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Hangola June 28-July 1, 2001

What a great day I had here. Soared the thermals in the LZ with my sailplane while Eddie and Kurt soared the rock for about an hour (too light for my huge ***). Then Jon and Tim Wisner from Thurmont show up towing a trailer with a "Buckeye" powered parachute (paraplane). Cool! Ran home for the camera and snapped some great shots of the take-off. Then Jon said "wanaride?" You couldn't have slapped the grin off my face. As Kurt and Natalie looked on, Jon and I were airborn in less than half the fields' length, and climbed up over the Rock to dazzle the numerous spectators. After a few soaring? passes we decended to buzz my house. We circled only about 100 feet above as I snapped a few photos of my wife Jeanne waving back when she realized that that was her crazy husband on the back of that thing. We continued, low-n-slow, over the orchards when I spotted a deer running through the orchards at full speed. We chased him as he darted between the rows of trees, over Mong road, then through another orchard. We left him behind when we spotted a red tail and followed him from above as he flew through the woods and popped out the other side. Then a Kolb Mark IV ultralight flew toward us and I snapped a great picture with the orange sun behind it. Jon then shot an approach through the south gap and did a low fly-by before coming around again for a south approach and a nice landing.

editor's note: a powered parachute is not the same animal as a powered paraglider

Playing hookey again.
1 hr 55 min in mostly light thermals that were closely spaced. Kicked myself later for not going downwind after I got the first decent thermal because from then on for about 1.5 hrs the streets were well established and I had no trouble flying upwind (making little progress in terms of milage) without losing altitude, no trouble jumping streets. Got a nice surprise when I hit 5067 ft and got my face washed quite nicely. No other thermal got me above 4000. I need to try flying with my mouth closed. I emptied the camelback and was parched when I came down. I'll fill the thing more next time.

Today's forecast looks a little better than yesterday's in terms of lift. Light again but soaring should start earlier, by about noon, and there should be more in the way of clouds. Winds will shift from NE to E and then SE. This might be my chance to fly home from Ridgely. I can feel the hang-flu coming back this morning.

PS. Glad I looked before I posted. CAPE is approaching 2000 with LI -3, -4 in central DelMarva at 4:00. Means there's starting to be a chance of T-storms.

Hanglider Pilots would have loved the steady 15+ winds but it was a bit strong for PG Pilots until about 5:30pm. I got a chance to record digital video of my entire flight and I will post a few pictures shortly showing features of the sight for anyone who is interested. Jeff Shriner

I've been teaching a gifted and talented summer camp down at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore about 15 minutes from Salisbury (so you see Cragin, I WAS out of the town of Salisbury! (Louis, told you wrong...which dorm was yours?)). Long running camp with great traditions, and wonderful kids; though being teenagers they can't escape being knuckleheads no matter how bright they are, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm teaching a course called "All the World's a Physics Toy". For years they've been building and analyzing rockets for the first week. I changed that pretty quick, and we built gliders out of balsa and saran wrap, and went pretty deeply into Newtonian Mechanics and the principles of flight. I used both the vector approach and the pressure approach. You can get SO MUCH more quick and dirty information out of the vector deflection idea, though you have to backtrack and talk about pressure changes to understand why it all works.

We talked about stability and the use of the tail - I think I've come up with a more general rule for designing the angle into the horizontal stabilizer than you'll find in any book...at least any books I've read. I'll spare the listserver the details. It was of course too hard to design tip twist into a balsa design, which is why we built a front airfoil and a rear tail with vertical and horizontal stabilizers instead of a true hang glider wing. I mandated that the angles of attack of the wing and tail had to be adjustable so they could optimize them. Damned if some of those gliders didn't actually fly! One kid built this amazingly beautiful wing with adhedral and sweepback, covered with saran wrap so you could see all the internal ribbing. It flew the best. Mine did okay, but the tail kept getting knocked off. The funniest was a teacher who was helping out: he built something huge shich immediately crashed - then picked it up, turned it on it's side and shook out the broken pieces. Then he threw it again and shook out another pile of pieces...this went on most of the day.

