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Hang gliding 1990 to 1993

This page continues from My return to hang gliding, 1989.

Hang gliders: Pacific Windcraft/Hiway Vision 1 and Airwave 166 Magic 4
Harness: Modified and strengthened 1970s stirrup harness
In-flight cameras: Olympus compact 35mm film camera with squeeze bulb and air line shutter release, and Ricoh FF-9 35mm compact film camera taking one exposure every minute automatically

From the the Canary Islands off the east coast of Africa, via flat-lands of Norfolk in England, then mainland Spain, this page ends with a hang gliding flight simulator rigged in a back garden on the south coast of England.

Return to Lanzarote

The black squiggly line attached to a side cable in these photos is a tube — an ‘air line’ — connecting a squeeze bulb on the control bar to the plunger connector on the camera. The camera, which was attached to an exposed tip strut, was one of several compact 35mm film cameras that I used with built-in motor drive (to advance the film automatically)

In this photo, my left hand is squeezing the air bulb to take the photo. Note the other hang glider just visible in front of my hang strap. (I created some of these images by re-photographing prints in my photo album. The odd triangles of solid colour in some corners are the surface I laid the print on and turned it to get the horizon level.)

Visualize realistic emergency situations and mentally chair-fly the proper reactions. For example, you will be a safer pilot if you have already thought about what you would do if you drifted behind launch in a thermal and were unable to penetrate back…

— Lt. Col. Mark Stucky USMC (call sign Forger) in Hang Gliding & Paragliding, September 2007

From the Mala car park, you carry your gear across this dam to the hill-top rigging and launch area.

I made my first ever cross-country flight in January or February 1991, from Mala on Lanzarote — one of the Canary islands. (A cross-country flight is one where you land significantly far away from where you took off.) It was the most severe winter in Britain for many years, so Lazarote was the right place to be.

M greatest fear — even more so than having the control bar fall apart on reaching a thousand feet — is that of being pulled up into a developing cumulonimbus and being taken to altitudes at which it is impossible to survive because of the cold and low partial pressure of oxygen. In addition, here on Lanzarote — which is only about thirty miles long by ten wide — even if you found your way out of such a monster you might end up well out to sea. Hang gliding is fun.

— From my article Escape from Disaster, My First Cross Country, BHPA magazine SkyWings, September 1991

I found myself behind the hill and also behind the lake with the dam, the wind having increased so that I felt that I might be caught in rotoring wind behind the hill if I flew forward. Unfortunately, down wind (behind me) where the ground rose, cloud had lowered to below the higher ground, blocking my escape route in that direction. I therefore started off to my right (south). As it turned out, I encountered rising air in the form of thermals frequently. By circling in them, I gained height until they dissipated at I guess about 1500 feet, whereupon I continued my cross-wind journey until I encountered the next thermal.

I steepened the turn to a full forty five degrees. I found it easier to keep a fairly constant pitch and use sideways shift to trim for airspeed — an untidy technique of varying bank angle but it would do for now. A reduction in the strength of the lift prompted me to widen the turn. My climb rate increased. I alternated between being in full sunlight and being in the rotating shadow of the translucent sail as I went round and round.

— From my article Escape from Disaster…

I flew between the extinct volcanoes in the photo because the road went that way. Landing near a road is safer than landing in the middle of nowhere because, if you crash land sub-optimally and are injured, someone is likely to see you. In addition, a nearby road makes for easier retrieval.

In the following photo I am circling to climb in a thermal — possibly one generated from the extinct volcano up wind, over which sits a cloud shadow, likely caused by a thermal it triggered.

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I was well past the cones and getting lower. I could tell that the wind was strong; the ground was sliding by underneath quickly so I slowed down to almost minimum sink speed in order to allow the wind maximum time to carry me along.

— From my article Escape from Disaster…

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I eventually landed in a stony field and, after de-rigging and hiding my wing, and after much walking, a British couple gave me a lift back to the hill.

Pilots throughout the world discovered the thrill of flying distances and landing out. They looked back at their footsteps in the field and realized they had arrived as if by magic in a new world far, far away.

