What we do is pretty special. We leap off a hill and enter a whole other world of possibilities. We share the sky with the birds, and find ourselves making decisions based on knowledge totally foreign to a majority of the human race.

These are incredible rewards for the few of us that develop the skills required to safely accomplish such feats. However many new students, after completing their initial licence course, leave the sport early on due to an inability to achieve what they consider “a worth while day out”. The early days in any hang gliders carer are full of heading out to hills and not flying or sled rides. You get used to sitting in the bombout while your new found friends climb out above you.

It is easy to be discouraged during this period but you must appreciate that we have all been there. Those days will end and one day you will be the one talking the next new guy through these challenging early days.

Local pilot, Andrew Luton, fills us in on his experiences as he stabs though this sometime difficult period:

I have always dreamed of going paragliding or hang gliding and have spent many years on the ridge at Lake George flying R/C gliders underneath the hang gliders and paragliders that fly by. I would always say to the people out flying with me, ‘gee I wish I was up there with them having fun’. My time has finally come.

I travelled up to Newcastle for my lessons with Tony Barton 3 months ago which took a week and was a lot of fun. The first time you run off a hill by yourself, it hits you that now your life really is in the palms of your hands! The two weeks up in Newcastle were great and I can’t wait to get back up there and have a few more flights (I really want to fly off Strzelecki Lookout).

After getting back from Newcastle I have attended as many flights as I can in order to obviously get up in the air and also meet as many people as possible. In the two months or so I have been flying here in Canberra I have managed to get to know a number of people who fly regularly. This is good for me as I can ring around and find out who is going or who wants to come out and fly! I am realising that this is a very important part of the first few months of your flying as you need to have an experienced pilot out with you while you are flying, so the more people you get to know the better your chances are of getting of the ground! I have been lucky as I met Trent purely by coincidence at on oval one day. While talking to him he told me that he was a hang glider pilot and from there on in I have kept in contact with Trent and he has given me a lot of advice and help. I guess the point I am trying to make here is that making contacts is an integral part of making the sport of hang gliding work best for you and to make it more enjoyable. There are the social benefits (mainly visits to the pub I have found) and more importantly the safety side of things. ‘Getting to know the locals’ for me has been a huge advantage as they have been able to give me ongoing feedback about the flying sites and the way I fly. I have received both positive and constructive (not negative) feedback!

Now onto the flying. I have had the majority of my flights out at Lake George with the best a few days ago. I was out there with 3 other hangies and one paraglider. One of the hangies was Ed (who along with Trent and a number of other guys, I have got to know over the past few months). Ed took off before me and I watched him make a few passes to gain lift off launch and proceed north above the highway. I then took off and also headed north up the ridge. As easy as Lake George I am happy to admit this as with each launch and landing I am gaining more experience. The one thing I am still getting used to is turbulence. After doing all my training on the nice smooth coast air, flying inland feels somewhat different. With each flight I do I am becoming better at handling the glider as it gets bumped around. I have mainly flown in the late afternoon after most thermals have shut down for the day thus generally smoother air. On the weekend just past I made my own decision not to fly (even though others were up) as the wind was quite strong and the air was a little rough. I may well have had a nice safe flight but I didn’t feel comfortable so I chose to leave the glider in the bag. This brings up another good point. Once the glider is set up and ready to go it is very tempting to fly even if it is a bit iffy, and knowing my ‘she’ll be right’ attitude, I have to keep this in mind! is to fly at I have bombed out three times!

Anyway back to the flight. I followed Ed up to the north and we both climbed to about 1200ft above the deck. After sussing out the pockets of lift we headed back south towards the launch. When tracking back over launch we had enough height to cross over the top of the highway through the gap and onto the next ridge line. This is the ridge where I have spent many years flying my R/C gliders and on this day one of my mates John, was down there fly his R/C (I recently managed to get him into flying R/C and hope to soon get him to take up hang gliding!). For the next hour Ed and I flew backwards and forwards flying in the air with John’s R/C. It was really cool to finally be up in the air flying within meters of an R/C and not being on the ground flying (in saying this I still thoroughly enjoy flying R/C on the ridge).

Lake George, I think, is one of the best spots inland to learn how to fly. You have a paddock 30 odd kilometres long to land in so overshooting of missing your landing spot would be a hard task to do. Just south of the main launch you have a ridge 200ft high with no trees no obstacles and plenty of room to try or practise top landings (not that I have made any myself yet J ). To the north the ridge line climbs to 500-600ft which provides very nice lift on the good days. When it is good and I have yet to try this out but you can fly from launch north to collector then south past launch to Bungendore, then back north to launch again. This could amount to a 70+km flight off the one ridge line using only ridge lift! Now I am just dreaming and going on what I have been told but it is easily possible given the right wind direction on the day.

