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Hangola December 21-25, 2001

To those of you who thought that you might have missed something by not being at WS today.... you didn't!

Some pilots flew in the strong and sometimes turbulant conditions. A couple mighta even enjoyed it. The rest of us.. watched. It was cold.

Terry

Woodstock Friday was cold and breezy. .Set up at 1 and watched the wind cycle up and down with highs being 13 to 19 mph. There were good launch cycles that Bruce Engen and Ed Reno took advantage of but it looked turbulent. Waited until 4 while Gary Smith and Terry decided to bag it for the day. The wind appeared to be backing off some so decided to launch.

The air was turbulent and strong once I got to a thousand over. I decided to land because I was having trouble penetrating with my Formula. I thought for a while that I would have to climb up and go over the back. Made it to the LZ and landed in some rough air. Landing was ok. Terry and Gary made the best decision to not fly. It was not fun. Too much work for and old geezer.

Saturday at Manquin was a beautiful with many people flying. Not many stayed up long. Chris Chaffee had one of the longer flights at 45 min. I finished my aerotow checkout with some flights on my formula. Carma from Woodstock was able to get her second round of truck tows.

Joe

Saturday I got two soaring flights in the sailplane at Morgantown. There were workable thermals. The second flight was my FAA check ride to get my private pilot glider rating and I had to leave the thermal to do a spot landing since the examiner had other things to do that day. It is actually quite comfortable under canopy this time of year although not so much fun in July.

Wind was close to 360 @ 10-15 at 3000 feet, kind of light on the ground. Now that I have my rating I'll be glad to take anyone who wants to check out sailplanes for a ride. There may or may not be a lot of days until spring though depending on the weather.

Happy Holidays and Happy Flying.

Dennis Monteiro

Keith and I showed up at Sac at about 12:30PM . After we set up we went to see the Gorries, however they decided to do other chores as wind died almost completely. Anyway, Keith and I had two perfect sleds in smooth air. First time we landed in our main LZ, and second in one further left. That was my first time landing there(No step landing).My Falcon reached that LZ without any problem, flying a bit faster than trim. In summary, good practice with good comopany. See you in the air!

Marry Christmas and best of everything to you and you wife from Lenko

Volo ergo sum!

Well, it never looked anything like bulletproof, but not having flown for a month I had to give it a try. Launched into STFI 8 - 12, made passes along the ridge finding very weak thermals and inconsistent ridge lift. At least the air was smooth. Never got more than 200' over during the 15-20 minutes I was up there.

The wind shut down and I headed out for my first ever landing at the horse farm. I can see why people don't like to land there. Getting my glider out of the field, while simultaneously trying to stop the horses (a) eating my glider (b) dashing to freedom, was quite an epic, needing Judy and Lenko's help.

No-one else showed up. Lenko didn't fly because of his single surface limitation.

Bill hey-a-flight-is-a-flight Buffam

Talked to Dan early; he was not sure he wanted to go out to fly. Convinced him it was worth trying.

We met at Toms Brook truckstop, ran into Tom McGowan and Pete Schumann, and arranged a mass car drop in the LZ. Thanks, Tom, for getting all of us to the top/ NICE truck.

Four of us set up. Mike Chevalier arrived just before Tom launched. Tom, reported 70 degrees cross and rowdy - be wary of leaving the slot. Good advice, because the slot was looking very nice, good direction with about 10 mph. Pete had a clean launch in the (apparent) nice slot and was immediately pushed to the right as he left the slot, just as Tom had suggested. Pete did not appear to have any real problem with it. Dan had second thoughts about flying. Dan had third thoughts about flying. But it still looked nice in the slot and in the LZ. I told him it didn't look bad. Dan was convinced to launch. While Mike C and I waited with Dan on launch, Gary Smith arrived. Dan waited for some wind - it had dropped to about 3 mph. Finally had a nice cycle and Dan was off and into the sky. Wuffos who had come up were amazed and entertained and declared us crazy.

