hang gliding & paragliding vol42/iss04 apr 2012

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HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING | WWW.USHPA.AERO 7

B y the time you receive this magazine, spring will have arrived. Pilots across the country will be planning their summer and keeping an eye on events that match their schedules. A calendar of events appears in the back of each

issue of our magazine as well as on the USHPA website, under the Calendar and Events tab on the left toolbar. Attending these events is not only incredibly fun, but also helps our communities grow.

Many of the fly-ins are great places to bring non-flying friends as well, for a day of experiencing our culture and, perhaps, taking a tandem flight and socializing at a delicious barbecue.

This year, we’re going to devote a section of the magazine to displaying your photos from USHPA-related events throughout the country. Send in your pictures with captions and enter a competition to win big prizes for your fly-in!

The April magazine is packed with good information. As you can see from the cover, Paul Voight has been collecting shots of vanity flying plates for some time. If you have a plate that you think belongs on this cover, we will run a follow-up to this montage in a coming issue.

C.J. Sturtevant is back with the first installment of a new section in the magazine showcasing chapters and clubs. What better club to start with than the Tennessee Tree Toppers! If you are part of a chapter or club that should be featured, drop us a line.

This issue includes an interview with a luminary of the free-flight and outdoor industry. Jeff Shapiro, just back from a first ascent of a treacherous peak in China, discusses life, flying, and the pursuit of altruistic goals with Christina Ammon. Two wing reviews are included for those interested in new gear this season. Chris Hilliard reports on the Gin Evo XC, while John Heiney is back with another Freedom review—this time for tandem pilots!

We urge you to attend at least one USHPA-related event this year and maybe even take pictures, write up your experience, and send it in! Pilots in other parts of the country are inspired by articles they read in our magazine. Since we can’t get to every event, we hope to live vicariously through your photos and tales.

http://ushpa.aero/editorial_dropbox.asp

Here’s to spring and the amazing summer to come!

EDITOR N I C K G R E E C E

HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING | WWW.USHPA.AERO8

FLYMASTERFlymaster USA is proud to

announce the release of

three new products to com-

plement the LIVE instrument.

The introductory VARIO is a

brand-new device that offers

vario functions, aimed at the

leisure pilot. The GPS is a

more advanced instrument

that provides integration of

the GPS with the vario, spe-

cifically designed for those

pilots flying cross-country.

The NAV instrument includes

all of those features from the

GPS, as well as additional

functions that competition

pilots enjoy. This instrument

replaces the very successful

B1 Nav.

All instruments are

housed in a sturdy case

with built-in, shock-resistant

screen protection cover-

ing the high-resolution LCD

displays (320 x 240) and

ULTRA-SENSE variometer

with 0.01m/s sensitivity. The

GPS, NAV, and LIVE also

include 3D AIR-SPACE maps,

allowing the pilot to be noti-

fied of any airspace issues.

The new line of instru-

ments for 2012 allows

the users to configure

their screens with the

free Flymaster DESIGNER

software, giving users the

ability to size any data field,

map, compass, or variometer

display to show whatever

they wish. Each of the new

instruments can display mul-

tiple customizable screens

that can be switched in

flight manually or, in some

instances, triggered auto-

matically.

The new range of prod-

ucts for 2012 will suit every

pilot, from beginner to

advanced competition pilot—

even those looking to break

world records.

For more details on the new

range of instruments check

out www.flymaster-usa.com.

OZONE LM4LM4 now certified EN D!

Ozone’s latest high-perfor-

mance vol-biv machine for

experienced pilots is now

certified EN D. The LM4 is

a lightweight high-perfor-

mance paraglider designed

for expert pilots who are on

the cutting edge of vol-bivo-

auc flight. The LM4 is based

on the Mantra M4, recon-

structed with the modern

lightweight techniques

that have made Ozone a

world leader in lightweight

paraglider technology. With

the same design and line

material as the M4, the LM4

features the same excellent

performance that has made

the Mantra M4 so successful

in its class..

LOPROIntroducing the latest in-

novation in helmet camera

technology—the Eagle

LoPro. Eagle Paragliding

developed this helmet

camera with only one pur-

pose: performance. The

camera features a 100x

optical zoom, and a voice-

command tilt function with

LCD display that can be

mounted on your flight deck.

The battery pack can hold 67

AA batteries, which allows

recording times of over 12

hours. The satellite inter-

net connection allows you

to live-stream your flights

to your Facebook account,

allows your friends to live-

track your flights in Google

Earth, and you can tweet

your in-flight thoughts with

the voice-command fea-

ture. Visit www.paragliding.

com for more info.

SUUNTOSuunto, the brand leader in

functional outdoor instru-

ments, announces the

launch of the AMBIT, the first

true GPS watch for explor-

ers. The Suunto AMBIT is

what every backcountry

skier, pilot, hiker, trail runner

and mountain climber has

been eagerly waiting for—a

watch that combines a GPS

navigation system, altimeter,

3D compass with advanced

heart rate monitoring into a

robust instrument for moun-

tain and everyday use. With

AMBIT s full-featured GPS

the user can choose way-

points to navigate with and

see their location in multiple

coordinate systems. The

AMBIT boasts a host of other

features including tempera-

ture, track logging, unique

3D compass and barometric

sensor. All these keep you

informed of your location,

altitude and weather condi-

tions on your adventures.

More information: http://

suunto.com/..

BRIEFINGS N E W | I M P R O V E D | B U Z Z W O R T H Y

PHOTO SUBMISSION GUIDELINESSubmit horizontal photos in digital format with a MINIMUM

of 3120 W x 2400 H pixels (7.5 megapixels). Please submit

unaltered at the highest resolution you have. Photos must

have been taken no earlier than January of 2010. Each

submission MUST INCLUDE: Signed contributor agreement

(1 per photographer) photographers name, mailing address,

phone, email address AND a photo caption, location, site

name, pilot name, wing type, month & year of photo.

SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE IS MAY 31ST.

Submission info & forms

are found at:

www.ushpa.aero/calendarproject.asp

1-800-616-6888


AIRMAIL L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R

GREAT NOSTALGIA Our magazine is get-ting more interesting from issue to issue. Even I, who have not been flying for 10 years, get absorbed and go through the pages with great nostalgia and interest.

I really enjoy the new addition of various perspectives on the psychologi-cal attitudes that arise in various articles.

I started hang gliding at the age of 50 and flew for nearly 22 years complet-ing approximately 700 flights. Maybe I was one of the oldest female pilots.

It still feels like a dream period to me, but hang gliding has enriched my life tremendously and I am tremendously grateful for my experiences and the many wonderful communities I met.

Enclosed is an experience I had at the beginning of this flying period. It may have an echo in many of us.All the very best to you,Ines Roberts

EvEN THE GoDS CAN BE SCArED

By Ines Roberts

A ll set-up and hooked-in, I am standing on take-off. This will be my second flight from a

mountain site, after spending several months on Learner Hill.

Learner Hill is the terrain where you struggle to handle a glider, which often feels like an enormous, heavy umbrella with a mind of its own. Then come the many runs you need to make with it. When you are finally allowed to start from a few feet above the flat area, have put on your helmet and are strapped into a harness that’s hooked into the awkward contraption that connects you to it, you run, run, run, trying always to head into the wind. When most pilots’ feet finally leave the ground and they are suspended above the oh-so-familiar

solid earth while hanging from their gliders, they shriek in utter ecstasy and joy. However, at that moment I only felt terrified, resulting in my uttering a help-less plea: “Let me down, let me down!”

My first flight at Rincon, an inter-mediate site about a mile up into the coastal range, had been uneventful. The take-off hillock overlooks a wide stretch of avocado and lemon orchards, before the plateau changes into a very steep cliff. Underneath it, the small settle-ment of La Conchita nestles beside the freeway to LA. The Pacific Ocean and its beautiful beach rim this busy thoroughfare.

After flying over the avocado fields and leaving the cliff, I looked down on the wide, car-filled road for the first time from this height, and felt panicked:

“What if the traffic has some magnetic, hypnotizing attraction towards me and my glider, and I land in the middle

of it?” Then I remembered the good advice an experienced motorcyclist once gave me: “When you are on a collision course with a tree or any firm obstacle, don’t stare at it in panic; look away from it! Strangely enough, that seems to alter your course away from the menacing item.” So I stopped gazing at the traffic and turned towards the ocean, since landing in the water might be less pain-ful.

No need for focusing on childish imagination; the beach at low tide was wide and hardly crowded with people. With that reassuring thought in mind, I had a safe landing and even made full use of the whole length of the beach—as other pilots later good-heartedly com-mented on my procedure.

So, what is going on now? Why don’t I confidently take off on my second high-altitude flight? My husband and all the other pilots have left long ago. My mother-in-law sits patiently on a nearby rock, having volunteered to drive our car down the hill.

Here I stand under my glider, but

can’t seem to move. The upwind is perfect, but I wait. I tell myself: Go! But there is no response. I am not fright-ened. No, I do not tremble with fear, so what is going on? Again and again my mind gives the command: Go! Run, run, run! No response. Is my mind disconnected from my body?

Ma finally has had enough and drives down. I see cars with gliders coming up for a second flight, and I just stand there, as if under someone’s spell. Here comes Darryl, laboring up the hill with glider and gear on his shoulder. He does not look that strong, but he is an ace of a flyer! When I see him jubilantly circling his glider, he looks like a god, and one feels convinced that the air is

his natural element.“What? Are you are still here?” he re-

marks under his breath. “What on earth is the matter with you?” Darryl looks reproachfully at me, while dropping his glider to the ground.

“You guys don’t know nor understand what fear is,” I casually reply.

Hearing that, he straightens his body and walks toward me.

“Do you know, Ines, when I was at your stage and had one of my first high mountain flights, I was sooo nervous that it nearly scared the shit out of me!”

Strong language. But that modest and honest admission from an ace pilot broke the spell, and I, with a run, run, run, was in the air.

“After flying over the avocado fields and

leaving the cliff, I looked down on the

wide, car-filled road for the first time

from this height, and felt panicked.”

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by Drs. Lisa Colletti and Tracy Tillman

B igger IS better. Detroit has the world’s biggest tire, 80 feet tall.Tracy: The picture of the big

tundra tires and hydraulic brakes that are on our Dragonfly tug, from our January 2012 “Rat Patrol” article [ref 1], prompt-ed requests from some other tug pilots and owners for us to write an article about how to acquire the components and install them on a tug.

Lisa: That project was your idea, so I get to ask the questions this time. First, why change from the standard-sized tires that come with the Dragonfly to the big tundra tires?

Tracy: Fundamentally, what most damages an aircraft is interfacing with the ground. Obviously, a hard impact with the ground usually causes immedi-ate damage. The tug is also damaged by the cumulative effects of normal taxiing: take-off, landing, and braking. This damage is not obvious immediately, but it will occur over time. The jostling and jarring experienced by the tug as it rolls on the ground causes fatigue of aircraft components, which eventually results in catastrophic failure of those components. These deleterious effects will accumu-late sooner or later, no matter what, on smooth ground as well as rough, but faster on the latter. Larger tires have the effect of making rough ground seem smoother to the tug, which reduces the

impact of the jostling and jarring and helps keep the tug airworthy.

Lisa: It is good that we are obsessive about doing thorough pre-flight inspec-tions of our tugs before we tow and about conducting rigorous annual and periodic inspections each season. Our airfield is fairly smooth, but over the last 16 years of towing with our Dragonflies, we have found cracks and experienced failure of components that were caused by rolling over swales, bumps, cracks, and holes in the ground.

Tracy: The Dragonfly is a workhorse tug. It is robust, but not immune to these problems. In fact, finding cracks and experiencing failure of some compo-nents are fairly common on heavily-used tugs. It is not a design flaw; these things happen to all aircraft, sooner or later. That’s why we perform periodic and fre-quent inspections on them. Aircraft are just machines, and they are not perfect machines. Sooner or later, some parts fatigue and fail. The Dragonfly and other tugs also deteriorate. Tugs spend much more time moving around on the ground, compared to “normal” planes, because of the nature and high number of towing operations performed by tugs. The more a tug is used and abused—as with other aircraft and machines—the sooner some components will fail. Newer models of the Dragonfly have incorporated improvements and strengthened some components to try to make it even more robust, but the basic design remains the same.

Lisa: It is obvious to us how much smoother our tugs roll over the ground after converting to bigger tires, and it seems to have really helped reduce the occurrence of fatigue problems. In this regard, they are a huge improvement. Are there any other benefits of having bigger tires on the tugs?

Tracy: Absolutely. Bigger tires help the tug roll through soft, wet spots in the field, and they help reduce the chance of

damage or flipping the tug over, should an emergency landing happen in a very soft and wet spot, in long vegetation, or on very rough ground.

Lisa: Tell me about it…Tracy: We learned that the hard way.

In one of the first years of our towing operation, we had a wet spring, and there were a couple of spots in our field that were very wet and soft. As you (Lisa) were starting a tow, the engine began to run rough and lose power. You had lots of room in front of you, and since you were not sure if the hang glider pilot you were towing had wheels on his glider, you wanted to give the pilot more altitude for a safe landing, so you did not release or wave the pilot off the tow line right away. You waved the pilot off after you got a bit higher, just as the engine quit. Both you and the hang glider pilot made good landings, but you landed in a soft spot. The tug’s tires rolled a bit, but then broke through the turf into the mushy ground below, and the tug flipped over.

Lisa: I landed slowly and was rolling slowly, so the tug flipped over slowly, without much energy. Fortunately, the cockpit cage remained intact, and so did I. It was one of those “there I was” moments, hanging upside- down in the harness, with gas spilling all over me. I was once a tower and spring-board diver and was used to being upside down, so it wasn’t real hard for me to get out quickly and tumble upright to the ground. The scariest part was hanging in the cockpit, getting soaked with fuel, knowing there could be a fire.

Tracy: It was just bad luck that you rolled into that soft spot on the field. You did a great job with the emergency landing, and you did the right thing after flipping, which was to turn off the elec-trical system right away to prevent a fire. That was scary. You’ve got a cool head as a pilot. That day, after flipping, you just pulled the other tug out of the hangar, went back to towing, and continued to

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tow for the rest of the day while I worked with students.