So I have waffled on for a bit now and will finish with a few views on ways in which I believe, you can make your early hang gliding days easy, safe and enjoyable –

No1.
Have a car that carries a few gliders easily with a strong quick and easy carrying system. (My car has a ladder. It carries one glider and is a pain in the arse. No one wants to mount a rack on the front of it due to airbag issues and it does not have enough clearance underneath to get up all launch sites. I am currently looking at getting a new car!)

No2.
Get to know the local pilots as soon as you can. Get their mobile numbers so you can bug them to come and fly. I am finding that a call to say you are planning on going out will usually entice someone to follow!

No 3.
Have a flexible job. This one is not so important but still a good thing if you have it (“coughs” Trent).

No 4.
Be like Trent, and in the words of Barnsy ‘Have the easterly flu’ on the good flying days.

No 5.
Listen to any advice you are given and improve on your ability and experiences.

No 6.
Most importantly. Have a flexible missus. (Not in the physical sense, but this can also be a positive, hehe).

I hope this may help encourage some people in some way. I know that I have a mate who is keen on the idea of hang gliding and it is only a matter of time until I talk him into getting lessons and becoming airborne.

Happy flying

Glenn Bachelor sends in some launching videos from the Melbourne cup long weekend.
Here are two clips I have posted up on Youtube of Trent and Ed launching off Buffalo on the Melb Cup day.

Trent’s Launch

Ed’s Launch

They were both in the top 5 launches of the day, nice clean straight take off’s.

Enjoy!

Glenn.

I’m a bit slow getting this out but the Canberra guys featured prominately in the local rag during the Gulgong Classic!

Thanks to Nath for picking up a copy of the paper.

Ed writes about his first XC last month. This commentary follows on from the day before.

My First XC Flight

As we drove up Mt Buffalo my hopes for achieving my first cross country flight weren’t great. I had been very hopeful the day before, taking of at the Pines only to find myself landing in the bombout about an hour later, but not so much today. The previous days efforts combined with a question mark over the suitability of the conditions to even take-off from Mt Buffalo left me with a real “lets just see what the day brings” attitude. We drove through the toll booth at the bottom and I met Carol who looked after us as we went through the gate. Carol is a bit of a hangliding icon in the area and at that time she was about 2 weeks away from becoming a Mum. A couple of things occurred to me as we drove up Mt Buffalo. It is absolutely beautiful. Hey were still driving – it’s bloody huge. There are lots of big rocks and dead trees – there are very few landing options. Trent pointed out a couple of key features.

“That’s the Hot Rocks – it’s always working and you’ll find good lift there. That’s the other side of the mountain – apparently there are a couple of places to land if you have to but there are no tracks out. A couple of guys have landed there but it’s about a 2 day walk out and unless you can find a couple of Sherpas you’re leaving your glider behind. There’s supposed to be a couple of gliders still there from the guys who have landed there. I wouldn’t recommend landing there.”

As we got to the plateau on top of the mountain Trent pointed out a beautiful big open area.

“You can land there if you have to but it is a bit bumpy and you’ll have to remember that you are at 4000ft AMSL and it’s pretty warm – you’ll have to land pretty fast”.

We arrived at the top to find about half a dozen other gliders at various stages of set-up. Having only done one other cliff launch before at Tongarra I was a little nervous about doing a cliff launch. Everything had gone very well on my previous cliff launch – the nerves were more from doing something relatively new. The shear height and openness of the rocks at the launch didn’t help to alleviate the little lump in the back of my throat. After meeting a couple of the locals Trent and I got to setting-up. Trent, like a lot of the good guys, has a capacity to set-up in about ten minutes. So while I was just finishing off and getting close to stepping into the glider Trent gave a great demonstration of how to do a cliff launch properly. With a few other gliders backed up on launch I thought I’d take the opportunity to watch a few more good launches. The next launch was a brilliant example of what not to do and I really appreciated the pilot risking his neck to demonstrate such an important and effective lesson. A very casual stroll down the ramp with the nose high, lobbing off the hill almost at the stall and getting a right wing drop that required a lot of pilot correction to avoid hitting the cliff to the right of launch – I’m sure it took the pilot a couple of minutes to “unpucker”. The crowd of on lookers gasped/sighed in unison. Now I understand why all my friends think I’ve got a death wish doing hang gliding – I’m sure they’ve all seen an effort like this at some stage. It was a great reminder for me – keep the nose low, wings level, wait for the wind to be straight on launch and run with commitment. I think that the popularity of our sport would benefit from less of these public demonstrations.