As I was suiting up, Christy Huddle and Rich arrived, sans gliders. Christy wondered aloud if she should have brought her glider. I launched at 2:00. Lots of rowdy. Nose over a few times. Pretty cold. was below launch, got back up to launch twice in up and down. stayed out front because I didn't like being close to the ridge in such messy air. Dan was getting above launch at the ridge. Finally I lost the bumpy air, at least I was getting more down than up. Headed out to the LZ. Cross from the south, so I came in on a short right hand DBF approach. Safe landing, but late flared and bump down to knees in the cross-wind landing. 13 minutes! Short flight of the day!

Mike C was complaining of cold, and cows in the field. But then he got warmed up in a thermal coming from a trash fire and went back up high.

I packed out before Gary launched or anyone else landed, so they will have to tell their stories. Glad I flew, but not the best flight I have had this year. With the pending drop in temperatures this week by another 10 degrees, it may have been my last flight of the year.

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Safe Flying, all!

Cragin S.

p.s, on Saturday I got in four sleds off truck tow at Manquin. Only soaring was from AT pilots. Landing practice is still fun down there!

p.p.s. seems like sometimes it takes longer to write up the flight than it did to fly it. Oh, well, I flew, and that is what counts!

The rest of us got an early Christmas present. The flying was terrific if somewhat chilly. I had to make the best low save of my life shortly after launching to stay in the air. Climbed out in really ratty stuff from more than 400' below launch over that little bowl to the right, and immediately in front of the river. After that things got much simpler. We all flew until we got tired, cold or both.

Merry Christmas all!

Dan T.

A better day than expected today at the Pulpit. There were a few flush cycles but everyone got up at least for a while. Marc launched first and had the flight of the day with 2+ hours and 2100 over. Karen, Ellis, Brian VH and Mike C followed. I had to wait to the end of the day because I was playing Observer-man. Paul Tjaden, recent Aerotow Hang 2, just got his foot-launch sign off from Richard. I never thought an AT pilot who started with towing would ever make it to the mountains. I actaully bet Brian VH that it would never happen. But Brian wanted to set a time limit for the bet. So we agreed on 2 years. Well, I won the bet because it's been 2.5 years since we made the bet. But I still never thought it would happen and Paul proved me wrong. I threw him off the new ramp at 3:30 and he soared for almost 40 minutes. I followed and stayed up for a little under an hour-- 300 over max. Paul's wife, Lauren (also an AT H2), is only a few lessons away from acheiving her foot-launch rating. It will be quite the pleasure to throw her ass off the mountain.

Matthew (Merry X-mas, hoh hoh ho, of Karen and Matthew)

What a great day!

Although winds were very SW cross, I eventually figured out the trick to nabbing a thermal was to intercept the diaglonaling sucker out in front of the ridge before it got "turbulated" close in. I twice had cores at 500 fpm (my 30 sec averager-dampened Tangent rarely gets that, even in spring) and I couldn't believe the frequency and strength of the thermals despite below freezing temps and a hazy non-cum sky. Since I had agreed with Ellis to chase her over the back if she had the chance, I contented myself with a headwind task of flying to the south end of the ridge and back. What fun on my old Klassic :) Since I now live in a state that is 90 percent trees and there are no drive-up flying sites I really am impressed with how great region 9 really is--makes me laugh when I read the whiners.

Marc

While I didn't have a great flight to boast about, I did have a cool encounter with a raptor yesterday at the Pulpit.

Falcon or hawk, don't know. It was white and brown mottled, almost more white than brown and it passed me at pretty high speed and at such close distance,that I'm not even sure it cleared my wing! It might have passed under it. Gave me quite a start on the way to the LZ. It peeled off to the little field just to the right of the LZ and hit a boomer (I was briefly playing with the thought of heading over there, but if the boomer wasn't big enough for me, I would not have made it to any LZ - i'm such a wimp). It rocketed up a couple of hundred feet, then tucked its wings, dove down the gained altitude, only to level out and shoot up again. Show off. It did that a couple of times and then zoomed on to whatever xmas party it was late to.

Very cool.