Lisa: We learned a couple of lessons from that incident. If a tug pilot experi-ences an emergency, he/she should not hesitate to just “give the rope” to the hang glider pilot on tow. It’s another reason why hang glider pilots who tow should fly with wheels: They can easily make a safe, rolling landing if they experience an aborted take-off, weak-link break or other emergency, at the start of the tow. And, it’s one less thing for the tug pilot to worry about, so the tug pilot can focus and react quickly to take care of himself in an emergency.

Tracy: We also discovered the reason for the power loss that day and how to prevent it. We determined that the cause was fuel starvation, due to a collapsed primer bulb. Fuel can make rubber softer over time, and the flow of fuel through a soft primer bulb can make it collapse, particularly at high power settings with high fuel flow.

Lisa: Like right at take-off. In fact,

usually right at take-off, which is already the diciest phase of every aerotow. We discussed that in some of our previous articles.

Tracy: One solution to this kind of fuel starvation problem is to replace the rubber primer bulb with a plunge primer—the type used on regular air-planes. We tried that, but because of the location of the gas tank relative to the engine, we found that it did not work as well as a primer bulb. So, the other, better, solution was to insert a couple of

“T” fittings into the main fuel line, just above the gas tank, to create a secondary circuit for the primer bulb. This way, the main fuel flow does not go through the primer bulb, but you can pinch the main fuel line to use the primer bulb when you need it. It works great for priming, and the fuel supply is not susceptible to collapse of a soft primer bulb at high fuel flow.

Lisa: So, back to the tundra tires. Are there any other benefits to having the bigger tires on the tug?

Tracy: Aside from looking really cool, they also enable the tug to roll easier, especially in longer grass or softer turf. This means that the tug will take off in a shorter distance, which is safer. We can feel how much easier it rolls when we are taxiing the plane with the engine at idle, and we can even feel it when we are pushing the tug around by hand on the

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ground. Bigger tires also make two-point wheel landings easier to do in a tail-dragger.

Lisa: For these reasons, we also put bigger tires on our Maules and our Wilga.

Tracy: That’s why early aviators had large wheels on their flying machines nearly 100 years ago and why I put 20-inch bicycle tires on my Icarus II powered hang glider more than 30 years ago. We’ve also got bigger wheels on our tandem gliders.

For these same reasons today, bush pilots put tundra tires on their planes. Because bigger tires roll easier, bush pilots usually have to put bigger, stronger brakes on their planes. The same is true for the Dragonfly—at least it was for ours with the 115 hp Rotax 914 engine. For effective braking, we had to install hydraulic brakes when we converted to bigger tires. We will describe how to do that in this article.

Lisa: Those hydraulic brakes are great. We should have installed them long ago, even before we got the bigger tires. Are there any negative aspects of the tundra tires and hydraulic brakes that you want to discuss before you describe the instal-lation procedure?

Tracy: Not really. The hydraulic brakes are about the same weight as the standard drum brakes, but they work a lot better. The tundra tires, being bigger, have a little bit more drag, but because we are towing and flying at slow airspeed,

the additional drag is not noticeable. The bigger tires on our Maules and Wilga only reduced their high-speed cruise by a few mph, at most. The tundra tires on the Dragonfly are only a bit heavier than the standard tires, not much heavier. The extra weight hardly affects the weight-and-balance of the Dragonfly and has no noticeable effect on climb rate or other flying characteristics.

Lisa: You also installed new wheel rims. Can you explain why?

Tracy: We could have mounted our new tundra tires on the standard 8” Azusa Spinner wheels that came with the Dragonfly. However, Azusa has come out with a newer, stronger 8” Tri-Star wheel design. The hydraulic brakes mount up directly to the new wheel design, but would have needed an additional adapter plate to mount to the old wheel design. Since I cracked one of the old-style Spinner rims when changing a tube last year, we decided to go with the new Tri-Star design. Going with the Tri-Star was also the recommendation of Tracy O’Brien, the manufacturer of the hydraulic brakes.

Lisa: How about telling folks where to get the components?

Tracy: OK. Order the hydraulic brakes from Tracy O’Brian. [ref 2] Send him a picture of how we mounted the master cylinder to the cockpit frame and how we connected the master cylinder to the original brake handle on our Dragonfly, so he can fabricate a custom mounting bracket for you. If you want to keep your old rims, tell Tracy that you need the adapter plates for the old Azusa Spinner rims. Or, if you want to change to the new Azusa rim design, get the Tri-Stars from Tracy. He will mount the special pins on them that are needed to engage with his brake disk design. This is the list of parts to get from Tracy O’Brien:

1. Brakes (2): C-90 hydraulic disc brakes for 5/8 axle Cub style gear [ref 2]

2. Master cylinder (1): ¾” custom master cylinder for cable operation

3. Wheels (2): Asuza Tri-Star 8 inch

wheel for 5/8 axle, with pins for O’Brien C-90 brake [ref 3]

4. Adapter plates (2, optional): For use with old-style Azusa Spinner wheels

Lisa: What about the tundra tires and inner tubes?

Tracy: The tundra tires are avail-able either from Leading Edge Airfoils (LEAF) or Nesser Aircraft Tires. Inner tubes are available from LEAF or the Motorcycle Superstore. Check prices and availability from all sources before order-ing. Here is the list:

1. Tires (2): 20/700-8 skinned tundra tire [refs 4&5]

2. Inner tubes (2): ATV TR-6 20x7-8 inner tube [refs 6&7]

Lisa: Is any other hardware needed?Tracy: Yes, here is the list of hard-

ware:1. Large loop clamps (2): WDG28

cushion wedge-type loop clamps for 1 ¾” tube [ref 8]

2. Small loop clamps (2): WDG6 cushion wedge-type loop clamps for 3/8” tube [ref 8]

3. 1/16” steel cable (4 ft): You can use some of your leftover mechanical brake cable.

4. 1/16” wire rope sleeve (1): MS511844 Nicopress-style swaged sleeve clamp for 1/16” cable [ref 9]

5. Cable thimble (1): AN100-3 thimble for 1/16” cable [ref 10]

6. Protective tubing (6 ft): 5/16” poly-ethylene or other hard plastic tubing to cover 3/16” hydraulic hose line

7. Filler tubing (4 ft.): 1/8” clear vinyl tubing for pressure feed oil can, 2 pcs, 2 ft. long each

8. Hydraulic fluid (1 qt.): Dextron/Mercon automatic transmission fluid

9. Brake mounting bolts (4): ¼-20 x .75 full thread hex-head bolts or socket-head cap screws

10. Lockwashers (4): ¼” lockwashers for brake mounting bolts

11. Master cylinder mounting bolts (2): AN3-5 hex-head bolt 10-32 x .65

12. Flat washers (4): AN960-10 flat washers for AN3 bolts


13. Nyloc nuts (2): AN365-1032 Nylon locknuts for AN3 bolts

14. Plastic cable “zip” ties (6): to secure brake lines to landing gear legs

Lisa: Ok, after getting all this stuff, what’s next?

Tracy: This is the step-by-step proce-dure:

1. Mount the new tires and tubes on the rims, and inflate.

2. Cut mechanical brake cables and cable housings in the area where brake master cylinder will be mounted, leaving some cable connected to the original brake actuator handle, and some cable housing remaining in the cable stops near the actuator handle.

3. Mount the brake master cylinder to the cockpit frame tube using the large wedge clamps with AN3 bolts, washers, and locknuts.

4. Insert the 1/16” cable thimble in

the new brake master-cylinder-actuation-lever arm, remove old 1/16” cable from housing coming from brake lever handle, route new cable through housing to make a loop from the brake-handle-lever arm to the master-cylinder-lever arm. (Note that the cable housing must be short enough to clear brake cylinder arm and swaged nico at full actuation.)

5. Attach a bungee cord to temporar-ily hold the brake lever arm all the way back (full off). Then swage ends of cable together next to the thimble. Remove bungee cord.

6. Remove old wheel and brake drum assemblies from gear legs.

7. Drill new disk brake mounting holes in torque plate mounting brackets: two 0.250 holes, 1.800” apart across center. (Existing drum brake holes are about 3” apart.)

8. Attach hydraulic disk brakes with

two ¼-20 x .75 bolts with lock washers and locktite. (Position so that hydraulic line fitting is on the back side of the gear leg and is higher than filler/overflow fitting).

9. Slide the 7/8”OD x 5/8”ID x 1.68” long spacers (supplied by O’Brien with the brake kit) on to each axle to create a bearing shoulder to properly locate wheels in relation to C-90 brake units.

10. Install wheels/tires.11. Temporarily position hydraulic

line t-fitting in planned mounting loca-tion, and cut three 3/16” hydraulic lines a bit longer than needed. Install these three hydraulic tubes in the t-fitting, then mount the t-fitting in position using the small adel wedge clamp.

12. Cut feeder line to t-fitting from brake master cylinder to length needed, slide polyethelyne oversleeve protective tube over the feeder line, then attach


feeder line to brake master cylinder. The fitting needs to be snugged down fairly tight to prevent leakage.

13. Position brake lines running from t-fitting to disk brakes behind gear legs and cut to length needed. (Making the brake lines a bit longer than needed makes removal of the wheel from the axle easier.) Slide the 5/16” protective oversleeve tubes over the top of the brake lines, then attach the brake lines to the disk brakes. Secure brake lines to each gear leg with 3 plastic “zip” cable ties. Secure the longer brake line (the tube that is running under the cockpit to the right gear leg) to the fuselage/gear box with the other small wedge clamp.

14. Fill a small pressure feed oil can with automatic transmission hydraulic fluid, and attach 1/8” clear vinyl tubing to the nozzle of the oil feed can. Attach the other end of the vinyl tubing to a filler/overflow fitting on one of the disk brakes. Slightly “crack open” the filler/overflow fitting a partial turn.

15. Attach the other piece of 1/8” clear vinyl tubing to the exit/overflow fitting on the brake master cylinder (to control overflow of fluid when filling) and also slightly crack open that fitting. Fill the system with fluid running from the brake up to the master cylinder until no bubbles come out from the brake master cylinder. Remove vinyl filler tubing from brake and close filler/overflow fittings.

16. Use the same procedure from the other disk brake to fill with fluid and push all air out of the system. When properly filled, it takes only a small amount of brake lever movement to fully actuate the brakes.

17. Lift each wheel off the ground and spin to make sure they spin free, to make sure that a brake is not dragging when the brake is not actuated.

18. Perform a weight and bal-ance (W&B) and keep the new W&B documentation in your tug, along with your airworthiness certificate, operating limitations, and registration.

Lisa: Is this considered a major change to the airplane?

Tracy: Not according to the EAA or FAR 21.93, as the change has “no appreciable effect on the weight, balance, structural strength, reliability, opera-tional characteristics, or other character-istics that affect the airworthiness of the airplane.” [ref 11] I confirmed that our conversion is considered to be a minor change, not a major change, with three separate authorities who work in different parts of the country.

Lisa: So, we did not have to return to Phase 1 testing [ref 11] of the experimen-tal airplane.

Tracy: No, we remained in Phase 2 [ref 11], but we flew both tugs a fair bit after the conversion before doing any tows with them, and we made appropri-ate notations in the maintenance logs, of course.

Lisa: We now have a full season of towing with the new tires and brakes on the tugs. I’m very happy with how well they work.

Tracy: Me, too. We wanted to use them for a season before we wrote an article about the conversion, to make sure we didn’t encounter any problems. The big wheels and hydraulic brakes are working great for us, but we can’t guar-antee that others will get the same results.

They ought to work well on Dragonflies and other E-LSA airplane tugs, and they might work well on weight-shift trike tugs, too, but we can’t guarantee it.

Lisa: Nope, no guarantee about that. But as far as I’m concerned, bigger IS better.

Lisa is the Associate Dean and Professor of Surgery at the University of Michigan Medical School, and is past chair of the USHPA Towing Committee. Tracy is a

retired university professor, current chair of the Towing committee, and regional direc-tor for USHPA Regions 7 & 13. He is also a Faast Team Safety Counselor for the FAA Detroit FSDO area. They are both very active multi-engine commercial airplane and glider pilots, tug pilots, and tandem hang gliding instructors for the Dragon Fly Soaring Club at Cloud 9 Field (46MI), Michigan. Please feel free to contact them about towing-related issues at [email protected].

References

1. “Higher Education: The Rat Patrol.” By Lisa Colletti and Tracy Tillman, Hang

Gliding & Paragliding magazine, January 2012, p.22. http://issuu.com/us_hang_

gliding_paragliding/docs/1201_web?mode=window&printButtonEnabled=false

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5. http://store.leadingedgeairfoils.com/product_info.php?products_id=7127

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7. http://www.motorcycle-superstore.com/4/22/276/30828/ITEM/Kenda-ATV-

TR-6-Inner-Tube.aspx?WT.ac=SLIsearch

8. http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/ms21919clamps.php

9. http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/nicopress.php

10. http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/an100.php

11. http://www.eaa.org/experimenter/articles/2011-02_darside.asp

http://www.kittyhawkkites.com


By Christina Ammon

J eff Shapiro. If his name sounds familiar, it might be because he’s among the top five competition

pilots representing the U.S. Hang Gliding team. But there’s a lot more to Shapiro then snagging awards at comps. A quick scroll through his blog, Searching for Satori (www.searchingforsatori.com), reveals an eclectic adventurer—part pilot, part climber, part trail runner, falconer, family man, world traveler and hang glid-ing harness designer.

The Montana-based athlete admits a particular penchant for pursuits that in-volve “good old-fashioned suffering.” But throughout his multi-day ascents, teeth-gritting ice climbs, and 50-mile mountain runs, Shapiro doesn’t lose perspective on what real suffering looks like.

“While traveling, I’ve seen kids with

nothing, dirt for floors, no medicine when they get sick, and no electricity, no shoes. I’ve seen whole families living in a 12’x12’ space where there are no grocery stores, only growing, picking, finding, and cooking what is eaten each day.”

Extreme sports have helped put Shapiro in touch with life’s fragility, and inspired his involvement in philan-thropic organizations like the Cloudbase Foundation.

“Being seriously humbled gives you perspective. You can’t tumble and break your glider under a black storm cloud, get snowed on by a cloud that is concur-rently spitting lightening, or sit on an icy ledge at over 20,000 feet hoping a storm will hold off just a little longer, without it having a tangible effect on your outlook toward life and luck.”