Of course we had to finish the week with a visit to Ridgely. When the kids we dropped off at the beginning of the week with their parents we had a table set up with waivers for the parents to sign. I thought the kids would be all excited about it, yanking on their parents arms; while the parents would take one look at the waiver and the cost, shudder and back away. I couldn't have been more wrong.

The parent's eyes would light up at the mention of a hang gliding ride, haul out their checkbook and skip right through the waiver cheerfully signing away all rights to their kid's physical integrity, while most of the kids would kind of back away at our glwing descriptions of flight saying "well...i don't know...sounds kinda scary...". You gotta remember this is a geek camp. Many agreed under parental pressure to let us have the check and the waiver under the condition that they could back out later.

Went to Ridgely yesterday and they all flew and had a great time. They'd come staggering off they flight saying "Awesome!". Just took some prompting.

Brian.

First off, the plan. The plan was to fly Ridgely and then go windsurfing. The Ridgely part worked fine. Hooked into the Target and had a nice 35 min flt. (BTW hooking into a glider that is already set up is an extremely civilised way to go) Then hightailed it back to the bay where I was expecting it to be blowing nicely. Only it wasn't. Maybe 10 -12. Dogged around a bunch falling off everytime I tried to turn and then considered calling it a day. But there was clearly something in the works windwise. A huge cell was exploding over the bay. Hmmm. "...winds locally higher in thunderstorms". I'm thinking I may just get this sucker up today after all. Looking meaner and meaner and better and better. Then I see the front approaching and I begin to have some second thoughts. "Damn -- that looks really serious." So I'm trying to get back to shore without much success -- still blowing only 10. Then the front caught me and the wind went from 10 to at least 50 in the space of a few seconds. The board and rig just blew away. Looked like it was 10 feet in the air at one point. Had to swim almost all the way back before I caught up with it. Problems weren't over yet. My board blew off my car when I was trying to load it and went skipping across the parking lot. Dings and Dings And I lost a bunch of scabbards and bags and stuff.

Oh well. Still alive.

Well, the weather sort of cooperated with a desire to fly this weekend. Friday was forecast as very light SW, so I left work early to run over to Ridgely, Maryland, in hopes of beginner conditions. I arrived about 4:00 to find it totally overcast with just a trickle of wind. Not good for experienced pilots, but exactly what i needed for initial aerotow solos on my Pulse. Sunny flew it three times to get the tow point set properly on the keel, and then I got in four tows in light, smooth conditions. The pulse tows very easily, with less bar pressure than I had expected, and mindless tracking behind the tug.

Also on hand were Lisa, practicing her flights in the second tug, and Allison, who flies in from St. Louis for lessons. Allison was flying the Target. Four weeks ago I met the couple from Pittsburgh, and now Allison from St. Louis. Highland Aerosports is fast becoming a national training center! Sunny and Chad were also flying tandems with Erika and Kristin. Bruce and Barb Satatis had arrived for the weekend, but he was not bothering to set up to fly, yet.

Saturday morning the forecast remained SW 5-10 mph, so the mountains did not beckon me. I was back at Ridgely by 11:30. About 15 gliders eventually set up. The sky had plenty of cummies and blue open areas, so we were hoping for a bit more thermal activity than the evening before. Fred and Raean Permenter had their La Mouette gliders set up, and Bruce S had finished rigging his Extassy rigid wing. John Muldoon was on hand and John Middleton arrived shortly after I did. Steve Kinsley drove up with wind surfer and no glider on his car; he explained that plan in his separate report. A pilot whose name I did not get had set up a brand new German topless, a Bautek Twister. Nice looking glider.

The day was beautiful, and there were several families out with pilots, with kids and dogs running around. The dogs chased each other through the water at intervals to cool off. Some group was having a cookout over by the office, too. Not sure if it was the soaring club or the RC modelers. The sailplanes were active, with several launches using their little yellow cropduster-like tug interspersed with the hang glider launches.

It was such a light day that Sunny and Chad were giving tandem lessons as early as noon. Steve K got in a couple of flights on the Target. Fred and Raean both flew but did not find enough air to go XC. Ric was also there, flying along with Fred. John Muldoon flew a couple of times, as did John Middleton. Bruce and Steve were both in the air but down below 1000 feet when I towed up for my first flight at 12:50. I actually found several small thermals over the trees and swamps, going between 1000 and 1450 feet three times, and eking out a 25 minute flight. I guess we can report that Muldoon landed out - he struggled scratching for thermals over the brown field off the back of the runway and ended up landing by the house. I watched that from my mini-thermal perch over the swamps. He just walked the glider back up the drive.