–from Downwind, a True Hang Gliding Story by Larry Fleming, 1992

Some people consider the latter stage of cross-country flying part of the adventure, but I find it a burden, which is one reason I am reluctant to fly cross-country.

From sunny Lanzarote, I returned home to Frbruary in England and to frozen water pipes that I found to be broken when the ice melted.

See my related topics page Lejair (Tony and Rona Webb).

Wendling windcraft

In this photo, I am flying across the Norfolk flatlands by circling in a thermal on a cold winter’s day in 1991. It was my second ever cross-country flight and was part of a competition hosted by the Lejair hang gliding school (the same people who run the Lanzarote expeditions). With a forest of massive power lines ahead, I landed in a field beside a road near a village. After de-rigging, I walked the short distance to a public phone box, called in, and set out to return to my gear while wondering how many hours I would have to wait. I had not gone more than 100 metres down the street when the retrieve vehicle pulled up! That is the way to go cross-country flying!

Wendling field was used in World War II by the USAAF as a B-24 base. It is used here by the Lejair hang gliding school. Chief instructors Tony and Rona Webb pioneered the use of winch launch training in Britain after learning the technique from Donnell Hewitt of Texas, among others.

At upper right in the photo, another hang glider is being winched into the air. The high angle demonstrates the rocket-launch aspect of winching into the sky. The pilot of that glider, incidentally, is a US Air force F-4 Phantom pilot who was at that time stationed nearby.

I wrote a one-page article about my winch launch training in the BHPA magazine.

The Pacific Windcraft Vision that I flew at that time was designed by Frenchman Jean-Michel Bernasconi, with input from Tom Peghiny. For a bit more about Bernasconi, see the section titled Entrepreneur in Mid-day lightning in Vermont, my review of the documentary film 1978 Pico Peak International Hang Gliding Meet by Francis Freedland.

See also my related topics page about winch launch training experts Lejair (Tony and Rona Webb).

Canary wharf

The sail is rucked because the airfoil-shaped aluminium alloy battens have not been inserted.

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The need for a hang check is obvious from this photo I took of the rigging and launch area at Famara, Lanzarote, Spanish Canary Islands in early 1992. British paragliding instructor Dave Sigourney was killed near here a few years afterwards while assisting another pilot to launch.

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The cliffs in the distance rise to more than 2 000 ft and the sea meets their base. You cross a spur (visible in the photo) to reach the sea cliff. Flying close in, watch out for vertigo caused by your fly-on-the-wall proximity to the cliff face. As you climb in the lift, eventually rising to level with and then above the cliff top, the crashing of the waves against the rock far below is attenuated to an amorphous hiss. The white golf ball on the cliff-top at Haria is actually a gigantic radar installation and the white buildings of the town nestled in the terraced green valley are highlighted in sharp contrast towards sunset.

Beware of orographic cloud. I was not paying attention and, looking down and back to locate a German hang glider that had been flying near me, I saw instead of the cliff, a wall of grey. As I accelerated seawards, the cloud formed around me faster than I could fly. With the airflow tearing at my sleeves, I aimed at a hazy and shifting spot of blue ahead. Eventually I emerged from the front of the cloud and, well out over the sea, I steered along its front edge back towards the flat land several miles away to the south, my legs shaking in the harness. And there was the German glider, having also escaped from the cloud. I wondered if its pilot also had the shakes.

So then why did I start shaking almost uncontrollably when I got the beast flying straight and level, headed more or less to the west? The whole incident had happened so quickly, was so intense and disorienting, that I’d had no time to be afraid. Adrenaline was pumping and my reaction after the sudden return to normalcy of the steady, soothing hum of the Mustang engine in the relative security of my snug cockpit made everything let go at once. I remember being glad to be alone in my plane, without a witness to my aftershock.

— from Fighter Pilot, the Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds, 2010

If you land on the beach at Caleta, ignore the row of triangular flags. They are made of metal and welded in a fixed direction!

See my related topics page Lejair (Tony and Rona Webb).