Shapiro’s current obsession with adventure travel and new culture has led

him to Asia. “While searching for adven-turous places to fly and climb, I learned of the huge rise in popularity of paragliding in Pokhara, Nepal. It has always been a dream of mine to fly in the big moun-tains, and Pokhara seems like a gateway to that dream.”

He won’t show up empty-handed. He’s already partnered with fellow pilots and recruited funding for a project called KEEN to Learn. This year, the scholarship program will help five kids in Pokhara who struggle to afford an educa-tion. Shapiro is a good example of how, when you follow your passion and your intention is good, support appears.

ca: It seems that many athletes embrace philanthropic projects. What do

PILOT PROJECTS J E F F S H A P I R O

[below] Jeff Shapiro climbing in Montana while taking a break from making hang gliding harnesses. [opposite] Jeff Shapiro makes a first ascent of a route in China, 6376m, in Sichuan Province | photo by Chris Gibisch.

you think sports and philanthropy have in common?

Js: In my own experience, both sports and philanthropy are motivated by a sincere passion and are a lifestyle choice. Athletes—the ones I know, at least—tend to feel luckier than most because they are getting humbled on a regular basis. Big adventures can give you an appreciation of mortality and a magical feeling of “having it really good.” It’s natural to be thankful and want to give back.

“Recreation” in many parts of the world is a foreign term. Even though the sports I love add much to my life, people in many countries have more life-related issues to deal with. Sports like aviation or rock and ice climbing are luxurious by comparison. So, I’m thankful and want to share. The bottom line is that if there is ANY way I can use my good fortune to pass on some-thing better to someone’s life, I feel lucky to do it.

Our time on this planet is a gift. For me, along with an amazing family, hang gliding and climbing have always made the decision to get up in the morning and be stoked and to give back a no-brainer.

ca: Tell us about the other pilots involved with KEEN to Learn scholarship program.

Js: Isabella “Bella” Messenger concep-tualized the idea using her experience and contacts within the community in Pokhara. Around the same time, Jeff O’Brien and I were awarded the KEEN Hybrid Care grant and were researching for the best way to use it. Nick Greece introduced us to Bella, and we began collaborating to help hard-working kids attend University. KEEN pledged to stand behind us with a matching donation.

Bella has been an active part of the flying community in Pokhara—living, teaching paragliding, and helping people. Bella’s friendship with her language instructor for the past four years, Prem, and his wife Apsara, is at the foundation of this idea. Prem is a teacher for one of the best boarding schools in Pokhara, and they have pledged to work both with us and the kids. None of this would be possible without their participation.

ca: Tell us about the challenges these kids in Pokhara face.

Js: To help me organize a proposal for KEEN, Bella briefed me on the numerous challenges the kids face. Most of the chil-dren there, especially those from the poor-est families, have trouble procuring things that we consider basic. The poorest families can usually only afford to send their kids

to school until they are old enough to be useful workers at home or elsewhere.

A couple of the kids she is trying to help come from the lowest caste of society, the Dalit. She said that in modern Nepal there is an effort to eliminate caste discrimina-tion through affirmative action. In that spirit, there are some positions in the university and the government reserved for them.

I recognized her description from what I have seen in my own travels to poor communities in Asia. My own experience helped to fuel the fire, for sure. We hope that, wherever we can, we will offer some unexpected hope for some hard-working kids.

ca: Who are some of the kids who will receive scholarships?

Js: Bella carefully selected five children. All easily fit the criteria of both needing the help and having the motivation to make use of higher education. Two of the girls are aged 11 and 12. Bella told me that despite being top students, they would not be allowed to continue their studies past 8th grade because in their village it’s still typically considered a waste of funds to educate girls. This scholarship money will now give them the opportunity.

We will also be assisting a 14-year old

J E F F S H A P I R O


boy who is able to attend school only four days a week because he must help his parents earn money for his educa-tion. KEEN to Learn will enable him to attend full time.

ca: In Pokhara, pilots have long been concerned about kids who skip school in order to earn money packing gliders in the LZ. Will KEEN to Learn address this problem?

Js: This situation in the landing zone illustrates a dilemma that families face all over Asia: the struggle between getting by day-to-day versus getting an education that creates greater earning potential in the long run.

I fly hang gliders and so only recently learned about this issue in Pokhara’s growing paragliding scene. I was stoked to hear that Bella and the community of para-pilots are aware and consider-ing ways to make positive change. From what she told me, they will be replac-ing the packing kids this season with salaried adult employees. Of course, the problem is that this will put the kids out of work. She said that most of them can afford to return to school, but there is some concern about one particular 12-year-old boy who is from an extremely poor family that lives near the landing zone. He is the family’s main breadwin-ner and will likely be forced to look for another job instead of going to school. With a scholarship, he can go to school, plus have some take-home money for his family.

ca: KEEN is a big player in this. How did you recruit their support?

Js: The folks at KEEN got to know Jeff O’Brien and me on a personal level after we flew for “Nature Propelled,” a film that promotes alternative energy. During the filming, they learned of our involvement with the Cloudbase Foundation and asked us to be ambas-sadors to carry their goal to turn “ideals into action.” Last year, they secured a portion of the annual grant budget to aid a CBF project of our choice. The KEEN to Learn scholarship is a result of that opportunity.


ca: What is the biggest challenge of this project for you?

Js: I know I’m not in a position to make huge change but I figure, one step at a time. It’s funny: Lately my mantra has been the question, “How do you eat an elephant? Easy: one bite at a time.” If I do what I can and others do the same, the world will become smaller and more unified toward the greater goal to help each other to make the world a better place. Sounds cliché, I know, but I think it’s the truth.

You know, we’ve been given this money and what it does is motivate us to use it in the best way we can in this world. Working on this project with Jeff, Bella and Nick makes it easy as we are all quite like-minded and looking to accomplish the same thing.

Bella’s close involvement, her ties to the school system and the teachers, helps to eliminate any worries of the money going anywhere but its intended place. Her participation is priceless.

ca: You travel a lot. How has seeing so many places influenced your worldview?

Js: Traveling has taught me that perspective is everything. I’ve learned that happiness is a choice we all make each morning. No one can make us happy and no “thing” can either. We are all faced with our lives, and we get to decide how we want to view the world and how we each fit within its boundaries.

I’ve met people who struggle and yet are happy and live life for what they have and not for what the wish they had. It’s

been a huge lesson. I come back and see some kids here crying because they didn’t get the toy they wanted at their local Wallyworld, and I see that happiness and awareness has nothing to do with stuff. Just perspective.

ca: Any advice for pilots wanting to make a difference?

Js: If we can bring awareness to this and other projects, we can expand the list of people who are willing to help make a difference. I’ve been surprised at how little money and effort, if used correctly, can make a tangible and positive change in someone’s future. At this point, I do what I can, and try to tell the story in a way that helps to inspire others to look within themselves and find the motiva-tion to help if they can.

Jeff, Nick and I are hoping to go document the progress of this project to best tell the story and, hopefully, inspire others to help. Creating awareness is the first step. If we have any ability to do that, we are all psyched to do the best we can with it.

ca: How can we help you?Js: One step at a time. As pilots, we

have a great avenue to help through the Cloudbase Foundation. They make it easy to contribute and follow along with the progress within the communities that receive the support. If people are psyched to contribute, they can get on the website, www.thecloudbasefoundation.org, and inquire.

ca: Now for the Big Question: Why fly?

Js: There are dreams that have been bred into the human psyche since the dawn of our time. Sitting close to a fire through the nights, scanning a star-filled sky to find the way—these are things that, even today, feel like we’re supposed to be doing them. It’s as though we can feel an essence that has been passed down through the ages of humanity.

As long as humans have sat by fires, they have also sat on the sides of moun-tains and in the cool grass of the prairies, looking up at the clouds drifting by and the circling falcons and hawks. For as long as our kind has experienced life “on the ground,” we have also dreamed of what it would be like to have the limit-less freedom of those birds. Unlike the history we have with star navigation and fire, it’s only been within the last 40 years that the dream of bird-like flight has been realized.

The powerless, foot-launched, prone flight that hang gliding enables is as close to “being a bird” as I could imagine. It feels like living a dream. It’s a surreal experience that is so “in the now” that I often remember only bits and pieces. Sometimes I wonder if what I remember actually happened. This is the essence of hang gliding. Actively living a dream—my dream. I will never forget how lucky I am to be alive in this time and participate in this dream.

Jeff's blog: www.searchingforsatori.comwww.thecloudbasefoundation.org

www.keenfootware.com


An Epic Tale of Big Thinkers and Bold Projects

By C.J. Sturtevant

W hether you travel around the country to fly, or stick right close to your home site, you’ve

surely encountered some of the serious challenges that the free-flight commu-nity faces in order to retain our ability to get airtime. But odds are you’ve never been involved with the actual business of obtaining, maintaining and retain-ing sites. Like Rob Dallas, current Tree Toppers secretary, who says, “I’ve been coming up to fly weekends for many years happily oblivious to most of what goes on behind the curtain so to speak. You all know how it goes; if you hang around any hang gliding club long enough flying and generally acting like a kid in a candy store,

eventually someone notices and asks you to do the adult thing and serve on the BOD. Which in all seriousness is quite an honor and a real eye opener on just how much volunteer time and energy goes into

keeping the home fires burning and the taxes paid.”

So who does deal with all that behind-the-scenes “stuff” in our flying communi-ties? Believe it or not, 99% of that work is done by USHPA.

In this new series of articles, I’ll be

The Tennessee Tree ToppersUSHPA at Work

[above] Clearing brush on launch in 1977 | photo by Tim Cocker. [right] Photo by Sonia Dwelley


profiling USHPA—not the six dedi-cated paid staff in the office in Colorado Springs, but the thousands of guys and gals around the country who are members of USHPA’s chapters and clubs, where most of the get-down-and-dirty work is done that keeps our flying options open.

Where to start, in profiling the best local segments of our association? I decid-ed to begin with the club whose website proclaims them to be “The Best Hang Gliding Club in America.” While it’s probably impossible to determine which club is THE best, it wasn’t at all difficult to find enough evidence to justify this group’s aspirations to top honors. With no further ado, I introduce the Tennessee Tree Toppers, arguably “The Best Hang Gliding Club in America.”

In order to get some hard facts, I grabbed a bunch of email addresses from the Tree Toppers’ website and sent out a list of “profile” questions to that handful of pilots. To my amazement and delight, I began receiving in-depth answers to my queries within a few hours! Not only did many of those I contacted respond, but these guys also forwarded my email to other club members who might be better able to provide the information I was seeking. Within a week, I had enough background on this club to write a book! I heard from H-2s through H-5s, from pilots who’ve been members of TTT since the club was founded and those who have just joined. Here’s a summary of what I learned.

The Tennessee Tree Toppers began as a club and a USHPA chapter in the early ‘70s. Several pilots mentioned that the club originally developed the launch that is now Lookout Mountain Flight Park, but that site was bought and became com-mercial, and, to quote the plaque that now stands near the Henson Gap ramp, “In August 1977, it became apparent that the Tennessee Tree Toppers needed their own flying site.” The TTT pilots began looking around for a new “home” site, and ended up at Henson Gap. One member says,

“A lot of wise, generous, and motivated people laid the ground work for what we

have now!”What they have now is mind-boggling.

The Tennessee Tree Toppers OWN the Henson Gap launch with its world-famous radial ramp, as well as a park-like setup and camping area, a bath house with hot showers, a huge pavilion, a posh clubhouse with a kitchen and upstairs bunks, and a 60-acre LZ in the valley below the Henson Gap launch. They also OWN Whitwell launch, on the other side of the valley, and have developed excellent relationships with the landowners whose fields are used as LZs near Whitwell. (Michael Bradford says, “According to our bylaws, we dedicate half of all net annual profits to a growing fund earmarked for a permanent LZ at our Whitwell launch.” So owning a Whitwell LZ appears to be in the cards.) Another member points out, with gratitude, “It took the vision, hard work, creativity and dedication of those early TTT members to get this fabulous club started and build it to what it has become.”

Indeed! But the Tree Toppers don’t own just any old garden-variety launch sites—Henson Gap launch is home of the Radial Ramp, built in 1982 and one of the wonders of the hang gliding world. Judging from the emails the TTT pilots sent me, the privilege of launching from

that ramp is one of the biggest bennies of Tree Toppers membership. The ramp was designed by Dennis Van Dam, an aeronautical engineer who also flew hang gliders. Dennis considered all the chal-lenges of launching a hang glider from a ramp, and addressed each of them in his design. Most members describe the ramp as “awesome,” or some variation on that theme. Ollie Gregory, who organizes the Tree Toppers’ annual Team Challenge, detailed the ramp’s awesomeness: “The air flow over the ramp is quite laminar, making it easier to cleanly launch in cross winds, light winds and strong winds. The ramp itself looks quite natural and organic. It sticks out into clean air, and its shape allows pilots to advance far out from the jumbled rocks of the cliff face. The slightly sloped deck transitions at the ‘Red Line’ to a rapidly increasing radial slope that allows very rapid, smooth ac-celeration and good wing clearance. Both sides of the ramp are chamfered off to slope away from the middle to allow more wingtip clearance and more clean airflow. There is about 200 feet of vertical dive room below the ramp, so one should be able to gain adequate airspeed if the wing is stalled but stays level.” That’s not the recommended launch procedure, but, he adds, “This ramp will allow one to trip stumble and fall off and still have a ‘good’ launch! I have seen some pilots with really wild launch techniques and launch mistakes fly safely away from this very forgiving ramp.” You can read the full history of the ramp at http://www.tennes-seetreetoppers.org/.

Close behind site ownership and the radial ramp, pilots listed “not a business” and “great people!” as their top-of-the-stack benefits of club membership. Dick Heckman cites pilot attitude as a major attraction. Thinking back to the club’s early days, he says, “There was none of the ‘hey, look at me’ approach that some in the sport displayed. If someone didn’t feel right about the conditions, there was no kidding them or other pressure to fly, just a, ‘No problem, there’s always another day when it looks better.’ That approach

[above] Dick Stern, founder of the Tennessee Tree Toppers, at the clearing of Stern Bluff, named in his honor. Note the windsock on his hat. Photo by Tim Cocker.


encouraged me and led me to stay in this sport even though there are many hang-waiting days. That attitude still exists in the club and I think that it is one of the reasons for the Tree Toppers’ success and longevity.”