Allison was flying again mid-afternoon, and Ed Reno arrived and set up, too. With a very visible storm front approaching from the west, I flew once more at about 3 to get more time in before the overcast got to us. I found no lift at all on that second flight for only 15 minutes. John Muldoon had a similar report. Bruce, John M, and I all broke down shortly after 3:00 to avoid the rush in the rain. All through the time from 12:30 to 3:30 or 4 there were tandem lesson flights going on among the solos. By the time I left there had been no cross country excursions, and no notably long flights. It was a pretty light day. Not sure if anyone did better after 4:00.

With my six solos in two days, I finished up my aerotow rating. Now I have three launch options available, with truck, ultralight tow, and running off the mountains. Now, if I can just learn to stay in the air once I am up there. My thanks to Sunny and Chad for making it so easy to get that new rating.

I left the airpark at about 4:00, and in hindsight may have given up on the sky a bit early. The front that had concerned me (as well as Bruce) at 2:30 to 3:00 went overhead without incident.

Heading back to DC Saturday afternoon I found the huge storms as I approached the Beltway about 5:30. I had been right that rain was in-bound, just not about the timing.

Sunday had too much thunderstorm in the afternoon forecast for my taste, so I hid at home for a rest day with Kay and Becky. We only lost power briefly two times. Here's hoping for a flyable 4th!

Cragin S.

Gary Smith, Bruce Engen and I left at midnight last Wednesday in Bruce's truck (a very nice one) on a quick flying trip West. We drove straight through to southern Utah, arriving there early on Friday.

On the way, we took on bad diesel fuel in Dillon, CO and replaced the fuel filter in Grand Junction. We made a brief detour to Arches National Park, did the tourist thing and took a dip in the CO river. Decided not to try Dead Horse point and headed to Hurricane, Utah for an evening flight from the "Molly's Nipple" launch. This site is awesome - the ridge extends all the way to the Grand Canyon and provides spectacular views (e.g. Zion national Park). It was a typical evening glass-off.

On Saturday (Day 3) we headed for my home town, Vegas and a SW-facing site named Tabletop, where I handed over 'Big Mama', the GTR 210 to a old friend named Bill Floyd. With winds were 15-30 at launch, Bruce and Gary weren't too keen on flying, so we threw Bill off for a quick flight (1800 over, :35), then drove to a smaller ridge at Jean, Nevada for some more glassy evening ridge soaring. We all top landed. I kinda miss being able to do that.

Sunday (Day 4 - today) - Bill brought over a new Zagi 400 he had recently built for me and I practiced flying it, so badly that I don't get to do that again until (minor) repairs are completed. Afterward, we went back to Jean where everyone flew again. Air temperatures were somewhere around 115, Camelback water temps were about 90. Sadly, conditions were somewhat marginal. Gary wing-mounted his digital video camera and managed to get a decent extended flight. Bruce fought valiantly, but was skunked by a lull. Bill and I managed to squeek for awhile until it went magic, stayed up till sunset,top landed and drove retrieve.

Well, this place is a bit too hot for my comrades, so we are headed to the cooler air and water of Lake Tahoe tommorrow, then Lakeview, OR.

So far, three flying days out of four.

I'll post more at the next available telephone jack in Lakeview

'Spark

Topic: scheduled paragliding lesson at Morningside Flight Park, New Hampshire

We were taking a trip to Maine, and scheduled a paragliding lesson for Karen en route. Ok, it's not quite on the way, but it's the only game in town.

After calling to confirm the lesson on Saturday morning before we left (to see if we should come up - to confirm scheduling plus weather prognosis), we battled rain and traffic many hours of delays through NY.

After a night in a cheap hotel we arrived at the crack of dawn at Morningside only to discover that the lesson had been cancelled and they hadn't bothered to tell us.

Recommendation: avoid Morningside.

Matthew (drinking lots of wine in Maine (with good dear friends)).

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This page last updated July 5, 2001