On final, I provided some white confetti (snowflake?) effect, when I lost some stuff out of my harness - much to the amusement of Karen and Brian vH. After checking all my pockets and not missing anything and starting to wonder what sort of refreshments they'd been enjoying in the LZ, BvH went to investigate and found my -- radio manual.

Thanks Brian!

-- ellis

(please don't ask me, why i fly with my radio manual)

Hi Everybody,

Paul and I spent yesterday, Christmas, on a mountain in Pennsylvania, congregated around an outcropping of rock known as "The Pulpit". The Pulpit is so named because a crazy man used to perch atop it and preach, screaming his lunatic sermons at the sinners in the town below. I'm told he was a war veteran, his brain overloaded and finally popped by the sight of too many unattached arms and legs.

So maybe it was the trauma of the war, or maybe the preacher was just demented from the start, but my theory is that the fault belongs to the rock itself. Although the preacher has long since vanished, lunatics still gather by the rock. They're called hang gliders.

These strange folks strap wings to their bodies, then struggle up a stony path to eventually straddle a ramp that totters on the rock. The ramp has been plastered with signs warning of its danger. The signs say things like pilots and crew only, danger of falling a million feet to your death. But the hang gliders ignore the signs, and march forward, the way a teenage girl follows her tattooed man into the back seat of his car.

Finally (after being held in place by a crew foolish enough to traipse onto the rock with them), the hang gliders sprint a few steps into the wind and then fall into the air, dangling like awkward birds above the cliff. And now Paul (my demented husband) is a member of their odd little cult.

Paul and I learned hang gliding through the aerotow method at Ridgely Airport, flying tandem with instructors until our skills were sufficient to solo. I personally thought it was thrilling enough to have my glider and I dragged up half a mile into the sky behind an ultralight, but the minute the airport closed for the winter, Paul was in search of new adventures. He thought that leaping off mountains looked interesting, and decided we needed to learn to foot launch.

Now, I'm not entirely stupid. Wanting to live to see another spring, I protested that we needed to catch up on our work. Paul ignored me and focused his energy on finding a new instructor to hound. Richard Hayes was the victim of choice.

Richard met us at several training hills, steep enough to learn on, but soft enough to forgive mistakes. After a few weeks patient coaching, Paul and I had both progressed. My quads, clearly unfit, had mutated into painful lumps of meat that howled at me whenever I dared to move. I couldn't jog, much less sprint. Paul, however, had progressed differently. He was signed off to foot launch.

Our vastly more experienced pilot friends, Matthew Graham and Karen Carra, volunteered to "throw Paul off the mountain". Being "thrown off" is the expression hang gliders use to describe helping someone on their first mountain launch (I think "dumping the fool's ass off the cliff" is an even more descriptive term).

I was jealous of Paul and his rating, but that was before I saw The Pulpit. Just looking at the launch site made me feel like I'd gulped an entire box of Ex Lax. The height could make a falcon airsick.

When we first pulled up in our noisy diesel truck, sheltered from the wind and bathed by the sun, the rock didn't seem like such a radical place. However, as we wandered closer to the lip of the mountain, the air tumbled at us, faster and colder every step. By the time we'd crept up the wooden stairs to the ramp, I had goose bumps under my jeans and ski pants. The wind ripped tears from my eyes.

The ramp itself slanted down, pointed at the cliff below. It ended in nothing, a few feet from where it started; a path leading into the sky. A meager two by four had been nailed close to the top, and I planted myself firmly on the uphill side of it. The valley unfolded beneath us, cars as tiny as ants.

I gratefully rubbed my quads. "Boy, I wish I could jump off of this."

"Screw you." Paul shuddered.

After we set up Paul's glider, we learned how to "crew". Just getting the gliders and pilots to the top of the ramp could be challenging. The wings had to be guided around rocks and bushes. And once we reached the ramp, the gliders would try to fly, excited by the wind, wanting to leap before the prescribed time.

The first part of our job was to wrestle with the wires beneath the wings and hold them down until the pilot had recovered his or her breath enough to consider flying. Matt pointed out that I should stand up, though I considered sitting behind the board a safer position. The first one to fly was Marc.