In Ollie Gregory’s opinion, “The flying and great flying buddies are of course one of the biggest benefits of membership in the Tree Toppers. The atmosphere is great at TTT. The sites are awesome with very well developed launches at Whitwell and Henson Gap. All this and it is noncom-mercial. I guess that is the best part. There is no secondary gain from anything the Tree Toppers do. It is all about preserving sites and promoting hang gliding.”

Tim Cocker, who’s currently compil-ing a comprehensive history of the Tree Toppers, adds, “We all share a common love of flying, but it goes way deeper than that. The camaraderie is unsurpassed. The generosity of the members is rare,

indeed. When the Radial Ramp needed to be replaced, the club passed the hat and funded the whole (very expensive) project.” We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars here. Even for a club with 145 members (as of January 2012), that’s a huge financial success story.

This group obviously knows it has a good thing going, and is willing to make the necessary investment to ensure they’ll continue to enjoy their club’s tangible benefits far into the future. Rob Dallas, the current TTT secretary, says, “Back in the day, it was a few like-minded hang glider pilots with vision who took the time (I’m guessing only on non-flyable days) and committed the treasure to buy the land, build the ramp, then the clubhouse, bathhouse, pavilion, etc. Fast forward 30-some years to a whole passel of like-minded hang glider pilots from wildly different backgrounds who keep the TTT faith by volunteering to do all

kinds of things to make this place not only going, but getting better year after year. What has to happen behind the curtain to keep the dream alive? Big and small things like organize and run the TTT Team Challenge, collect member-ship dues and website maintenance, rebuild the ramp, pick up sticks, mow the lawn, take away the trash, meet the neighbors and stay on friendly terms, or-ganize parties, pay the tax man, organize the finances, clean the restrooms, scout for a Whitwell LZ, hand-craft awards and pumpkin people, donate computer equipment and a jam-up weather station. The list goes on and on. This place rocks because everyone plays AND works well together.”

Clearly the Tennessee Tree Toppers in the 21st century are a close-knit club with a strong focus on keeping hang gliding options available in their neck of the woods. What’s even more impressive is their focus on supporting hang glider pilots across the country. Several members named the annual TTT Team Challenge as one of the club’s biggest contributions to the sport. And no wonder: The Team Challenge is an amazing teaching/learn-ing event that partners the country’s best cross-country hang pilots with up-and-coming pilots who’d like to develop their flying and XC skills. Ollie Gregory says,

“It is the best mentoring format I know of to help intermediate pilots get safer and

[above] Don Guess won the drawing to make the first flight from the western bluff along the Sequatchie Valley, December 18, 1977. [below] Waiting on launch, at the red line, in windy conditions. Photos by Tim Cocker.

learn how to fly XC. Some of the very best hang gliding educators anywhere volun-teer to help us provide top-notch seminars and critiques. Most importantly, Tim Cocker’s video launch seminar has helped many pilots recognize and hopefully correct marginal launch techniques. It is a great format for improving your flying skills and having a lot of fun!” Pilots from around the country participate in this weeklong event, and even when the flying conditions are less than stellar, it seems everyone goes back to their home sites infused with an impressive increase in knowledge, skills, enthusiasm and excitement. Even better, Team Challenge organizer Ollie Gregory says, “We have some money donated by the FFF to help qualified pilots to participate in the 2012 Team Challenge and learn about how to run a cool comp like TTT’s TC. We will provide free entry fees to anyone who is an advanced pilot with home club approv-al to come and learn about TC with intent to try something like it at their home site.” If you’re interested and qualified, contact Ollie at [email protected].

Another theme that was frequently sounded was the club’s proactive relation-ships with the people in the Sequatchie Valley who are impacted by the presence of hang gliding. To quote many of the pilots who answered my emails, “We emphasize being friendly, courteous and grateful when we land on their property, or meet them in town. We try to em-phasize use of known, friendly landing fields so as to not wear out the non-flying neighbors. We’re quick to identify and disseminate DNL (do not land) locations and work with other clubs and flyers in Sequatchie Valley to assure the best possible local relations. We do ‘favorite neighbor’ gifts during the holidays. We are pretty well known and accepted, since the city of Dunlap describes itself as ‘The Hang Gliding Capitol of the East.’ Tennessee Tree Toppers is a member of the local Chamber of Commerce. We are also active in the community, and recently donated projectors to the special-education class in Dunlap.”

http://www.thefloridaridge.com

http://www.thermaltracker.com


If your local club works like mine, you probably found yourself nodding your head on several of the Tree Toppers’ claims to fame and thinking, We do that! Or maybe your club has some unique pro-grams and policies that have cemented the relationship between pilots and your local

non-flying community. The Tennessee Tree Toppers are a stellar example of USHPA hard at work in one small sec-tion of the Northeast. Next on my list of groups to profile is the Hawaii paragliding club that won this year’s USHPA Chapter of the Year award. If your club exemplifies the spirit of USHPA—active involvement with site preservation, land-owner and community relations, pilot safety and skill development, fun activities— send

an email to me at [email protected], and we’ll chat.

Thanks to TTT pilots Michael Bradford,

Tim Cocker, Buddy Cutts, Rob Dallas,

Dean Funk, Ollie Gregory, Dick

Heckman, Channing Kilgore, Steve

Lee, Jeff Nibler, and Dennis Pagen for

providing the facts and the photos

included this article.

C.J. Sturtevant is a H-5/P-5 pilot who’s been accumulating airtime since 1982. She retired from 25 years of teaching middle-school math and science in 2000, and edited this magazine from April 2004 through February 2008. Now she and her husband George are both retired from any high-stress professions, and she enjoys writing articles for the magazine as they travel across the country and around the world on vacations that sometimes involve flying, sometimes not. This article was composed mainly in Yosemite National Park, and worked into final form in the camp area at Andy Jackson Flight Park. The LZ at Marshall has almost all the amenities a traveling writer could desire.

[above] Photo by Dean Funk. [below] Chuck Toth (left) and Dick Stern on that first day, December 18, 1977. Chuck passed away in 2011. Photo by Tim Cocker.

History of The Radial Ramp 1977-2008

In August 1977, it became apparent

that The Tennessee Tree Toppers (TTT)

needed their own flying site. The Henson

Gap site where you are now standing

was purchased in 1978. A large rectan-

gular ramp consistent with the typical

design of the day was erected that fall,

courtesy of TTT founders Dick Stern and

Don Guess. Airflow over the first ramp

created dangerous launching conditions,

demanding a better method and an

innovative solution. A blown launch by

Dennis van Dam, taking Chuck Toth over

the edge, was the beginning of the end

of “The Ramp of Terror”.

A day at Edisto Island in the winter

of 1981 provided the inspiration needed

in the shape of a horseshoe crab placed

on a small dune and facing into the

breeze. Imaginations soared and Dennis

Van Dam immediately returned home to

begin the design process of something

never before imagined—a radial ramp.

The initial budget was authorized April 10,

1982 and dozens of Tree Toppers began

their assigned tasks.

Radial truss construction began

in April 1982 at the old post office in

Wildwood, Georgia. On-site construc-

tion began on May 1 and was completed

on May 10. As we finished decking, we

knew we had created something special.

We exceeded our budget but launches

became pleasurable instead of dreaded,

and the ramp lasted twice as long as

expected.

The ramp and its untreated wood

trusses under the flat section endured

for nine years. Obvious repairs were

needed by 1991. Ironworkers and Tree

Topper members Tom Churay and Casey

Deering led the effort. Tom donated

the steel and Tree Topper volunteers

provided the labor. The project was

completed that March and the steel is in

good shape today.

The natural beauty of the radial ramp

design has been enjoyed by untold num-

bers of pilots and non-pilots, alike, from

across the country and around the world.

The ramp’s longevity and reconstruc-

tion are testaments to the cohesiveness

of the hang gliding community. Every

launch from the ramp is a celebration of

realized dreams…to soar.

Revamp The Ramp

In December 2007, a group of

Tennessee Tree Toppers met to dis-

cuss the deteriorating condition of the

wooden support structure under the

radial portion of the ramp. Jim Lamb

suggested replacing the radial supports

with curved steel struts and installing

new decking. The estimated cost of over

$20,000 was huge. Jim then made a

most incredible challenge. He offered to

match up to $10,000 of the funds raised

by the club for repairing the ramp. The

“Revamp the Ramp” fundraiser took off.

Brainstorming ensued. The board of

directors decided to encourage dona-

tions by offering decking planks “for sale”

for a contribution of $100 each. In just

eight weeks, The Tree Toppers “sold” the

equivalent of 220 planks to Tree Toppers

and friends from all across America and

Canada. With Jim’s matching contribu-

tion, the total raised came to $32,000. S

& H Steel Erectors of Chattanooga won

the bid and installed new steel supports

and concrete footings in a matter of

weeks. TTT decking crews worked fast

and furiously over five weekends, com-

pleting the new ramp in May 2008.

The radial ramp at Henson Gap has

stood resolutely for 26 years. It has

become a hang gliding icon recognized

worldwide for its graceful lines and

forgiving launch characteristics. The

reconstructed ramp should last another

50 years and launch hundreds more

hang glider pilots to soar high above the

Sequatchie Valley. The TTT has thrived

and accomplished so much during its 34

years of continuous operation because of

the vision, dedication, and volunteerism

of its membership. The Tennessee Tree

Toppers can rightfully claim the distin-

guished title of “The Best Hang Gliding

Club in America”.

http://www.flymaster-usa.com


by ErnieBUTLER

Flight ProjectThe Phoenix


I t is zero-dark early on Sunday morning, August 7, 2011—my 58th birthday! So why am I getting up at 4:00 a.m.? I have

an airplane to catch. And this particular plane is whisking fellow North West Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) Chapter member Brent King and me to Sun Valley, Idaho, where we will begin an intense training week—boot camp, if you will—into the exhilarating world of paragliding for disabled folks. You read that right—paraglid-ing. Hopefully, by the end of the week we will be launching into flights off some of the higher hills in that beautiful mountain resort area. Dare I dream—Mt. Baldy?

But before I get too far ahead of myself, I want to tell this story one day at a time, starting at the beginning. We arrived on a glorious Sunday in the mountains of beautiful Sun Valley, Idaho. Brent and I grabbed a cab and headed to Sun Valley Lodge, a renowned mountain resort. After check-ing in, we devoured a delicious buffet lunch over-looking the outdoor ice skating rink and took a short nap before our first team meeting over dinner in downtown Ketchum, Idaho.

After everybody introduced themselves, the Able Pilot team—Rob Sporrer, Chuck Smith, Nick Greece, Mark Gaskill, and Tim Meehan—de-scribed the founding of the program, told us that we were the first disabled novices to be invited to fly the Phoenix “buggy,” and explained the training procedure. We learned that our instruc-tor/tandem pilots were some of the best and most experienced paragliding pilots in the country and that we five veterans were going to have their un-divided attention for a full week. Following dinner,

we were brought back to the lodge and called it an early night. I placed a 4:00 a.m. wakeup call and went to sleep dreaming of getting my knees back in the breeze. As I said at the beginning of this article—one heck of a 58th birthday.

Day 2: Monday. At 5:30 a.m. we were out of the hotel and on the way up the mountain, where we spent the morning doing ground school and towed ground launches, absorbing lots of information. We were intrigued by the Phoenix chair/harness and its design. It’s like flying in a chaise lounge; one feels very comfortable and secure. We returned to our hotel at 2:00 p.m. for a great lunch and then headed out for our first flights. We were told only two of us would launch off Mt. Baldy at approxi-mately 5000 feet above the ground level. We drew straws, and I was one of the two lucky winners.

Driving up Baldy, on a winding, bumpy dirt road along the edge of a severe drop, was an adven-ture in itself. It also reminded me of all the times I had skied down this mountain.

When we reached the top, the Able Pilot guys set up the buggy and loaded us in. My tandem pilot, Nick Greece, is the current Paragliding World Cup Americas’ Champion. He had me go through the entire pre-flight checklist—ensuring all the paraglider’s lines and risers were positioned correctly for launch—as if I were a solo pilot. When we were ready, the two assistants holding the buggy (to prevent it from rolling while we prepared for launch) gave it a push and we rolled into the air within three feet. The launch was so clean and stable that we were immediately flying, turning left along the ridgeline, looking for thermals, gaining altitude as we soared the ridgeline.

[opposite] Test flying the Phoenix in Salt Lake City. [above] Rob Sporrer demonstrating proper hook-in technique.


Within minutes of liftoff, Nick began preparing to turn over control of the canopy to me. We spent a few moments on the twin toggles at first, so I could feel his input with the steering lines. Then he released and let me go. Having taken a fair number of canopy rides in my skydiving days gave me some confidence, but pretty quickly I could discern a few significant differences between the two styles of canopies. A skydiving canopy is strictly a decel-eration device, controllable, but heading inexorably back down to Mother Earth. Paragliding canopies, in contrast, are truly soft-wing aircraft designed to climb thermals and soar. I could immediately

sense our entrance into a thermal and could use it to gain altitude. What a rush! I had not been under a canopy for 16 years, but I quickly felt comfort-able and back home.

Nick continued to teach the entire time we were aloft and gave me plenty of time on the toggles. When he was flying, I could see his steering inputs and hear his explanation for every control input he made.

After 40 minutes in the air, we began our descent back down to the valley floor thousands of feet below. Nick allowed me the simple pleasure of bringing us home; he directed me in doing

[above] Anthony Radovic getting ready to transfer

to practice kiting. [below] Ernie Butler inflating..


controlled “S” turns to bleed some altitude and set us up for our downwind leg, until we were about 500 feet above the ground. Then he took over the controls for our landing, turning us to a base leg and executing a 180-degree turn back on the base leg, with our last turn to final and a nice soft 4-wheel touchdown. Our landing was clean and gentle with a short rollout. My first time back under canopy could not have gone any smoother, and my tandem pilot could not have been a better instructor. This first generation buggy has a lot going for it. It’s comfortable and stable. I felt very secure through the entire flight.

Sun Valley is really a beautiful place to fly. I’m pretty certain God created these hills just for this sport. The folks involved with this program have spent a lot of time and effort in designing and refining a vehicle that truly opens the sport of paragliding to the disabled community. Are the re-finements done? Not by a long shot. But the team is continuously working on them. And right now, we disabled people can realistically look at this sport and realize it has been opened up to us. The skies have always seemed limitless to me and now, even more so. We have three more days; plenty of learning and flying lies ahead for us.

