Best flight yet

Best Day Yet... from knumbknuts on Vimeo.

If more days were like today, I probably wouldn't have a job... or a house... or a wife... or a car....

I was anxious to get up the hill, so I ditched my clients early and Hoffbrow, DbyD, & I barreled up the hill around noon. Beautiful marshmallows were coming over from Cuco to the Cajon pass. As I launched there, were dotting the ridge.

Popped to 7700 over launch.

Glided to halfway between Pine and Sugarpine, got nervous, turned to go out front, caught a real drifter that I bailed out of at 7800 because I didn't want to go to Vegas.

Got just past Sugarpine and turned my po', slow Falcon around, fearing the Venturi effect.

Back to Pine, I saw Dave as a speck way above me and caught another one to 7,500 and bailed out for the same reason, but soon caught a fatty to 9,300. A jet went overhead, so I kept my eyes on the desert.

Sure enough, here comes Alaska Airlines. Not too close, but closer than I'd prefer.

Bunny hopped the clouds East... chased one back to Rimforest, then the cloud disappeared and I got nervous. My vario showed 4:1 to AJ, so I pointed that direction and got drilled. Kyle was working Baylis Park and the exchange and thermals there popped me high enough to skip right past Billboard to Pine (barely). Not much shaking there, I figured the marine layer had taken the day, so I started working back to the LZ. right over it, I caught a punchy one from 4k to 8.5K, with notable turbulence a couple of times as I punched through mild inversions... or something.

A final tag of the 215 and a due West landing into smooth winds and my furthest, highest, & longest flight was over.

I am amazed that our club doesn't have 10,000 members... there are only about 6,000 hang glider pilots in the country.  This is so much fun.

Chortle.... got an article published in the USHPA monthly mag.

Getting an article published in the USHPA magazine is not particularly difficult, but it is fun, nonetheless. The only hard part is: I'm a n00b with little to write about. The organization only has about 10,000 members, so it's basically like a university-sized publication, but I respect those members greatly and hope the article is enjoyable and interesting.

This particular article is about short packing a Falcon 3. I can't reproduce it here, but it does point to a walk through I did:

http://www.johnwright.com/hanggliding/shortpack/

A better than average day.

The inversion lifted a bit, got to 6,500 a bunch, tagged Pine 3 times, flew until I didn't want to fly.

Fun times with Rebardan, Dave A., Owen.

Tracklog links to larger version:

Press covers the Andy Jackson Airpark and development nearby.

The Andy Jackson Airpark, a world class LZ and home to the Crestline Soaring Society (and testbed for Wills Wing), is being threatened by neighboring development and a developer who has blown us off for years in our effort to come to a mutually agreeable solution.

The story in the San Bernardino Sun is here:
http://www.sbsun.com/search/ci_10294244?IADID

Find out about writing letters of support here:
http://www.crestlinesoaring.org/andy_jackson_airpark_needs_your_help

I'm happy with the quotes attributed to me. It's refreshing for a journo to get it right and it's fun to be in the paper.

Rented a Sport 2

This post is aimed at either "wuffos" (people who are not hang glider pilots) or other new pilots who haven't flown double surface wings. I figure pilots more experienced than I would, obviously, already have their own opinion on the topic.

In the world of hang gliding, there are 4 basic classes of wings:
- Beginner
- Intermediate/Advanced (kingposted)
- Topless
- Rigid

The wing I've been flying for the last year and two thirds and 112 mountain solos has been a beginner wing, the Wills Wing Falcon 3 195 (3 is the version, 195 refers to the square footage of the sail). The other term for this class of wing is "single surface." These wings have, for the most part, one surface to their airfoil.

Intermediate/Advanced wings have two surfaces. They have a top surface similar to the single surface wing, but their bottom is also covered to significant amounts by another surface. This allows for cleaner, faster airflow. Less drag means the wing can go faster and will go further in static conditions than a single surface wing.