When the wind looked promising, he hoisted his glider to shoulder level. While we had to be ready to grab and hold on if his glider got impatient, at this stage, our duties changed to merely touching the wires and reporting if they were pulling upward or not. Matt had me hold the keel since it wasn't so important.

When the balance seemed right, Marc yelled "clear". I don't know if he quit breathing for a second, but I sure did. The crew dropped the wires like they were electric and Marc ran ( literally) for his life. But before he reached the end of the ramp, the magic worked. His glider finally got its wish and climbed, graceful as a dancer, once freed from the earth and its chains of gravity.

Brian, Ellis, Mike and Karen all took their turns. They soared up and down the ridge until the sky tired of lifting them, or until their toes and fingers became numb from cold.

I drove the road to the landing zone and back numerous times, collecting pilots, crew, and gliders, whenever I wasn't huddled on the ramp. Ellis listened to the Chipmunks sing Christmas tunes between flights, while her dog Kia moped by a tree. Karen replaced a batten tie on her glider before leaping into space. Marc scarfed a few cookies, and I think Mike did, too. Matthew organized and put off his own flight. The wind had to be right for Paul.

But then the time rolled around, like time always does, and the waiting was over. Matt did a final check to make sure Paul's carabiner was locked and that all his loops and lines were correctly placed. I hobbled down to the truck as fast as my crippled legs would carry me to fetch Paul's sunglasses. I noticed when I handed them to him that he was whiter than the top of his glider.

Then Paul stood on the ramp, a giant condor of a bird, and I was grateful that my eyes were already watering so nobody would know how afraid I was. Paul had his color back, though, and was focused on the horizon. Brian and Matthew felt the wires and described their pull as neutral. Before I could insist the whole thing was a mistake, Paul said "clear", and took off. He trotted instead of galloped, but his glider knew what it needed to do and reached for the sky anyhow.

"That was the wussiest run I ever saw," Matt said.

"He got lucky." Ellis insisted.

But I felt fine. In fact, I felt finer than a cat at a mouse party. I knew Paul could fly and land, thanks to the Ridgely boys - that is, Chad Elchin and Sunny Venesky, who have endlessly drilled us. By the way, I can't imagine setting up an approach and flying at altitude without the experience they gave both Paul and I. Kind of allows those of us without sheer testosterone flowing through our veins to enjoy and learn the sport.

I relaxed and climbed into the truck to pick up crew for Ellis, so she could fly one more time. Paul was still busy soaring the ridge when I dragged Marc and Mike from their gliders to help her. Ellis was cool enough to take off perfectly again, and also cool enough to let me hold her upwind wire. Now, that girl has balls.

Paul soared for forty minutes before the sky spat him out like a fly in its gullet. When I kissed and congratulated him, I noticed he had torn a hole in the knee of his ski suit. He mumbled about the gradient and that he didn't pull in for enough speed before landing, but he grinned wider than a deer hunter with an eight point buck in view.

I still had a few more quick trips to make, though, to gather flags and f olks, and, more importantly, pour martinis. After we had packed up, indulged in cookies, and tried to ignite our livers with Beefeaters, Paul and I joined the other lunatics to search for a place that might serve us food.

Alas, the only heathens without turkey to eat and wine to sup seemed to be us. Everyone else in the nation seemed to be clustered around their own tables. Tuesdays, Fridays, and all the other restaurants were closed. A few poor saps remained at the Seven Eleven, but somehow, a Christmas "big bite" didn't sound appetizing. So we all drove home to our cans of Campbell's chicken noodle.

But I have to tell you, I'm a pathetic creature. Because I thought this Christmas was pretty great, turkey or not. At least this Christmas I knew my heart was beating, because I could feel it trying to rise through the skin in my chest, and I knew I was breathing, because my lungs hurt, and I knew that I had things I still wanted to go and do, because I was worried about how well I would perform. This Christmas, I felt more alive than a drop of water on an electric line. There are worse things.

Happy holidays.

Lauren Tjaden

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This page last updated Dec 28, 2001