Day 3: Today began again at 5:30 a.m. with a plan to travel south to another training site with low-level rolling launches. Unfortunately, a storm was hovering right over the hill we had planned to use. So we turned around, drove back to Mt. Baldy and got two more of us students, Darrel Kubacz and Anthony Rant, beautiful morning flights. Unfortunately, high winds shut us down before we could get Brent King up for his flight. At this point the decision was made to take a break, have some lunch in Ketchum, and meet again at 3:30 for another classroom session, after which we’d return to the mountain for some evening flying.

I discovered that paragliding has something else in common with skydiving: weather dependency. By evening the weather still was not cooperating enough to allow more high altitude flights. This was bad for Brent, who, by now, was chomping at the bit to get up and fly.

We did, however, put the evening to some good use while waiting to see if conditions would improve enough to allow flight off the top. We all made several towed runs in the buggies, giving us the experience of bringing up the canopy and controlling it over a longer period. Several times

the wind freshened enough to actually let me get wheels up momentarily. These kiting pulls really gave all of us a feel for the canopy under pressure and helped us learn more about controlled toggle inputs.

At this time, I noted another similarity between the two canopy communities: If I had not known I was here to paraglide, I would have sworn I was back on my old home drop zone. The camaraderie among paragliders and skydivers is identical, and the bonds within this group were every bit as strong as any I had felt in the skydiving communi-ty. Better still, we five were being fully welcomed into this camaraderie. All of these people were here to introduce us to their sport and help open this unique world not only to us, but to the entire disabled community. I cannot wait for Day 4!

(To be continued)

[above] Test flying the Phoenix in Salt Lake City.


A s I write this article on the first day of 2012, I think it’s a good time to look back on the progression of hang glider design.

Truth is, glider design generally advances in small increments by necessity—it takes a lot of moxie to come up with a radical new idea, and it’s bad juju to offer it without extensive testing and development. And that costs money. But every once in a while a company or independent designer has the vision or gumption to pursue a new concept and follow it through to fruition. A couple of more recent break-throughs occurred in the ‘90s, with the creation of topless gliders by Gerard Thevenot of La Mouette (France) and the new rigid wings by Felix Rhule of A.I.R. (Germany).

It’s taken a long time, but it appears we may be on the verge of seeing another breakthrough. I am referring to the debut of the Kitty Hawk Boone Flyer that was recently presented to eager onlook-ers at the Soaring 100 event at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, last October. This event celebrated the Wright brothers’ setting their soaring record in 1911 on the Outer Banks dunes. What a fitting time to see, touch and fly a new wing!

HIS-STORY

Way back in the primordial dawn of hang gliding design and manufacturing, we had Bill Bennett’s Delta Wings cranking out gliders on Sepulveda Ave. in Van Nuys, California. Bill, as most of you know, was the Australian who brought the Rogallo wing concept, as developed Down Under, to the US. Bill eventually hired a young design enthusiast with a fertile brain by the name of Dick Boone. Dick was the first to use a radial tip batten layout (now standard on most gliders), which allowed for wider tips and, thus, more docile handling and stall char-acteristics. Dick also designed the Mariah, the first double-surface glider certified. This glider featured the first cable-supported floating crossbar and other innovations.

In the eighties, Dick moved on and started his own company, ProAir. He came out with the Dawn, one of the first topless gliders, using side struts rather than a king post with upper cables. At the time he had to incorporate a system for pitch stabil-ity similar to the sprogs of today’s topless gliders, so the concept was forward thinking.

In 1985, Dick participated in an event to bring

by DennisPAGEN

BOONE FLYERThe Kitty Hawk

[opposite] photo by Nick Greece.


[above] Dick Boone standing with his newest

creation. [below] A closer look at what makes the

Boone flyer work. Photos by Nick Greece.

a little joy to children undergoing cancer treatment. The idea was to give them a taste of the intense expe-rience of personal flight. Dick used a 220-square-foot Dream to loft the kids on a flat-ground flight. The big glider allowed very slow, controlled flight as the “handlers” on each side of the control bar jogged and pulled the glider along. This experience sparked training possibility ideas which have been percolating on Dick’s back burner ever since.

Fast forward to the current era. Dick is now Senior Project Engineer at Cessna Aircraft in Wichita. But he is still dabbling in hang glider design. He has had a concept for a different format hang glider at least since he described it to me some-time in the late eighties. But other obligations got in the way until now. When the back-burner project could no longer be ignored, Dick went knocking on John Harris’s door. Yes, the Grandfather-Mountain-opening, Nags-Head-sand-dunes-preserving,

Morningside-Flight-Park-rescuing, Kitty-Hawk-Kites-owning John Harris. Dick knew his new con-cept would be a boon (pun possibly intended) to the type of slow dune training perfected at Kitty Hawk. John was intrigued and agreed to share funding for the development of what is now called the Kitty Hawk Boone Flyer.

WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?

One of the first things you learn as a marriage partner or hang glider designer is compromise. Managing this compromise is often delicate. For hang glider designers, the balance of weight, strength, handling, stability, performance and cost must always be given attention. For example, the experience of rigid wings shows that we can achieve a bit better performance by paying for it in weight and more expensive materials. What the rigid wing format allows is wider spans (higher aspect ratios) and less twist.

But Dick wondered if we could get some of that rigid wing mojo without resorting to compos-ites and aerodynamic controls. Could we reduce the twist of the typical flexible wing and perhaps improve efficiency? A little drawing board scribbling showed him the possibility. If he could somehow hold down the twist far enough outboard on a flex wing, it should improve that wing’s performance. The idea was to create a more efficient glider so it would fly slower at a given wing loading—slow enough to allow an instructor to walk or jog along-side the glider and give input. Sort of makes you think of paragliding training, doesn’t it?

The realization of Dick’s musings can be seen in the photos. First, we see the glider is a single surface


[above] Jouette Travis taking her debut flight. Note that the instructors are doing little more than slow jogging. Photo by Dennis Pagen.

with a relatively wide nose angle and not much sweep in the trailing edge. Everything else looks conventional, until you peer underneath at the chas-sis. There you see the crossbar is enclosed in a sleeve that is attached to the sail. The crossbar itself is not attached directly to the leading edge, but to a strut that does reach to the leading edge. There are two side cables per side. One goes to the leading edge, as in a normal glider, while the other goes to the outward end of the crossbar. This latter cable holds the crossbar down, which in turn holds down the sail by holding down the sleeve. Take a look at the photo showing a close-up of the rear of the glider in flight. You can see that the trailing edge is fairly flat, unlike conventional single-surface gliders.

The crossbar is not under major compression as it is in a conventional glider. It has mostly bending loads on it that are distributed along its length, so it can be of smaller diameter than a normal crossbar (a weight savings). Also, since the Flyer doesn’t rely on outward sail tension to achieve washout control, even the leading edges can be a bit less beefy or porky. In some of the photos you can see there is a sweep wire routing from the nose to the outboard junction on the crossbar. This cable keeps the wings open when the center of the crossbar is pulled back. This feature, along with the spar (crossbar) semi-parallel to the leading edge, is conventional airplane construction (and was also used in the rigid wing Fledgling hang gliders of yesteryear). Once the crossbar holdback cable is detached, folding of the glider proceeds as normal. You couldn’t identify anything unusual in a packaged Boone Flyer.

FLYING THE ProoF oF CoNCEPT

Along with many other Soaring 100 attendees, I got to fly the Flyer. I’d like to say I reached great heights and distant vistas, but I can’t. I did do what the glider meant for me to do. Take off at a walk, float a few feet above the ground with a smile, fly forever over a flat, flat nearly-non slope and land with aplomb long after propriety and physics say I should have. OK, the wind was coming right at me, and the instructors were pulling along at first (part of the plan for training), but they soon released me, and I floated along high on life, if not in actual ground clearance. The glider simply flew slowly and efficiently. I note that at one point, when I was milking distance, a wing caught a little turbulence. I made a correction and it straightened right out (this can be seen in a photo sequence I have). Others

had the same control experience, as shown in several photo sequences.

Another thing I noted both in the flight and from photos is that the Flyer will go to a very high attitude without stalling. Some pilots got the nose up very high without its doing the conven-tional rapid loss of airspeed; it kept chugging along. Perhaps the glider would stall eventually, but it sure is forgiving. The Flyer’s ability to go to a high angle of attack without stalling is due to its forward shifting airfoil, according to Dick. The highpoint of the airfoil’s camber moves forward as the front part of the sail is loaded, which helps the glider hang on the nose. This effect is not unlike that of the Atlas (a glider from the late ‘70s with a single surface, a very far forward airfoil camber and a super sink rate) or the Princeton Sailwing (a sail without battens that would change camber with angle of attack).

Even though none of us got more than six or


[above] Bruce Weaver helps take a student for a

test run | photo by Nick Greece.

seven feet off the ground, I have seen pictures of the glider flying much higher. It will turn. The Flyer has some of the construction of a rigid wing, but there are a few wrinkles that make it different. Besides the relatively loose sail, there is a little Boone trick. The side cable that goes out to hold down the crossbar is actually attached to a sleeve that can slide sideways on the base tube. This sleeve will move when you shift your weight sideways, so that it, in effect, warps the wing. Here’s the sequence: You want to turn left? Shift your weight left, which slides the sleeve right, which pulls down on the left side of the wing. The left side is essentially twisted down more, while the right side is twisted up more, as the side cable is slackened on that side. Note that this effect is the opposite of that by which ailerons

turn an airplane (right aileron down for left turn). That’s because such an application of control on an airplane requires a good deal of rudder to offset adverse yaw. But the combination of weight-shift left and an increase of the angle of attack on the left should produce the desired results. I suspect Dick will have to experiment a bit with some leverage setups to achieve the true dream-handling we would all like, but the potential is there. He has already added bungees or springs to the base tube slider that help it center, and he’s exploring more possibilities.

THE FUTURE PRESENT

The glider we flew at Kitty Hawk is the proof-of-concept wing. Already Dick has produced the


[above] Hooking-in, in Kitty Hawk | photo by Nick Greece.

second generation of the glider. There are refine-ments to the frame and sail. The photo I have shows that, instead of a sleeve, the crossbar holds the sail down through straps at each batten station. These straps may be adjusted in development to test differ-ent washout or twist patterns. Also, Dick says he is arranging the base tube system differently to allow more movement of the wing. We should note that, theoretically, such a system could relieve a gust on one side of the wing by letting the sail equalize au-tomatically. According to Dick, he has been able to get some savings on the airframe and has shaved 15 pounds off the first version. The new glider weighs 55 pounds. Weight watchers move over!

But those of us longing for more performance with convenience should hope that Dick continues

his development to bring us a high-performance glider as well. It could probably be based on the current gliders with just a little bit of help in the glide department by holding the twist down way outboard. I have always felt it is a better idea to hold twist out with a scheme similar to Dick’s, rather than with pure sail tension and the high forces involved (a couple of my own designs went this route). It would also be simple to add a VG to such a system by allowing the side cables to be reeled in or out a bit, thereby changing the twist on both sides. Dialing in a whole bunch of twist would create a docile wing for landing and handling, while pulling it out would make a flat glider. All of us drag-busters dream of such capabilities.

I f the Kitty Hawk Boone Flyer keeps flying, we will be reporting on it, for it may be the breakthrough we need to make the introduc-

tion of hang gliding appropriate for many situations. In Dick’s words, “The Boone Flyer is not designed to replace the normal training glider. It is designed to introduce hang gliding to a vastly larger portion of the population and provide individuals the joy of gliding flight.” It can be flown on flat ground with escorts trotting by the control bar, so mall parking lots and other gathering spots can be turned into demo arenas.

By the time you read this, the 2012 training season will be about to begin. If we are lucky, if the stars align, if there is cosmic justice, it will be a breakthrough year. It will be the year of the Kitty Hawk Boone Flyer.

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INTroDUCTIoN

T hermals fascinate me. I’ve only scratched the surface in understanding them and am no

thermaling expert, but I’ll share some observations that I hope will be help-ful, especially for the typical pilot, who doesn’t fly every week, hasn’t logged countless thermaling hours, and doesn’t fly competitively.

My first decade of thermaling was frustrating. I lost many thermals, rarely gained 1000 feet in one thermal, and sank out quickly in thermal-only condi-tions. Thankfully, I eventually learned some techniques, including a simple practical tip, that significantly improved my thermaling.

Sadly, some pilots give up flying due to thermaling frustration. Others don’t quit entirely, but miss out on the great fun of thermaling and the extra airtime, altitude, and freedom to roam that good

thermaling skills make possible. I hope to help make thermaling a little easier, and, thus, make flying more enjoyable for you!

DISCovErY

“There’s a way to do better… find it.” - Thomas Edison

I blamed my mediocre thermaling on bad luck, gremlins, the govern-ment—anything but me. I eventually decided, though, to consider the remote possibility that the problem was me and pondered what I might be doing wrong. My best theory was that thermals weren’t as elusive, snaky, or demon-possessed as I thought, and gave up the idea that I’d do better by basically flying steady circles, largely ignoring the “chop.”

And so I decided to test this crazy theory. After a decade of doing otherwise, choosing to not immediately react to a blast of stronger lift while circling wasn’t easy. Everything in me screamed, “Chase

it now!”The results of these experiments were

surprising. One circle after encounter-ing a surge in lift strength, the surge was usually GONE! The more I experienced this, the easier it got to resist the tempta-tion to react immediately to surges, and the better my thermaling got. And so I found, with much injury to my ego, that the problem was indeed me. I had been chasing surges when I’d have done better to ignore them.PoST-DISCovErY FLYING

The lesson learned was well worth the ego scars. I lost far fewer thermals and was more relaxed (physically and mentally) in flight. I converted from “aerobatic ther-maling” to “grandma thermaling” and had much better results. Before, many of my control inputs while thermaling were vigorous maneuvers to chase surges and re-find lost thermals. Now, though, about 90% of my thermaling control inputs are

by EricCARDEN

Work the SurgeThermaling:


simply small adjustments to hold a steady bank angle and airspeed. And even the other 10% are fairly mild-mannered. It’s sort of like steering a car down a highway: mostly just small inputs to stay where you want to be.

Before, I was more anxious in ther-mals because I was constantly afraid I was about to lose them. When I find a thermal now, I’m calmer and confident I can stay in it. And because staying in it is easier, I’m free to look around, pick my next destination, sip some water, or take a short nap (well… almost).