Shortly afterwards I found myself on launch – the last one to take-off. A couple of local pilots, Mark and Glen, had volunteered to help everyone off. I really appreciated their help and when I catch up with them around the traps it’ll be my shout – thanks guys. When you are standing on the edge of a cliff contemplating running off it there are useful-thoughts and there are not-so-useful-thoughts. As pilots we must have the mental ability to discipline our minds to focus on the useful thoughts. “Bugger me it’s high up here. Is that little paddock way over there the bombout? Gee that other guy nearly died doing this and he’s a more experience local pilot. This is only my second cliff launch. Rocks are really hard. How fast can a cheetah run?” None of these were useful thoughts. Some of these thoughts ran through my mind before I strapped in however I couldn’t afford to be thinking about these things as I took off. The best way to clear them from my head was to acknowledge and mitigate the risk prior to stepping into the glider. “Yes it is high up here – but really, falling any more than ten metres, which I’ve taken off from heaps before, is deadly – check. That little bombout paddock is perfectly adequate to land in and within glide – check. The other guy, regardless of experience, had very poor technique. I will keep my nose low, wings level, wait for the wind to be straight and run with commitment – check. My first cliff launch went well because I focussed on nose low, wings level, straight wind and a committed run. I now have even more experience cliff launching – check. Yes rocks are hard – don’t hit them – check. About 120km/h – check.” Now after zipping into the harness all I had to think about was safely getting the glider over to launch and – nose low, wings level, wind straight and a committed run.

Running of a cliff is a great buzz. I’m in the air, all is well and the take off felt good. I’ll ask the girls how it looked when I land. Now the fun begins. I work the rocky outcrop immediately to the right of the launch, slowly building enough height to get further around to the right where the rest of the gliders are. They are working on a face more directly into the wind. After about ten minutes or so I’ve got enough height and move over to where the other guys are. By now it feels like there are a few less gliders there. I work this face and get some good height (about 1500ft above launch) only to have to taken from me in some big sink – this happens a few times till one of the big sink cycles has me scratching around back at the little rocky outcrop near launch again. In the air for 45 minutes and right back where I was after only one minute in the air. Hang gliding is funny like that – sometimes being where you were 45 minutes before (ie. still in the air) is an achievement in it’s own right – a lesson I start to appreciate as I notice that I’m now one of only two gliders on the hill. I can see a few gliders low on glide and landing in various paddocks in front of the mountain and over near the airstrip. So I settle into a cycle of scratching around the rocky outcrop and occasionally stretching my circles back around to the other face to see what’s there – nothing. After doing this for about 15 minutes a felt some lift out in front of the rocky outcrop and follow it a fair way out to a pretty good thermal. I look down to discover that I’m over the Hot Rocks. I should listen to Trent more often – although he is packing up in the bombout right now. I work this thermal and a series of thermals that follow slowly drifting across to the left of launch – the two day walk out side of the mountain. Finally I get to a height where I’m thinking of drifting back with the wind to achieve my first, albeit very meagre cross country flight. However, every time I extend my circles out in that direction I hit massive, massive sink. Before I get to decision time (ie. I’m still going up in the thermal) a lone paraglider comes drifting past on glide in the direction that I am contemplating going. Great I’ll just watch him and see how he goes … “Holly crap, did someone just hand that guy an anvil?” As he appeared to fall from the sky I decided that I could wait a while and work for the extra height that I thought I’d need. Part of my problem is that because I’ve not done any cross country flying I have no judgement of what I can or can’t glide to. Ridge soaring into 20-30km/h winds distorts your judgement Yes I can look at the ground and see if it is moving up, down or staying still to get some idea but there’s a guy up here handing out anvils. I don’t know how many anvils I might be handed between here and there. My Sonic and I are a good team but “anvil transporting” just out our thing. As for me and my glider – we will err on the side of caution. Eventually the lift I’m in dries up and, having decided left to the valley of anvils is not my thing, I work my way over to the Hot Rocks. I was planning to head back over to the launch area however by now there was a gaggle of paragliders drifting towards me from the other side of the Hot Rocks in a pretty good thermal. One anvil later I am over the Hot Rocks below launch height looking out and up at the paragliders thinking “Hmmm, bugger, I may have just missed the bottom of that beautiful looking thermal”. After scratching around for a bit and taking the average of a couple of thermal cores the vario started to make a very nice noise, a noise I like to call “going off it’s nut”. I had found my own thermal and I felt a little like a fisherman sitting on the shore with a 10lb line and a whale on the other end. The thermal was a monster. It was very wide and going up like a champion. I think I averaged around 7ms for quite a while. It seemed to take only 5 minutes to get way above launch and another 5 to get ridiculously above launch. As I approached 7000ft AMSL I was joined in the thermal by the biggest Wedge tail eagle I’ve ever seen and we shared the ride to cloud base. I’ve shared thermals with wedgies before but this was different. For significant periods of the climb we were perfectly in synch in the thermal both circling in the same direction, exactly opposite each other at the same height with a great view of each other. Very cool! Cloud base was at about 7800ft AMSL and formed a very cool concave shape where you could fly around up in the middle of the cloud just below it but be circled by the lower edge of the cloud. Very cool!