Intermediate/Advanced wings also have a "VG" (variable geometry) system that allows the wing's shape to change in flight. A "full on VG" means the wing will glide better, faster and more efficiently, in a straight line, but will be more difficult to turn. It also lends to a more pronounced stall at a slightly higher speed.

The Wills Wing Sport 2 175 (20 square feet larger than the one I flew Friday)

Friday, for my second flight, I rented a Wills Wing Sport 2, an intermediate level wing. It is well known for having a very good combination of improved performance with still fairly easy handling.

Boy, did I notice the speed. That thing really zips around compared to the Falcon.

When I am in the Falcon, I am either putting along fairly slowly at around 24 mph. It pretty much feels like I have one speed. If I pull in to gain speed, I feel more like I am going down than anything. Things get pretty loud and the ground starts rushing up to me.

The upside of that lower speed is that the Falcon handles very well and crisply at its lower speeds. If I fly into a thermal at "trim" (that optimal speed), it is easy to turn the wing and stay in the thermal, for two reasons. The first reason is that the wing turns more easily than double surface wings at the same speeds. The second reason is that I'm not going very fast, so it takes a while to get through the thermal.

In the Sport 2, I felt the wind more, but heard it less. The wing really felt smooth and fast. It turned easily, but I felt like I would have to put more effort into putting it on a wing and coring a thermal. The difference between it and the Falcon felt like the difference between changing direction while running vs. changing direction while on a bicycle. With the Falcon, if I felt a thermal, I feel like I can just "crank it" into a turn. I didn't really try, but it doesn't quite feel like it would be more difficult to do that in a Sport 2, in accordance with what I've heard.

The only hard part of the flight was my approach, where I thought like a Falcon pilot and just buried the control bar to get speed up. Well, the Sport 2 speeds up in a hurry and so I turned to downwind a bit late and low. I also lost a lot of altitude in the turn, due to the bar being buried. I think I was even oscillating due to speed and poor control (this is called PIO for Pilot Induced Oscillations). I eased back on the control bar, turned a bit too low straight to the LZ, cutting the corner but heading right into the wind (somewhat by plan), got the wings level, thought I should flare, hesitated and mushed it in on my knees. Grass stains on my pants were the only dinger to pilot or wing... I'll take it.

I wanted to rent the Sport 2 for a number of reasons:
1. To see what it was like to fly a double surface wing
2. To see if I had the chops to fly an intermediate wing
3. To help my planning for buying the next wing, in both timeframe and type.

Here are my intial reactions:
1. It's a lot of fun. It's fast, smooth, clean. I felt like I was almost on a completely different kind of wing. It was really nice not to lose so much altitude going places. I got to just crank on the VG and zoom across to a spot that I wouldn't have reached in a Falcon.

2. I give myself a passing grade on the flight as a whole. Good launch (near as I could tell), good control in air, poor approach, adequate save on landing.

3. I need to lose weight and try again (I was a bit heavy on this one) on the Sport 2 155. I am better fit, weight-wise, for the next one up the ladder, the U2 160. I think I am going to have to rent the Sport 2 enough times to get familiar with it, if Rob has one available, then try to get a U2 rental or demo to see what the difference is. The U2 has slightly better performance but is more significantly difficult to fly, according to Wills Wing.

I need more time to answer all those questions adequately.

In sum, it was fun to fly, I am going to set aside the whole question for now, try to lose some weight, hopefully fitting into my sleeker harness, get used to that, and try again. Hopefully, that won't be too far off.

Whatever the case, I will always want a Falcon in the quiver. It's tough to beat how easy it is to fly.

Here's a chart of the various wing type "polars." Basically, the shallower the curve, the better the wing performance. That'd be the Falcon there on the bottom. The wings between it and the Sport 2 are older wings. According to this, at 30 miles per hour in static air, the Sport 2 would only be descending about 215 feet per minute. At that speed, a Falcon would be dropping like a rock, 400 feet per minute.

Another new site

You know you are in Southern California when traffic is a major consideration of where you fly when you live equidistant to two sites. Because going up through the middle of LA is the only thing that is worse than going out the 91 to San Berdoo, I had never flown Kagel in the year and a half I've been flying.