Because my thermaling improved, cross-country flying got much easier. Before, I hadn’t crossed the Tennessee River (or Lake Guntersville), 20 miles downwind of my home site, although I had tried plenty of times. It’s difficult to go far (without ridge lift) when you can’t stay in any thermal very long. After this change, I crossed the river/lake twice in less than a year—once making the site’s second-longest flight. Both times, I landed only because the lift diminished, once due to approaching sunset and, another time, after flying beyond the area of good clouds.

PrACTICAL APPLICATIoN

OK, enough testimony. I mentioned a simple practical tip, so I guess I’d better deliver. I found that temptingly strong lift-surges within reasonably well-estab-lished thermaling circles are often very small and/or short-lived and that chasing them significantly increased my thermal loss rate. So I formed a simple rule:

The Check-twice Rule: If you’re circling in a thermal and hit stronger

lift, hold bank angle and airspeed steady, until you complete another circle and find the stronger lift still there.

After my thermaling improved, I re-laxed this rule a bit, but I still don’t chase surges as aggressively as before. Many pilots may thermal best by strictly fol-lowing this rule, while more experienced pilots can benefit slightly from working surges more aggressively. Even experts are slower to chase surges, though, when they want to minimize their risk of losing a sufficiently organized thermal.

I believe the check-twice rule is a good compromise that should keep you from losing more than 10 to 20% of thermals and sacrifices only a little climb-rate po-tential. This small cost can be significant in racing, but for recreational flying, it usually doesn’t mean much.

oUTSMArT YoUrSELF

The mind is an amazing thing, but sometimes it lies—ask any instrument-rated pilot! In a well-centered circle in a smooth, ideal thermal, your climb rate is constant all the way around. In the real world, there are usually some bumps, but it’s common enough to approach this ideal.

Your eyes can’t sense that you’re climbing, unless you’re low and climbing quickly. In any other case, the only cues that you’re climbing are your instruments. Especially in a smooth thermal, your mind may “recalibrate” so that the vario sound seems to say you’re barely climb-ing, even if you’re climbing nicely.

To combat this effect, glance at your vario whenever in this situation. I don’t often look at my vario in flight, but I

look when in this situation—and am usually pleasantly surprised by what I see. If you don’t handle this situation well, you’ll find any surge more tempting.

SUrGE SCIENCE

A major reason we have trouble visual-izing thermals (other than the fact that they’re invisible!) is that real-world thermals often fail to fit our “textbook” drawings, few of which reflect random variation or the passage of time very well. A lift surge is one such difficult-to-draw animal.

A lift surge is just a brief—and often abrupt—increase in lift strength inside a thermal. Surges are sort of like moles in the Whack-a-Mole game: They have random timing and locations and don’t stay around long. The randomness in the shape of a building cumulus cloud and the chaos within a smoke plume are somewhat similar, too.

I suspect that the typical cause of a surge is a small bubble of faster-rising air moving up through a thermal, as shown in the (unrealistically tidy, of course) sequence above. (The little speck is a glider.) To see this sequence in motion,


go to http://ti-nyurl.com/6ts487z or scan this barcode with your smart phone.

Below you'll find a figure showing one notion of a theoretical, or “Ideal,” thermal-strength profile along with a slightly perturbed possible real-world profile with a surge at “B.” It’s critical to note that this “Real” profile is a snapshot in time. In the time it takes to fly one circle, the surge will often be gone.

Imagine that this thermal held this profile long enough to fly halfway around

a well-centered circle (touching points “A” and “B”). While flying from “A” to “B,” climb rate would increase 200 fpm.

On the previous page you can see a sequence of strength profiles (at a fixed altitude) showing the effect of a small faster-rising bubble of air moving up through a thermal. The entire sequence often takes only 20 seconds or so.

And how common are surges? I agree with the “Master+” pilots (see chart - op-posite page) from a 92-pilot (hang glider and paraglider, mostly from the eastern U.S.) December 2011 online survey I conducted. This chart seems to show pilots starting out with one idea and

eventually coming to a different under-standing, given enough experience. This suggests that the frequency of surges isn’t intuitively obvious and that we don’t pass this knowledge down from experts to beginners.

I consider this a key thermaling concept, because if you underestimate the frequency of surges, you’re likely to misinterpret more surges as larger, more permanent phenomena, leading to more lost thermals (see below chart). Underestimation of surge frequency can also cause you to underestimate your thermal loss rate, since many thermals you deem “unkeepable” (and thus don’t count as “lost”) could actually be plenty usable. You may just be losing them by pursuing surges. I speak from ample experience!

BrAINS ovEr BrAWN

It took me ten years to figure out, but the thermaling pilot is more like a chess player than a football player. You don’t need to fight the thermal as much as you need to figure it out. Intellect, observa-tion, analysis, and patience are more important than strength and agility. Physical strength and abrupt maneuver-ing aren’t necessary in order to stay in the vast majority of thermals. In fact, watch a top pilot thermal, and you may not be able to tell he’s making adjustments at all. Thermal smarter, not harder.

TUrN rEvErSALS

I believe that many turn reversals are made chasing lift surges. One especially reversal-prone scenario is when a surge occurs outside your established circle, in which case the surge lifts your outer wing. Conventional wisdom says to turn toward the lifted wing, so it’s tempting to reverse your turn. More often than not, though, this reversal jettisons you right out the side of the thermal (especially likely in narrow thermals) into sink. This makes the thermal seem trickier than it really is, costs altitude as you dive “over

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the falls,” and disorients you. Odds are good that you’ll lose the thermal.

I used to reverse turns too often, but I almost never reverse them now. I even had one post-“conversion” ultra-weak (45 fpm average) late-day thermal in which I made right-hand circles for 45 continu-ous minutes! If you’ve circled a few times in a row in one direction and suddenly think you need to reverse your turn, think again. A turn reversal is almost always too large an adjustment. While expert pilots regularly work lift surges, they rarely reverse turns.

FroM CHUMP To CHAMP

This discussion largely relates to skills development, and our eagerness and impatience can make it difficult to accept that expert skills are neither developed overnight nor maintained without practice.

“Anything in life worth having is worth working for.”

- Andrew Carnegie

How well one works surges affects two key thermaling metrics: thermal loss rate and average climb rate. Skillful surge-working is needed to reach an elite level in either metric, but I believe you can get both metrics to 80-90% of

“elite” relatively quickly, without bend-ing the check-twice rule. If you try to

work surges more aggressively but do so unskillfully, both metrics are likely to go down the toilet.

A less-experienced pilot may not yet be comfortable with thermal turbulence, a spinning world beneath him, higher altitudes, or traffic. He may also be preoccupied with landing or even basic glider control or stability, especially if he prematurely jumped into a higher-performance glider. Working surges can easily cause mental overload for such a pilot, making it likely he’ll lose the thermal. Experienced and frequent-flyer pilots are more relaxed and comfortable in thermals (and their gliders) and can thus work surges more without reaching mental overload.

If a beginner starts out with an ag-gressive surge-working approach, he’ll probably lose a lot of thermals and suffer much frustration, but given enough practice, he may eventually catch on (although I hadn’t after ten years). You’ll never learn to work surges well, though, if you never practice. So I recommend gradually training yourself to work surges. Any time you’re willing to risk losing your thermal, consider practicing. And when you’re low, where thermals are typically narrower and less organized, you may have no other viable option.

Pilot personality is a factor, but don’t be hamstrung by your own personality. We’d often have better results by doing what doesn’t come naturally. How often

you fly and how much you’ve invested in this flight (time off work, gas money, etc.) are factors, too. The more rare or costly the flight, the more likely you’ll be disappointed if you sink out. And assessing whether your current amount of surge-chasing is optimum for you largely depends on your level of thermal-ing satisfaction. But beware, it’s easy to grow complacent or not know that more satisfaction is yours for the taking.

Progress often involves risk, and to test whether you’re really optimizing your surge-working, you must risk losing a thermal or some climb rate. Whether you’re testing a more conservative or a more aggressive approach, you’ll feel the risk. I felt considerable risk (of losing even more thermals) as I tested my crazy theory (by flying less aggressively).

And you can only be so good at work-ing surges given a fixed understanding, amount of experience, flight frequency, etc. Know your limitations, set realistic expectations, and enjoy developing your skills, even if you never quite become

“champ.”

TrACK ANALYSIS

Study your GPS track from a thermaling flight and look at some thermals. Your memory may lie, but your track never will. Good thermaling tracks generally look pretty simple—never-reversing circles stretching out straight downwind.


You may see slight stretching, bunching, or bending as small adjustments were made (or as the thermal or wind changed). But good tracks typically look pretty boring. If your tracks look messy, then you may be flying too aggressively. Below is the track of my 45-minute, 66-circle, half-marathon thermal.

rELATED ToPICS

A few topics bear mentioning before I wrap up. There’s no room here to discuss thermal centering in much more depth, but if you’d be happy to thermal almost as well as the pros, I recommend the simple 270 method. That is, after decid-ing to move your circle toward the side of the circle you’re on now, wait 270°, level out for a few seconds, and then resume the former bank angle. This method requires minimal focus, keeps circle adjustments manageably small, and avoids overly frequent adjustments—all desirable characteristics of a typical-pilot strategy tailored to maximize thermal retention.

Also, you may have noticed my advice to thermal by basically keeping a constant bank angle and airspeed. This approach works well for the vast majority of thermals. In fact, I can’t remember the last thermal in which it didn’t work well.

And last, with a soaring simulator, you can practice work-ing (or ignoring) surges even when grounded. For example, the Condor simulator has a thermal turbulence setting that controls the frequency and magnitude of surges. Track analysis is simpler with Condor, too, as you can study a track immediately after working a thermal and without having to fly with a GPS receiver or connect it to a computer.

CoNCLUSIoN

In-thermal lift surges are more common than most pilots think, and not expecting frequent surges will likely cost you thermals. Chasing surges generally increases the risk of losing thermals (especially if done via turn reversals!), but surge-working is a skill you’ll need in the toughest few thermals, or to climb more than about 90% as quickly as the pros. Your ideal amount of surge-chasing depends on your skill level, flight frequency, and what you want out of each flight. Experiment, find your optimum point on the conservative-aggressive continuum, and reevaluate occasionally.

For beginners or anyone losing 25% or more of thermals (and frustrated with this high a loss rate), I believe that the following simple thermaling approach will be quite satisfying:

1. Hold a constant bank angle and airspeed (except during adjustments).

2. Use the check-twice rule to decide when adjustments are needed.

3. Use the 270 method to make any needed adjustments.One of the most common questions beginners ask about


thermals is, “How do I find them?” However, learning about the nature of surges and changing to a more conserva-tive thermaling style helped me far more than knowing where to find thermals. After all, when I was chasing surges too aggressively, any thermal I found was likely to soon be lost. And many more thermals are accidentally found than are accidentally kept. The fewer thermals you lose, the fewer you must find. And often, if you don’t climb enough in this thermal, you can’t reach another one— even if you know exactly where it is!

While my changes in technique and theory have served me well, perhaps the best lesson I learned was how to approach self-improvement in general. Take an honest look in the mirror, set your ego

aside, be willing to change, experiment, and don’t give up. Also, be patient as you gain skill, and be aware that for typical pilots, especially beginners, pro tactics may yield poorer results than easier tactics.

Happy ponderings and experimen-tation, and may your thermaling and overall enjoyment of flying be everything it can be!

Thanks to those who took the online

survey and to those who gave me your

thoughts on this topic via other means.

Your input helped. To participate in a

new survey for a possible future article,

go to http://tinyurl.com/89m3fgr or

scan this barcode.

Eric is a mechanical and aerospace engineer and H4/P2 pilot in Huntsville, Alabama. He started hang gliding in 1993 and has since also flown paragliders and powered ultralights, serving as an instructor in vari-ous aircraft types. He also created “Cross-Country Soaring,” a program that created more realistic thermals for Microsoft Flight Simulator (see the November 2006 issue of this magazine).


by Chris Hilliardphotos by Jerome Maupoint

POSITIONINGThe Sprint Evo joins the original Sprint, released in 2009, and the lightweight Sprint X-Alps as EN B offerings in Gin’s line-up. The Sprint Evo, released in April 2011, may share the Sprint name, but the assertion that this is a completely new glider is backed up by a list of incor-porated features and other changes. As stated in Gin’s literature, the most notable change is the adoption of their latest design features, materials, and construc-tion passed down from comp-wing development. The Sprint Evo is targeted at intermediate and advanced pilots who want the performance benefits of cutting-edge design and modern features, without sacrificing the security of the EN B class.

WhAT GIN SAYS AbOUT ThE SPRINT EvO The Sprint Evo is an intermediate wing built with completely new technology and is suitable for local soaring or cross-country. The GIN design team has drawn on their many years of experience to pro-duce a wing that is uniquely in tune with the needs of today’s pilots. The Sprint Evo offers outstanding security and top performance, combined with precise and dynamic handling. This allows the pilot to accurately feel the sensations of flight, and, thus, develop an active flying style. Rapid progression up the learning curve is enabled as the pilot becomes acquaint-ed with the myriad of different move-ments and moods of the air. The Sprint Evo will allow a pilot to experience the full pleasure of free flight without ever compromising his or her safety.

WhAT’S IN ThE bAGThe Sprint Evo comes with Gin’s stan-dard 160-liter rucksack. Made using Kodra™ fabric (the Korean equivalent of Cordura™) for its high tear strength and abrasion resistance, this is a rucksack that should last at least as long as the glider! The pack itself is well designed, with easily accessed storage pockets and a main U-shaped zip on the main compartment that reduces zipper stress and makes getting it closed easy, even when fully stuffed. The compression system is functional and constructed of Hypalon® that, while heavy, is very durable and won’t blow out of the seams. The suspension (shoulder straps, hip belt, load stabilizers) are well designed, and the pack carries reasonably well. The attention to detail and quality is evident in the pack, which is typical for Gin. Not

SprintGin


all glider packs are created equal. This is a pretty good one.