Thermals close to the ground in wind

We were arguing the old saw about turning into wind causing you to climb. One new pilot, perhaps because he was older and more certain of his ground (and air) would not give in: “But if I closed my eyes, I’d be able to tell when I turn into wind because my climb rate definitely increases according to my vario.” (A variometer emits an audible succession of beeps when you are going up. See Variometer in Hang gliding 1976 part 1.)

Sometimes it takes a persistent counter revolutionary to persuade knowledgeable pilots to question their hard-won beliefs. In the end I had to admit that, even according to my own experiences that day — thermaling from a 2000 foot high ridge in semi desert conditions — he was right!

For the complete theory, see Thermals close to the ground in wind.

Return to mainland Spain

When we arrived at Ager, northern Spain, in the summer of 1993, the Dutch national championship competition was going on. (They go to places such as Spain because Holland is short of mountains.) There, I witnessed an emergency parachute deployment. Here is a snippet from my unpublished novel:

Clipped in and third in line, Neil shuffled his wing forwards two metres nearer the ramp. There was a shout. Those around him looked up at the sky, some shading their eyes with their hands, one woman using her other hand to cover her mouth. Restrained by his attachment to the hang glider he reached forward, grasped its fore-cables, and craned his neck to see upwards past the starboard leading edge. Two hang gliders, eight hundred feet above, were locked together and spinning. Something streamed from one, elongated, angled upwards, and blossomed into a parachute. The two gliders parted and the pilot of the other deployed his own parachute. The first glider swung radically, lifting, stalling, swinging down, un-stalling and lifting again, its crouching pilot standing in the control frame, all under parachute. The other glider stabilised in a slow upside-down spin, its pilot having fallen over the trailing edge. While firmly attached to the rig and parachute by his harness, he steadied himself by holding on to the downward-pointing king post. The distorted shape of the wing indicated that both leading edge tubes were broken. The first glider struck the ground on a rocky ledge a half mile away and the other touched down half a minute later out of sight behind a ridge. Two jeeps trailing dust sped towards the downed wings.

In reality, it was a single (accidental) parachute deployment, the description of the first glider being what I saw.

And:

In the distance, on the other side of the valley, white specks moved against a grey-forested mountainside topped with layers of rock strata at twenty degrees to the horizontal. Some of the specks circled and gained height while drifting in the same direction as Neil. Others inched slowly in the opposite direction, up-wind, sinking.

I am at far right in the preceding photo.

I continued to use my 1970s harness, although it was rebuilt in about 1990 to improve its strength and safety.

In 1993, I bought a pre-owned Airwave 166 Magic IV. (Magic? See my opinions about Hang glider names.) Not only was its performance superior to that of the Vision, its handling was also superior. However, at 80 lb, it was a heavy glider to carry.

Notice in this photo that all the wire assists are not actually touching my wires. I have full control of the glider, but their hands are ready to prevent a wayward gust of wind from taking that control away from me. On my command of Release! the side wire assists retract their arms while the guy on my front wires dives for the deck to one side of the concrete launch ramp.

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One day the wind became stronger as late afternoon became evening. Others de-rigged. However, the wind was smooth and not too strong for my old Airwave 166 Magic IV, so I launched and had a good flight. I was told afterwards that my launch inspired a round of applause from the small crowd that witnessed it!

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The air-tube system for taking photos in the air was clumsy and only semi-reliable, so I obtained a Ricoh FF-9 35mm compact camera with a wire-activated remote release. A switch on the control bar bridged two wires (which ran together in the same thin and unobtrusive cable) that closed the electric circuit that fired the camera. Alternatively — and most reliably of all — the Ricoh FF-9 could be set to take a photo every minute until the film ran out.

In the preceding photo, I am turning right, but the other three in the same thermal are circling to the left. Either I am wrong or they are.

By 1993 a new camp site had reduced the old town landing zone to half its 1989 size. See Mainland Spain in My return to hang gliding, 1989 for a photo taken before the new camp site was built.

Simulator

In 1993 I created a full flight simulator rig. See under Simulator in Aviation computer-based training for more details.

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This topic continues in Hang gliding 1994 and 1995.

Reference

Dennis Pagen, The Heavy Air, in Hang Gliding, August 1989