Today, I finally got to Kagel/Sylmar, though I had to game the traffic like Steve Martin in "LA Story" to get up there by noon. I didn't pull out of the driveway until 10:40. It's 77 miles the way I went, 64 at the shortest. I made it in an hour 10.

I am glad I went today and I look forward to getting some mileage out of my 90 day visitor membership. Variety is the spice of life and Kagel has it for me.

The inversion layer kept me on the first ridge, but there were some thermals to work there and I got to get a little oil on my technique, which was a bit rusty after one thermalling flight in the last month (at Dunlap).

I was glad I was not there on a crowded day, as I felt my way around the ridge, I only had one ATOS to keep track of.

The LZ at Kagel is an interesting one. The grass is a Hang 4 spot, as they are concerned about lesser pilots overshooting into the the storage containers and picnic benches. That left me in the wash, a long, narrow riverbed with some spots nicer than others. A long, fast DBF got me right where I wanted to be with plenty of speed. Turns out, though, I nipped the edge of the "Sylmar Triangle." The wash has some funky geometry to its geology and I encountered the lowest wind shadow I've ever felt. I was maybe 15 feet off the ground with good speed and hands on the downtubes, rounding out, when suddenly I was 5 feet off with not so much speed.

"Flare!" I thought to myself, thinking possibly ballooning would be a better risk to take than flying into the ground. My timing was actually pretty good, but my wings were not very level and I couldn't give it a full flare.

I didn't whack, though, and I recovered it pretty well, so I am giving myself a passing grade on my landing... based on the new site, the well known "triangle," my perfect approach, and my good save.

I am not letting myself buy a new wing until, among other things (like having money), I have landed my Falcon well 30 straight times. By well I mean I can not do anything that would disqualify me from a spot landing contest or anything unsafe. That was my 6th such landing and 28th out of the last 29.

Fun day, nice people, great site... though working afterward took some of the sheen off it.

I finally get to fly there

15 years ago, I was flying an RC glider near where I lived when a couple of guys unfolded hang gliders, hooked in, launched, and went up. I was really surprised at their soaring capability.

I started poking around about lessons, but I witnessed a pretty rough bailout landing at this site and a medevac flight picking up a guy who got rotored behind the ridge. Then, a friend who had flown hang gliders as a French Foreign Legion commando (and tumbled one at altitude) said they scared the hell out of him. That cooled me off.



But, once I got into flying, I really wanted to fly the site. It took three trips, but I finally got the combination of help from the local instructor and the right winds to be able to fly it. Said instructor was very helpful, as always. It is definitely not a site you want to fly without help from a local. As a matter of fact, it'd be about impossible, as you need a gate code and a few other items or information.

The video shows the fun I had and we topped off the day with dinner at a Brazilian BBQ.


A fun thing happened on the way back from Reno. from knumbknuts on Vimeo.

All you can eat at Morningside

My trip to Morningside ended up solidly in the "Win" column, a big relief after much travel and a "Loss" at Funston three weeks ago.

After being rained out the first of two days, I got 22 flights in on the second. I got to practice dead, cross, and strong wind ramp launches. Ramp launching in a tree gap is noticeably different than launching from a nice, rounded hilltop. The varying conditions allowed me to practice a number of different approaches and landings. Along with my best crosswind launch in my short flying career, I also affected my best crosswind landing, keeping the glider crabbed into the wind and running it out at about a 30 degree angle.

More importantly, I got to spend a lot of time with my Brother, Brad, allowing us to catch up on quite a bit. After flying, I finally saw his nice house in Storrs, where I had not visited in 7 years. All that house cuts into his flying budget, so we brainstormed how to get a university professor rigged for hang gliding on the cheap. If anyone has a Falcon 225 and/or a harness for a 6'1" 220 pounder, let me know.

