I only flipped the Glider once!

My second day of Hang Gliding was long and eventful. It started with another tandem flight. This time Rob put me on the controls much earlier in the flight. He had me fly out towards a location where there is usually some good thermal activity, but we lost about 600 feet of altitude, so he took over. I noticed during this flight that I am not really good at judging the distance to the ground or the ridges of the mountain. After we had climbed back up above the height of the launch I was back in control. Unlike on my first flight, I really felt much more in control. I was getting the glider to go where I wanted it to go and was keeping a steady heading. I was doing really good, we were just flying around having a good time. Rob seemed impressed and told me that if it wasn't for the first 5 seconds and last 20 seconds of the flight (ie take off and landing) he would solo me. He had me fly it all the way down to final approach. This was a little difficult because on the tandem, the instructor is directly in front of the student during landing. I had to look over his shoulder to see where we were going. He coached me about when and where to turn and to keep the speed up. “Speed is your friend” he reminded me. I was able to get us lined up nicely with the LZ and flew all the way until the last 15 seconds or so when Rob took over to put us down. It was a great flight and I gained a lot of confidence. Later Rob told me that he liked how I took the initiative and flew all the way down to final. It seems that most people are either too afraid or just not confident enough. I was feeling pretty good about my abilities to control the glider and I knew that if things we not going so well Rob was right there to take over.

I helped Rob break down the tandem glider and then assemble the big Condor trainer. The Condor is designed to fly as slow as possible to make it easy for the student to learn the low level basics. (http://willswing.com/prod2.asp?theClass=hg&theModel=condor) If there is a steady wind the glider will just hang in the air. You start out low on the training hill just learning to run with the glider and keep the wings level. I had no problems with this so we moved up a few feet. Each flight after that starts a few more feet further up the hill and the air time is a few seconds longer. The object here is to just keep the wings level. As you get up higher on the hill you gain a lot more altitude and you out of the instructor's hands. On the flights with more altitude I had to keep the wings level and the speed up. I found that I would concentrate on keeping the wings level, but forget about speed control. It is definitely a new thing to learn what I see as control in 3 dimensional space. When we drive a car we only have to worry about right/left control, but in a flying machine there is the third dimension, up/down. I think I got the hang (no pun) of this after a few more flights. The last flight from the training hill was at about 85 feet up the 90 foot hill. This time I really got some altitude but came in fast. I must have forgot to push the control bar out and ease out of the speed. I touched down with too much speed and at a bit of a crosswind. The wing quickly got away form me and it flipped over. Some other pilots at the LZ came running over to help me get unhooked and off the glider so we could flip it back over. Later Rob said he was glad that happened, sort of lesson learned the hard way kind of thing. You really have to be in control of the glider at all times or bad stuff like that can happen.

After the training hill flights I took a break while Rob worked with a guy learning to fly a paraglider. This was the guy's third lesson without getting in the air and Rob wasted to get him airborne. I needed the break, lugging that big glider up the hill gets tiering, even though Rob did most of the carrying. After 20 minutes or so the paraglider was in the air and it was my turn again. This time we went to the edge of the LZ which is a very steep 50 foot hill. This was more scary than the training hill because it was so steep. I was a little nervous, especially since I flipped the glider on the last flight, but I stepped up anyway and off I went. I did just fine and after that flight me and the paraglider pilot too turns flying off this spot. Dianne used the Gator to shuttle us back up the the LZ after flying. I had about 10 flights from there and each time I felt I made progress with the last flight being the best. I was flying pretty strait, keeping the speed up and setting down nice and gentle. We flew until the sun went down. I got to fly all afternoon for the price of one lesson, not a bad deal.

After we packed up I made an appointment for another lesson, next Friday afternoon. Rob seemed confident in my skills and next time I will be flying a real glider, Falcon 195 (no more dorky big training glider.) He said that he thinks I am making record progress and that people usually don't fly off of the LZ hill on the first day. He thinks that I may only need one more day of training before I am ready to solo. He made me a deal. If he thinks I am not ready to solo, he will say so and if I think I am not ready, I will say so. After yesterday's flying my confidence level is high so I think I may be ready after next week. It all depends on how I handle the Falcon.

The excitement level just keeps building. I can't wait to order a glider. I can't wait until next weeks lesson. I can't wait to solo! Damn If I can get my H2 rating before school gets out, I can just fly all summer.

I spent a few minutes today figuring out how I am going to fit a Hang Glider in my garage and on top my dad's Suburban. There is a roof on it and I think I can use that with a few modifications. My garage is about 22 feet wide and the Falcon 3 170 is about 18 feet long in the bag, so I should be able to store it.

I would like to buy a new glider, but if a decent looking used one comes up I may go for that. I would expect a first glider to get pretty beat up so used might be a better way to go. Then again I would really like to buy my own shiny new glider. Maybe I will get a new glider and look for a used harness and parachute, then upgrade to a nice shiny new harness later on. All I can really do now is wait, and as Tom Petty said “The waiting is the hardest part.”