Also included: Speed bar, storage stuff sack, Velcro packing strap, leading-edge packing strap, repair tape, owner’s manual on a USB drive, and a tiny wind-sock for your key-ring or rearview mirror.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS The details of the glider are those you would expect to see incorporated into a modern high-performance design. The wing is a 4-liner, but the risers are made using the narrow 12mm Kevlar webbing seen on the higher performance wings in the Gin line. Gin uses high quality Harken pulleys on the speed systems, puts swivels on the brakes, and uses magnetic brake keepers. All compo-nents make use easy and comfortable. The upper lines on the Sprint Evo are

unsheathed, which is another difference from the original Sprint. Gin stresses that patterning refinement was a significant part of the wing’s development in their marketing, and the results of their efforts are evident. The wing is very clean as a result. It should not go without saying that Gin has a great reputation for qual-ity and attention to detail in manufactur-ing.

There are Rigifoil™ battens in the leading edge that extend well along the

top surface away from the leading edge and create lots of structure in the glider. Due to this, Gin has suggested a packing method that is pictured in the manual, as well as in a video on their website. It’s quick, easy, and gives good protection to the leading-edge reinforcements. The internal construction (cell dividers, di-agonals) uses a combination of noticeably lightweight materials, which likely offsets the weight of the battens and contrib-utes to the overall feel of the glider. The

“Gin stresses that patterning refinement

was a significant part of the wing’s

development in their marketing, and the

results of their efforts are evident.”

SprintGin


trailing edge has partial battens and uses metal rings to control gathering. Gin says both contribute to the handling and a clean profile throughout the brake range.

ON ThE GROUNd Kiting the Sprint Evo was fun and easy

in a wide range of conditions. The wing comes up smoothly and predictably in all conditions and settles nicely over the pilot. In addition to the primary benefit of collapse resistance in flight, the ad-ditional structure in the leading edge makes building a wall and inflating the glider out of a bundle easier. In really light conditions, the pilot needs to take care when bringing the glider down, as the weight of the long battens in the leading edge can cause it to fall toward the pilot. This is no big deal, but is worth noting if you are making a switch from a wing without leading-edge battens. The Sprint Evo has a light feeling and comes up surprisingly easily in weak conditions. As a result, forward-launch behavior was good, requiring minimal effort to get the wing flying. In stronger wind, the behavior was also very predictable and overshooting was not a big issue.

IN ThE AIRIt says something that Gin has chosen to lead off their marketing description of this wing by invoking the pucker factor of testing the glider in 9m/s thermals. If the design intent was to develop a glider that is comfortable to fly in a wide range of conditions, then Gin has succeeded. I was lucky to fly the wing in a range of conditions in both ridge and thermal lift. The wing has a very solid feel overall. Brake pressure is moderate and becomes progressively more firm through the range of travel, without losing sensa-tion of feedback. The glider wants to stay overhead, but without being so damped that you can’t feel the air, even

in light conditions. It performed well in light stuff, with enough sensitivity and feedback to find the lift and then scratch out 200fpm in flat 360s. In stronger conditions, with small punchy cores, getting the wing into tight, banked turns without throwing away all the climb per-formance with heavy braking was pretty straightforward. Transitioning to the glide, the speed bar is easy to engage and acceleration is smooth and noticeable, giving the wing a sporty feel on the bar. I found the whole speed range comfortably usable. Quarter-to-half bar when gliding was my norm; beyond 2/3 bar, the con-sequences in terms of increased sink rate were predictable. The feel of the glider when accelerated is still very stable, and pitch control with the bar was usable. On ridge days, it’s an enjoyable glider to fly. The wing responds to committed inputs and is happy flying big, fun wingovers, once you give it a little encouragement.

O verall, the Sprint EVO is certainly a joy to fly. I was impressed with the materials,

modern design and clean construction and found no unruly surprises on the ground or in the air. Gin has created a product that will give a wide range of pilots a wing that is secure and fun, with performance that they will feel comfort-able using.

[right] Jerome Maupoint snaps a shot in the Aravis range in France.


by John Heiney

A fter developing and certifying three sizes of North Wing’s excel-lent Freedom line of high-per-

formance single-surface gliders, company owner Kamron Blevins informs me that he’s working on a Freedom tandem. I said: “Kamron. You already make the best tandem glider in the World, the T-2. Why

spend the money and considerable effort to develop and certify a new one?”

He said, “Well, if we can make a better one, why not?” How could I argue with that?

The new 220 Freedom Tandem is here, and what a glider it is. It has the cool Freedom lines with curved tips. It has the Freedom way-light handling. It has the reluctant sink rate of a Freedom. It is certi-

fied to carry up to 500 pounds of human-ity. And it excels at the most important characteristic of a tandem wing: It is easy to land.

In fact, one drawback to owning a Freedom is that you might need to slightly re-learn how to land. Like all the Freedoms, this thing does not want to stop flying. On your first few flights you will need to be careful not to flare too early.

Freedom TandemNorth Wing


When I first set it up and walked down to launch, I noticed some extra tail-heaviness. It does have a more encompassing reflex bridle than the T-2 tandem. After David Beardslee flew it, he suggested moving the top of the control bar rearward an inch. That would help with the static balance and give more room for the hang-strap adjustment for trim. It would also allow a little more push-out for the flare.

I e-mailed Kamron with that info and he shot back a message: “I will make the change right away.”

The 220 Freedom Tandem weighs like a topless, so it’s a little heavy for a skinny foot-launch tandem pilot like me. But normal men will not mind the weight, especially when they understand why it’s heavier.

First, it is made of 6061-T6. That’s

good, because replacement spars are cheaper and domestically available. Second, the pitch requirements have gotten more stringent. When you hold up more of the trailing edge for better pitch stability, you need a stronger airframe for the negative tests. Third, the sail is made from 4.8-ounce cloth (instead of the normal 3.8) for better heavy-load durability and longevity.

Kamron had sold T-2s to some Rio pilots who do tandem after tandem all day long, day after day, in the hot Brazillian sun. After a few months of this torture, the gliders were flying like rags. The Rio pilots complained, so Kamron sent replacement sails made of 4.8-ounce Dacron. Turns out the glid-ers with the new, heavier cloth fly great for years. With that experience behind him, it was an easy decision to make the new Tandem Freedom out of the heavy cloth for longevity, safety and customer satisfaction.

There are good reasons for making a glider from 6061-T6. This tubing is

domestically available and costs less. There is one very nice thing about a glider made of 6061-T6. If you are mechani-cally inclined and you need to replace a spar, you can buy your own American-made tube, cut and drill it, and have your glider back together in no time.

There are some heavy pilots who have been waiting for the next-bigger-sized Freedom so they can improve their sink rate. The F-220 certainly handles sweetly, but it might be a little heavy for all but the most yeti-like plus-sized pilots. It’s a personal decision whether the benefits of some extra weight are worth it. Kamron might be persuaded to make a lighter ver-sion available for solo flying.

A Freedom 220 “light” would be more expensive, since it would have a 7075-T6 cross spar. It would have the normal 3.8-ounce sailcloth and maybe a few other weight-savers.

The pitch pressure on the old T-2 tandem from North Wing was close to being too light, in my opinion. In fact, I would bend a little reflex in the four root

$24.50$9.50$8.00

$24.50$8.00

[left] Paris Williams, PhD flying the Freedom 220 towards a landing at Stinson Beach. [below] Paris Williams hooked in and waiting for a cycle at Mount Tamalpais State Park north of San Francisco | photos by John Heiney.

http://www.hallwindmeter.com


ribs (two per side), just to get a little more pressure.

The Freedom pitch pressure is not that light, but it is light—light enough to be easy to speed around with. That is a cool feature in a tandem wing when introduc-ing new people to hang gliding. It is obvi-ous to me that paragliding is the easiest way to take people flying. The main thing that separates hang gliding from paragliding is speed. I tell my passengers:

“Here’s what Jonathan Livingston Seagull meant when he said, ‘I enjoy speed.’” Then I have them pull in as far as they can. I enjoy the smiles.

The 220 has 1.25” .058 downtubes, which make a more reliable slender column strut. I find the added size of the downtubes to be barely noticeable and not a problem for comfort in ground handling or take-off and landing.

Steve Stackable is a long-time Torrey

Pines hang glider tandem pilot and, by the way, a former Supercross Champion. Steve has used a 220 Dream for many years, before recently getting one of the new Wills Wing tandem gliders. He has done six tandems on the Freedom now, and, after the last one, he was heard saying “…anyone want to buy a Wills tandem?” He also said that the Freedom 220 is obviously better in sink rate than any other tandem wing, with more speed and better glide.

Stack has become a master at taking people tandem in light ridge lift. He feels the Freedom will allow him to take the

“round boys” in lighter conditions and still get back in on top.

I have been teaching people to fly for the last ten years. Most of my students learn how to turn a hang glider on their first solo sled run off the mountain. I don’t use tandem instruction as a major component of my training program. I feel that the weight-shift controlling of a hang glider is intuitive enough that most can learn it by themselves in their first

few mountain flights. That’s how most of us dinosaurs learned.

But if someone is having trouble keeping the glider going straight, even after doing their hundred beginner-slope flights, I will do a tandem before sending them off a higher launch. I find the Freedom 220 to be a great glider for tandem instruction. It seems more like the easy, intuitive control of flying solo on a single-surface glider, even though you are tandem.

My girlfriend, who weighs 108 pounds, is having a fairly easy time learn-ing to control the Freedom tandem in the smooth air at Torrey Pines, with my 150 pounds as her passenger. Our total hook-in is only about 275.

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I let 4-time (‘01, ‘02, ‘03, and ‘05) US National Champion Paris Williams do a tandem on the glider. He makes his living doing tandems, mostly in the Bay Area. He launched in a light thermal cycle that he had to wait for, and landed in “light and variable” (basically zero)

[above] Hang gliding enthusiast Hitomi Naito flying the Freedom 220 at the Torrey Pines Golf Course | photo by John Heiney.

wind. He said, “That’s the easiest han-dling tandem glider I have ever flown.”

Paris has flown the North Wing T-2 Tandem for some years. He said, “I have always found it to be among the best per-forming tandem gliders. This Freedom seems to be significantly better in sink

and glide.”The new Freedom Tandem is a big,

strong glider with light control pressures and better performance. I feel this glider gives the student the closest experience to what it will be like to fly solo, of any tandem glider to date. I think it will soon

be the standard for tandem instruction. The tow parks will love this wing. Set up with landing gear, it will be a workhorse that will allow pilots the freedom to do more flights in a day without fatigue. I feel the Freedom 220 marks a new era in two-place ultralight soaring.

GALLERY


What a day to soar Mt. Bachelor! | photo by Dana Margosian. [opposite top]

Chris Santacroce snaps a shot in Mexico. [bottom] Faris

Alaboudy is cheered on by his two children, Alia and Mark,

at Inspo/Squaw Peak in Utah | photo by Karin Alaboudy. [previous page] Flying Mt.

Bachelor, Oregon | photo by Dana Margosian.


Dean Funk of the Tennessee Tree Toppers. [below] Photo by Dan

Tuckwiller. [opposite] Photos by Everard Cunion.


Chris Santacroce over Valle de Bravo. [opposite top & bottom] Chris Santacroce gets a few photos during one of Superfly's tours to Valle de Bravo, Mexico. [next page] A gaggle forms on a clear day at Mt. Bachelor | photo by Dana Margosian.


USHPA SANCTIONED COMPETITION

HG aPriL 14-20 Rob Kells Memorial Competition / USHPA Sanctioned Hang Gliding Race-to-goal Regional Competition. Located at the Florida Ridge. H4 or foreign equivalent, aerotow rating, XC and turbulence signoffs, extensive aerotow experience on the glider flown in the competition, and a 3D GPS. Registration: 12/14-3/14. Entry fee $250, tow fees $375. Trophies to be awarded. More information: James Tindle, 786-417-8778, [email protected].

HG aPriL 22-28 Flytec Race and Rally / USHPA Sanctioned Hang Gliding Race-to-goal Competition. Starting at the Florida Ridge Flight Park. H4 or foreign equivalent, aerotow rating, XC & turbulence signoffs, extensive aerotow experience on the glider flown in the competition, and a 3D GPS. Registration: 12/14-3/22. Entry fee: $300, tow fees: TBA. Trophies and day prizes. More information: Jamie Shelden, 831-261-5444, [email protected], or flytecraceandrally.wordpress.com.

HG June 3-8 East Coast Hang Gliding Championship / USHPA Sanctioned Hang Gliding Race-to-goal Competition. Highland Aerosports Flight Park, Maryland. Pilots need a GPS, a H4 rating, or H3 with meet director approval, XC, Turb, AT ratings, previously flown in USHPA aerotow comp or have written approval prior to registering from the safety director. Pilots must have successfully aerotowed their glider model in competition conditions at least 10 times. USHPA H3 & USHPA membership with aerotow sign-off required at least 7 days prior to start of the meet. Prize money TBD by entries. More information: Highland Aerosports, 410-634-2700, [email protected], or www.aerosports.net.

PG June 17-23 Rat Race/Sprint National Paragliding Competition / USHPA Sanctioned Paragliding Race-to-goal National Championship. Woodrat Mtn., Ruch, OR. Pilots need a P3 with USHPA radio frequencies. There will be two independently scored groups in the event with each side having stand alone NTSS points. Rat Race will carry the National moniker and will allow paragliders tested by DHV with and LTF Class of 2 & 2/3 or by EN with a certification of C & D. The Rat Race Sprint will only allow paragliders tested by DHV with a LTF Class of 1, 1/2 & 2, or by EN with a certification of A, B. Entry fee: $425 to 4/15, $475 to 6/1, $495 after 6/1. Trophies will be awarded. More information: MPH Sports [email protected], or mphsports.com.

HG JuLy 2-7 2012 Midwest HG Comp / USHPA Sanctioned Hang Gliding Race-to-goal Competition. Registration: 12/01 - 4/30 Entry fee: $300, tow fees TBD (see webpage). Guaranteed prize money $2,000. Trophies will be awarded. More Information: Krzysztof Grzyb, or Gary Solomon, 630-533-1288, [email protected], or www.midwesthgcomp.org.

