone over the weekend and even managed to choke out that they "had a good time and we're glad we came" :-) The gang at Ridgely did a great job of everything running smoothly - congratulations!

Sheila

Thanks for coming out this past weekend. We hope everyone had a good time. Here are the results of the comp.

XC:
1st place Doug Rogers 27 miles
2nd place Rick Niehaus 21.5 miles
3rd place Mike Chevalier 20 miles

Spot landing
1st Rick Niehaus
2nd Christy Huddle
3rd Danny Brotto

Duration
1st Steve Krichten
2nd Greg DeWolf
3rd John Middleton

Bomb drop
1st Fred Permenter
2nd Danny Brotto
3rd Rick Niehaus

Duration Novice Div
1st Jim Gatewood
2nd Rolf Goedhart

Spot Landing Novice
1st Place Ellis Kim

Thanks again for coming out.
Highland

Hi all,

Last Sat I drove to Hyner, PA (my first ever visit to this famous site) to hook up with Dennis and Claire Pagen and others to fly and shoot some photos for part of a project i am working on for National Geographic. Sat was hot and hazy but blowing in strong on launch and we all eventually launched late as it backed off quick. Dennis and I did the best getting 700ft or so over and flying around for 45 minutes working light lift and shooting photos. On launch I had shown Dennis a new fancy fullface helmet I recently bought from GW. It fits great but to my dismay I had realized that it sticks out such that I can't see my parchute handles or my chest mounted camera pocket. I've flown with it a few times and it really bugged me not being able to see the chute handles and/or being able to notice if the chute pins are properly in place. I've had them nearly come out a number of times over the years. So, I decided to fly with my old Uvex helmet which is fine but a little loose. Saturdays flight went fine as I chased Dennis around till we had both lost it and we landed within seconds of one another. This was my first flight at Hyner.

Sunday morn was hot and dead in the field and the forecast was 10-15 from the west with chance of t-storms in the afternoon. The 3 of us, Tom ? and Darl? both locals had things to do that aft so we headed up for earlyish flights. I wanted to be on the ground by noon, way ahead of any t-storm development. Blowing fairly straight in 5-10 with higher gusts in thermals, cummies starting to pop in the very hazy sky. I launched first at 10:30am and went up right away in slightly bumpy air but totally normal flying conditions. I got to 800-900 over out front in wide, moderately bumpy weak thermals, never more than 200ft/min. I will stress that the conditions were extremely normal to my flying experiences, nothing I havn't flown in a hundred times. A little bumpy here and there but nothing like a booming day. And not even very strong lift. I was waiting for the next guy to launch and just flying around, not really coring anything when I did one little over the falls into a short dive and pullout like we've all done before. I actually kind of enjoy them when they're not too abrupt. About 5 minutes later I hit a little pop and then BAM! went over the falls like never before and right on over headfirst into a series of very violent forward tumbles!

It happened VERY fast. I've never tumbled before and it took a second or two for my brain to compute what was happening. I lost the bar and was thrown around and then managed to grab the left corner of the bar and tried to pull in hoping that maybe it might right itself. I've heard of gliders tumbling and then flying out of the tumbles so I was hoping maybe....but no such luck. Mid way through the third forward loop the glider went into a 45 degree angle spin. I didn't know that my left leading edge had snapped and I was still yanking on wires for a couple of revolutions and watching sky/ground/sky/ground etc.. and then I grabbed and threw my chute. My left arm was wrapped up in wires and basically pinned but thankfully my right arm was free and i had a good look at open air to throw at. In what seemed like less than 2 seconds I was looking up at a fully inflated canopy - an incredible sight. I wrestled with getting my arm and hand out of the wires and tried to work the glider a bit more underneath me as we spun a few more times and then crashed into the trees, well below and off to the left of launch. I ended up hanging 20 feet off the ground, just dangling there. I knew i'd survive that last 20 feet but still didn't want to faceplant it and I couldn't get out of my harness at all. I swung over towards the nearest strong branch (one holding the glider was dead) and as I grabbed the tree the whole mess came down, me holding onto the trunk as I slid down fast, cutting up my arms even more.

On the ground, alive, in one piece - I was very happy. I couldn't unhook as the parachute bridle was stretched from a tree and I couldn't open the biner. And, my chest zipper was jammed so it took a while to get out of the harness. I sat and stared at the mess for a while, went and got my camera (in fine shape) and took some carnage photos when I heard the other pilots yelling my name. We eventually got the chute out of the tree, packed the whole mess up and hiked out, dodging rattlesnakes along the way. We caught a raft of shit from a pot bellied rescue squad guy who was pissed because he had to hike through the woods looking for us and then I got grilled by the park service boss who was convinced that there had to be a problem and that I was not following proper procedure (?). I repeated over and over that I had signed the Hyner waiver, was a USHGA member (card in hand), advanced rated pilot, etc... I had just about got killed, bad wire burns and cuts all over my arm and feeling like I had just been in a car crash and they were giving me very hard time. Go figure. The local ranger was much cooler and got his boss settled down as well as did Will ?, local pilot and Hyner club VP I'm bummed that I totally destroyed my 610F,a glider I liked very much and that, because it was a Sensor, will take a long time to replace if you know what I mean. It still had the original downtubes. It was also the first time I've ever been in the trees but I'd like to not really consider that a tree landing....

The moral? Not much to learn sad to say. The conditions were totally OK, nothing I would ever think twice about flying in. The Hyner valley is very small and the upwind ridges quite close so I would imagine the potential for pockets of rotary air? Who knows. They've been flying there for 25 years but there has also been a previous tumble (Danny Brotto, i think). I've certainly never been hit like this at High Rock. I will purchase a good hook knife of some sort as I would have drowned if I'd landed in the river - I could not get unhooked or out of my harness. Wearing a jacket or longsleeves would have saved me some serious cuts to my arm. And I'll probably never wear the groovy, expensive helmet that doesn't let me see my chute handles. I must say too that I hadn't repacked my chute in a LONG time and even though it opened beautifully I will try to be better about repacks. I never, ever thought I'd need to use my parachute.

Sorry to be so long in telling this story but I'm just glad to be here and able to tell it.

regards,
SKIP BROWN

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This page last updated June 23, 2000