At about the 7000ft mark I tried getting Trent on the radio to help with the upcoming decision – go/no go? Although I was very high I had what appeared to be a reasonable distance to cover back over Mt Buffalo and in the straight back direction I couldn’t see the terrain on the other side of the mountain. I could potentially arrive quite low above the back edge of the mountain only to discover that there was no where to land. The only terrain that I could see in that direction was covered in pine forests and it didn’t look like a land filled with free beer, ice cream and landing paddock for everyone if you know what I mean. The only patch of ground that I could see that had heaps of landing options was NW across the mountain towards Myrtleford but would require a slightly longer glide. Hurry up Trent and help me make a D (decision). Decision time comes when anvil number 2 quickly robs me of a couple of hundred feet while I search to regain the whopper that got me up here. I can’t find it – D time – Options 1.stay here go down and eventually land in the bombout; 2. go on glide to the known; 3. go on glide to the unknown. Question – do I really have a glide to the known? I believe that I can achieve the glide to that paddock – an under informed yes. Right – glide to the known it is. I now do one of the most intimidating things I have ever done in a glider (actually it’s one of the most intimidating things I’ve ever done full stop). I go on glide over the back of Mount Buffalo, looking down and seeing a few landing options initially but the land quickly becomes full-on tiger country (remember: rocks, dead trees and 2 day hikes). It starts off well as I fly across the top of the lake, the chalet and the beautiful big open area on top in close to zero sink. As I drift further across the mountain towards Myrtleford and am now committed to the glide across, as I have passed that point of no return due to the wind factor, I take receipt of anvils number three and four simultaneously. Just what I needed. I am going down quickly and I can see a relatively clear patch (big open rocks with gaps in the dead trees – not pretty) on the top of the evil side of the mountain (2 day walk side) and seriously consider landing there. D time – there is a cloud ahead within glide that looks like it is building and if I’m getting this much sink there must be some lift nearby. The D – continue on glide towards the cloud but move sideways to try and lose one of these anvils. I try moving left, then right, then left in response to my glider only to discover that I have simply zig-zagged down what appears to be a great sink line. The anvils remain. My decisions and lack of judgement has developed this situation into a real sphincter moment. I am getting very “concerned” (euphemism). The paddock I’d picked out to land in, the first paddock on the other side of the tiger country was most definitely moving up in my vision so I took the most logical option left and started to pray real hard – seriously. Literally a matter of seconds later my vario made the best noise in the world. I didn’t think it was possible for a vario to make a better noise than the “going off it’s nut” noise” but I learnt that there is a better noise. “Beep …. beep, beep …. beep …”. It wasn’t a rocket going up … it just wasn’t going down … and the landing paddock was now staying still. That is the best and most appreciated sound my vario has ever made. I searched around and eventually found some air going up a bit better than the odd solitary “beep”. I took a couple of turns in the thermal to a height that I knew I could make the landing paddock and then I headed out to the clear ground. I probably could have taken that thermal back up to near cloud base again but by this stage I was a spent force.

I ended up getting to the valley with a bit of height and found a good line of zero sink to just slowly meander down the valley towards Myrtleford. As I floated along I kept an eye on the power lines and updated my choice of landing paddock. Eventually I found myself low at a bit of a bottleneck in the valley and picked a paddock. I set up for a landing into the easterly I’d been flying in for the entire flight but at about 40 ft discovered that it was from the north. Luckily I’d set myself up along the south side of the paddock and it was easy enough to turn into the wind and land. The landing wasn’t the prettiest one I’ve ever done and tried to run it out. I just nosed over at the end. Too many landings at Lake George in 20km/h winds had eroded my practice at flaring. I had landed at Nug Nug, only about 10km from where I had taken off.