Morningside Flight Park was a real sleeper hit for me. I was very impressed by the facilities:
- A nice, carpeted hanger to reassemble my shortpacked glider
- Lots of spare parts and equipment (see previous post for why that helped)
- Helpful, friendly staff
- Gatorade for sale! Man, was I thirsty in the 90 degree 90% humidity weather
- ATVs to get you to launch in a couple of minutes
- A slope that is perfect for working your way up in training and is also perfect for flying down in ground effect on final
- Aero tow operations & lessons (which I will do next time)
- Lots of enthusiastic students

Variety is the spice of life. After averaging an hour per flight in California, but only flying once or twice a day, it was a blast to get in almost 2 dozen "Mountain" flights in one day. I know you can get that many at a beach site or at Point of the Mountain or winch towing, all of which I look forward to doing. But, for this trip, getting that many flights in felt like cheating.

Well, it felt like cheating until the next day, when I tried to get outta bed. No matter how easy the ATVs and facilities make it, 22 times of putting the glider on the cart, carrying down the crest of the hill, launching, landing, and taking it back to the cart... adds up.

By about 3 o'clock, the winds had picked up to the point where you needed two wire crew to launch and I was too tired to do so safely. I ended on a 7 minute flight that got me above launch.

The wing went back to Storrs on a ladder and I spent a scant 1:20 the next morning short packing it and the rest of the day playing with my nephews in the pool.

Even Delta was nice to me, only charging me $25 for the wing, making that cost $200 for the round trip... fair enough. And no tubbies crowded my "airspace" on the way back.

Work bit with a vengeance, though, and I stopped by a client's on the way home from LAX and recovered a failed RAID array until two in the morning.

When do I get to fly again? How can I make it back to Morningside this summer?

Open the link and click on Watch in High Quality for the video.

Planes, cables, and automobiles

Needless to say, on a supposedly full flight, I get stuck next to a 350 pound man. Delta's response was something to the effect of "sucks to be you." Ugh. So, for 6 hours, I tried to doze while shifted to the left out into the aisle... getting bumped by the flight attendants and passengers every time. Worst... flight... ever.

Fortunately, it was a straight shot and 6 hours later, I was on the ground in CT with my bro and it's great to be hanging out with him. He's a fun guy and a good big brother to have. I wish he lived closer.

Here's a tip for the shortpack of a Falcon. DO NOT LET ANYONE DISTRACT YOU WHILE DOING IT. The one time I was hurried while dissembling it was when I was putting the battens in a few days after having done most of the packing. My wife was anxious to leave for the gym... and I ended up dropping the kingpost luff line dongle, a 6 inch cable that hangs out of the kingpost to hook the luff lines to. The way the dongle works, it can twist and slip out of the kingpost if there are no other cables in the kingpost to help hold it in. It was in the grass of my backyard as I was in New Hampshire. Profanity ensued this discovery... next time I'm putting it in a ziploc. Fortunately, the helpful guys at Morningside crafted a spare from old parts (shortened one from a previous WW Glider) for me. The cost was some beer. Great guys.

I spent about 4-5 hours reassembling the wing in their great hangar, protected from the rain and the South winds which kept me, along with being too tired, from flying.

After going back to the nearby hotel, which is cheap and clean, showering and taking a cat nap, I walked with my brother to the top of the 450' launch. Morningside is such a nice place... what a great setup.

Today, we fly.

Off to Morningside

My policy of not liking to travel, especially by air, is well founded, though it's going fairly well so far.

Delta cut me a minor break... only charging me oversize ($150) and extra bag ($25) and not overweight (would have been $85) for my glider.

Man, I wish Morningside rented wings... I'da soooo much rather rented, especially since weather there is so fickle. But, the ticket wasn't bad and the trip will be worth it...

Now I am sitting in LAX at the bar... wondering if I am going to pull a Radwhacker. I drove up early to beat the traffic. Dockweiler looked quiet, though a Condor was unfolded, nobody was flying. So, I am drinking a Sam Adams, waiting for the Celtics game to start, watching the birds go by... could be a lot worse.

Security didn't open my glider bag... they just wiped the latches with some kinda of chemical wipe... phew.

Gonna be a long night.