I stepped out of the glider in a surreal state absolutely hooked on cross country flying – that was too much fun. After a couple of minutes I came back to earth and SMS’d the guys my co-ords, took some commemorative photos of my glider with the back of Mt Buffalo in the back ground and then got to packing up. I was nearly finished when the guys arrived and Trent trekked across the 150m from the road to where I was with a grin as big as mine and a Southern Comfort and Coke in his hand for me.

“Congratulations mate. Well done! How was it?”

“That was great but bloody scary. I love it but I don’t think I could cope with it being that scary all the time.”

“Don’t worry about it, you’ll never do another flight that scary again”

“What do you mean?”

“Mate, you just did your first ever cross country flight going over the back of Mt Buffalo, on a scratchy sort of a day in a Sonic. Everything you ever do from here is going to be easier and less intimidating than that. But what a great storey – your first cross country flight ever from Mt Buffalo. Man there are experienced hangies that won’t even fly off Mt Buffalo and you just did your first cross country flight from here. Dude I’m so happy for you.”

“Well when you put it like that – cheers” and I took my first sip of the congratulatory Southern and Coke.

“Man, before we left the bombout I told Carol that you were off on your first cross country flight – she was so stoked for you. Well done Dude.”

I realise that 10km downwind over the back of Mt Buffalo barely counts as a cross country flight, particularly to experienced cross country warriors. Hell, I’ve done far longer flights at Lake George. But this does count as my first toe in the water and I learnt a bunch of lessons that may be of value to people who are yet to take their first step. So to the most important part of this story – what did I learn. Lots! In priority order, my lessons were:

1. Cross country flying is fantastic. The difference between ridge soaring and cross country flying can be likened to a domestic and a wild dog. One stays in place and gets the easy food and the other has to use all his faculties to survive. Using your faculties to survive is hard work but very rewarding. If you haven’t done it have a go … but in a less intimidating manner than my first flight … and with experienced pilots around to help.
2. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have a landing paddock that you KNOW that you can glide to … ALWAYS.
3. Baby steps are good in hangliding. Small incremental advancements are generally a better/safer way to develop rather than big bold steps which can be very intimidating and dangerous.
4. Beware of panic. Let me get one thing straight – I wasn’t a blithering panicking mess, but I’m sure that my anxiety levels had moved beyond the optimal to the point where my performance was being detrimentally effected. My mind certainly wasn’t relaxed and my decision making was less than it could have been. Too much of my glide was probably spent looking directly at the chosen landing paddock. I did look around but no where near as much as I should have. I’m sure that there were many indicators that the good pilots would have easily identified and used to find lift lines or booming thermals etc. I probably wasn’t too far away from having my performance and decision making get exponentially worse.
5. Even experienced guys get it wrong. Work systematically at not allowing yourself to become a complacent experienced pilot. Develop a system of mental and physical checks to ensure that your focus is where it should be and to ward off the evil of complacency.
6. Work hard to rid yourself of anvils by moving sideways – don’t just zig-zag up the middle of a sink line.
7. Be ready for the next D and anticipate it – have an action plan in place if you are forced to act and no new information comes along. Update the plan.
8. Get your approaches and landings right. Picking the wind direction correctly and doing a quality evaluation of your proposed landing paddock is the key to landing safely from a cross country flight. If you have the confidence to know that you can always land safely there is no limit to you’re ability to practice flying cross country. Don’t be afraid of doing a big committed flare – you really need them in light thermic conditions. Practice nil wind landings – even if it means going out for a sleddy.
9. Get your take-off right. Focus on your technique (there is nothing more important that you have to do while taking off so you may as well give it 100% of your concentration/effort – it’s a reasonably simple formula – nose low, wings level, wind straight and a committed run.
10. Sometimes being exactly where you were 45 minutes ago is a positive achievement
11. Wind direction can change, particularly in mountainous areas, and it tends to flow up a valley during the day.
12. Use other gliders to find lift and avoid sink
13. You can only fly as far as you plan to. I had focussed so long on making the landing paddock that even when I found a thermal near it which in all likelihood I could have taken back up to somewhere near 7000ft AMSL I left it to go and land. I had my excuses but really I failed to update my goals and think a few moves ahead.
14. The theory books don’t lie. The cliché textbook examples are out there – there were plenty of dams to tell the wind direction and I even got a bit of lift above a harvester moving around a paddock. Read and learn so that when you get in the air you will have a bucket load of info to inform your decisions and start matching the theory to the real world.

Safe flying.

Ed