CALENDAR ITEMS will not be listed if only ten-tative. Please include exact information (event, date, contact name and phone number). Items should be received no later than six weeks prior to the event. We request two months lead time for regional and national meets. For more com-plete information on the events listed, see our Calendar of Events at: www.USHPA.AERo

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING RATES - The rate for classified advertising is $10.00 for 25 words and $1.00 per word after 25. MINIMUM AD CHARGE $10.00. AD DEADLINES: All ad copy, instructions, changes, additions & cancella-tions must be received in writing 2 months pre-ceding the cover date, i.e. September 15th is the deadline for the November issue. ALL CLAS-SIFIEDS ARE PREPAID. If paying by check, please include the following with your payment: name, address, phone, category, how many months you want the ad to run and the classified ad. Please make checks payable to USHPA, P.O. Box 1330, Colorado Springs, CO 80901-1330. If paying with credit card, you may email the pre-vious information and classified to [email protected]. For security reasons, please call your Visa/MC or Amex info to the office. No refunds will be given on ads cancelled that are sched-uled to run multiple months. (719) 632-8300. Fax (719) 632-6417

HANG GLIDING ADVISoRY: Used hang glid-ers should always be disassembled before fly-ing for the first time and inspected carefully for fatigued, bent or dented downtubes, ruined bushings, bent bolts (especially the heart bolt), re-used Nyloc nuts, loose thimbles, frayed or rusted cables, tangs with non-circular holes, and on flex wings, sails badly torn or torn loose from their anchor points front and back on the keel and leading edges.

PARAGLIDING ADVISoRY: Used paragliders should always be thoroughly inspected before flying for the first time. Annual inspections on paragliders should include sailcloth strength tests. Simply performing a porosity check isn’t sufficient. Some gliders pass porosity yet have very weak sailcloth.

If in doubt, many hang gliding and paragliding businesses will be happy to give an objective opinion on the condition of equipment you bring them to inspect.

BUYERS SHoULD SELECT EQUIPMENT THAT IS APPRoPRIATE FoR THEIR SKILL LEVEL oR RATING. NEw PILoTS SHoULD SEEK PRo-FESSIoNAL INSTRUCTIoN FRoM A USHPA CERTIFIED INSTRUCToR.

PG JuLy 8-14 Chelan XC Open 2012 / USHPA Sanctioned Paragliding Race-to-goal Competition. Chelan Butte, Chelan, WA. P3 w/XC & turbulence endorsements required, SPOT highly recommended. Registration dates are March 1 through July 7. Entry Fee: $375 by June 7 $425 after. For more information contact Doug Stroop, [email protected], 509-782-5543. http://chelanxcopen.com.

HG JuLy 9-14 2012 King Mountain Hang Gliding Championships / USHPA Sanctioned Hang Gliding Open-Distance Competition. King Mountain, Moore, ID. All the elements of a fun Fly-In with some competition and learning experience thrown in the mix. More information: Connie Work, 559-338-2621, [email protected], or www.FlyKingMountain.com.

HG JuLy 15-20 Texas Single-Surface Shoot-Out / Texas Shoot-Out / USHPA Sanctioned Hang Gliding Single-surface Class Race-to-goal National Championship. Carter Memorial Airport, Luling, TX. Competition will have 3 categories with trophy for first place for each: 1-Single-Surface, R2G, National Champion; 2-Open Class, Topless, double-surface gliders; 3-Sports Class, Kingposted, double-surface gliders. $250 entry fee. H3 rating or greater with Aerotow sign off required. Please refer to meet specific rules for further info. More information: Joel Froehlich, 210-381-5193, [email protected], or www.joefroehlich.wordpress.com.

HG JuLy 22-28 Big Spring – US HG Nationals / USHPA Sanctioned Hang Gliding Open-Distance National Championship and USHPA Sanctioned Hang Gliding Race-to-goal Competition. Big Spring Airport, Big Spring, TX. Best weather, great locals, excellent facilities, tons of airtime, and long flights. Longest continuously sanctioned competition in the US. $350 entry fee. Trophies to be awarded. H3 with aerotow signoff required, along with current aerotow experience on glider to be used during the competition. More information: David Glover 405-830-6420, [email protected], or www.endlessthermal.com.

PG augusT 27 - sePTember 1 US Open-Distance Nationals / UHSPA Sanctioned Paragliding Open-Distance Competition. Bald Mountain, Hailey, Idaho. Flying far in Idaho. P3 with Turbulence signoff required. $375-$450 entry fee. Register April 1 - August 27. More Information: Mike Pfau 208-721-0897 [email protected].

HG sePTember 16-22 Santa Cruz Flats Race / USHPA Sanctioned Hang Gliding Race-to-goal National Championship. Francisco Grande Resort, Casa Grande, AZ. $300 entry fee, and tow fees (TBA). Trophies & day prizes to be awarded. H4 or foreign equivalent with Aerotow, Cross Country & Turbulence signoffs required, along with a 3D GPS and extensive aerotow experience on the glider to be flown in the comp. More information: Jamie Sheldon 831-261-5444, [email protected], or www.santacruzflatsrace.blogspot.com.

DISPATCH C A L E N D A R & C L A S S I F I E D

http://www.flytec.com

http://www.hanglide.com

http://www.minigliders.com

PG sePTember 29-30 Northern California. The Cross Country league is an informal series of cross country competitions running from March through to October held at flying sites within driving distance of the Bay Area. The league is set up to help pilots of all abilities in improving their flying skills by flying set courses with other pilots. These are essentially a fly in with a mission, with the focus on distance and not speed. More information: Jugdeep Aggarwal 831-566-8652, [email protected], or www.santacruzparagliding.com.

PG ocTober 1-3 or 6-8 Northern Califor-nia. The Cross Country league is an informal series of cross country competitions running from March through to October held at flying sites within driving distance of the Bay Area. The league is set up to help pilots of all abilities in improving their flying skills by flying set courses with other pilots. These are essen-tially a fly in with a mission, with the focus on distance and not speed. More information: Jugdeep Aggarwal 831-566-8652, [email protected], or www.santa-cruzparagliding.com.

FLY-INS

HG PG may 3-8 Baja California, Mexico. Sixth Annual Fiesta Del Cielo. Cinco de Mayo Full Moon Fly-in at La Salina Flying Ridge. Deemed The Perfect Ridge by HG pilots in the late 70's, La Salina is known worldwide as Baja's best airsports venue. Launch from the 700 ft ridge, located ½ mile east of Pacific Ocean. Soar for hours, climbing to 3000 ft+ in desert thermals, then land on big/beautiful sandy beach, OR XC into Baja's world class wine country. This year, fly up to 5 different flying coastal sites including a 50 KM XC (Cantamar, La Salina, Salsipuedes, El Borrego (new site) and Punta Banda/Bufadora). Thursday is site intro day. XC and flying events begin Friday. Full moon flight is Saturday night: CINCO DE MAYO!!! The 30th Rosarito-Ensenada Bike race will be Sat, so you can join that too! There will be a Valle De Guadalupe wine country tour for pilots, friends, and family. Fly PG, HG, PPG, and trikes. Event sponsored by TEAM FlyLaSalina.com; Ejido La Mision; Ensenada Secretaria de Tourismo; and BajaBrent (who handles accommodations at his beachfront B & B complete with beachfront astro-turfed LZ). More details at www.FlyLaSalina.wordpress.com, www.FlyLaSalina.com or www.BajaBrent.com or call 760-203-2658, or 01152-646-155-4218 or email [email protected].

HG PG may 5-6 Chelan, Washington. Annual spring fly-in and spot-landing contest kicks off Chelan’s soaring season. Spot landings on the beach at Lakeside Park Saturday and Sunday. Pizza party on Saturday evening in the park. Optional race to beach early Sunday morning. Sign up at Lakeside Park. Entry/donation $30.00. More information: Tom Johns or Lori Lawson, 425-681-2458, [email protected], or www.cloudbase.org.

HG may 11-13 Pacific City, Oregon. 40 Years of Oregon Hang Gliding Antique Glider Fly-In. A gathering at Cape Kiwanda State Park and Sandlake Grange Hall. Fri. Grange Hall Open, Free- Fly. Multi-media Presentation and Display by Ken DeRussy. Awards, Posters/T-Shirts, $30 at the door. Enjoy the spectacular Tillamook County coastal sites during the prime season. Low tides for big LZ's and beachcombing. Onshore winds and longer daylight for flying. All Foot-Launch Glider Pilots Welcome! We are all connected! Come see how your sport began. Contact: David Raybourn, 425-233-9429, or airbourn55@yahoo. com.

HG June 26-28 King Mountain, Idaho. Season opener for King. Fun flying, open XC, cash prizes, $20 donation entry, BIG BBQ, and fun for all of course. 11th annual. More information: Alan Paylor 208-390-0205, [email protected], or www.kingmountaingliders.biz.

HG JuLy 5-7 Lakeview, OR. Umpteenth Annual Festival of Free Flight. Three days of fun and competitions with cash prizes for Spot Landings, Sugar Hill Run, Accumulated Distance, and a special “Golden Hammer” award for the strangest landing! More information: Audrey E. Henry, 877-947-6040, [email protected], or www.lakecountychamber.org.

HG PG augusT 18-26 King Mountain, Idaho. Glider Park Safari. Annual Idaho event just east of Sun Valley. Hang gliders, paragliders, sailplanes, and self-launching sailplanes are all welcome. Awesome glass-off, and cloudbases near 18,000’. Fly to Montana or Yellowstone. Wave window. Campfire, potlucks, star gazing, hiking, mountain biking and fishing. Free camping at the glider park. For more information call John at 208-407-7174. Go to www.kingmountaingliderpark.com for directions and more info. See the pictures from prior Safaris in our gallery. Film clip about the King Mountain Safari is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E _ 7WJPlDDR4.

HG PG sePTember 29-30 Chelan, Washington. Annual Lake Chelan Bike and Fly. This fun and unique meet is open to hang gliders, paragliders and non-flying cyclists as well. The competition combines spot landing and bomb drop at the Chelan Falls soccer field LZ with a 10-mile bike race through the Chelan Falls river gorge. We hope to see you at this relaxed and fun event. Bombs will be issued at the LZ. Entry/donation $25.00. More information: Tom Johns or Lori Lawson 425-681-2458, [email protected], or www.cloudbase.org.

CLINICS & TOURS

aPriL 6-8 Sebring, Florida. Over-the-water maneuvers training from beginner to advanced. Progress at your own pace with in-air radio coaching from David Prentice, and his 20 years of experience. Sebring offers one of the best SIV locations in the world! More information: David Prentice, 505-720-5436, [email protected], or www.earthcog.com

aPriL 12-14 Entiat, Washington. Come join Aerial Paragliding and Brad Gunnuscio for SIV training this spring! We are holding these clinics in beautiful Entiat on the east side of the Cascade Mountains, close to world-famous Chelan Butte. These clinics are tailored to each pilot so you’ll be comfortable and challenged whether you are a beginner or advanced. More Infor-mation: Aerial Paragliding 509-782-5543, [email protected], or http://www.paragliding.us.


aPriL 15-17 Entiat, Washington. Come join Aerial Paragliding and Brad Gunnuscio for SIV training this spring! We are holding these clinics in beautiful Entiat on the east side of the Cascade Mountains, close to world-famous Chelan Butte. These clinics are tailored to each pilot so you’ll be comfortable and challenged whether you are a beginner or advanced. More Infor-mation: Aerial Paragliding 509-782-5543, [email protected], or http://www.paragliding.us.


aPriL 20 - may 11 Bir, India. Join Jeff Cristol and Adventure Tour Productions paragliding in Northern India, flying the world famous site of Billing/Bir. Jeff has been visiting India since 1990 and flying in the Indian Himalaya since 2003. This site is located between Dharamsala and Manali, with a 100km out and back to the Dalai Lama’s residence considered the standard milk run. Visit during the spring and avoid the crowds that over run the site every fall. The Tibetan colony of Bir with many centers of Buddhist learning, adds to the depth of the already overwhelming cultural experience that is India. Please visit http://adventuretourproductions.com/articles/indianorth.htm to read Jeff’s article about flying Bir, or contact Jeff at 970-729-0078, or email at [email protected]

aPriL 27-29 Owens Valley Thermal and Cross-country Clinic with Eagle Paragliding. Many pilots are sure to get personal bests. View photos and videos from our last clinic at www.paragliding.com, or call 805-968-0980 for more information.

aPriL 28-29 Utah. Tandem (T2 & T3) with Ken Hudonjorgensen. More information: Phone 801-572-3414, email [email protected], or www.twocanfly.com


noVember 2-6 Owens Valley, CA. Fly one of the best sites in the US with one of the best pilots in the world. Kari Castle is a Bi-wingual pilot and a 3-time world champion, World Record holder with multiple national champion titles under both of her wings. Let Kari’s 30 years of flying and 23 years of living/flying the Owens Valley, be your guide! I will help customize your 3-4 day adventure to fit your needs whether you want one on one or a group setting. We will work on everything from take offs to landings, high altitude launches, dust devil awareness, reading the sky, how to map a thermal, goal setting and cross country. For more information contact: [email protected], or 760-920-0748, or sign up at www.karicastle.com

noVember 9-11 Santa Barbara, California. Instructor Certification Clinic with Rob Sporrer of Eagle Paragliding. This three-day clinic is open to basic and advanced Paragliding Instructor candidates, and those needing recertification. Visit www.paragliding.com, or call 805-968-0980 for more information.

noVember 12-13 Santa Barbara, California. Tandem Paragliding Clinic with Rob Sporrer of Eagle Paragliding. Classroom and practical training at our world-class training hill. Visit www.paragliding.com, or call 805-968-0980 for more information.

FLEX WINGS

A GREAT SELECTIoN oF HG&PG GLIDERS (ss, ds, pg) -HARNESSES (trainer, cocoon, pod) -PARACHUTES (hg&pg) -WHEELS (new & used). Phone for latest inventory 262-473-8800, www.hanggliding.com

BUSINESS & EMPLOYMENT

HG INSTRUCToRS, winch tow operators & experienced sales people wanted. We will train you if qualified. Must have good references & be good with people. Positions available from May thru Nov 30th. F/T or P/T, living arrangements available. Mountain Wings, Ellenville, NY 845-647-3377, www.mtnwings.com

ALABAMA

LooKoUT MoUNTAIN FLIGHT PARK - The best facilities, largest inventory, camping, swimming, volleyball, more. Wide range of accommodations. hanglide.com, 877-HANGLIDE, 877-426-4543, hanglide.com.

ALASKA

SKYDANCE PARAGLIDING and PARAMOTOR SCHOOL - Year-round; USHPA + USPPA certification. Novice, refresher training, equipment. Frank Sihler 907-841-7468 www.skydanceparagliding.com

ARKANSAS

RIVER VALLEY PARAGLIDING - Year-round paragliding and paramotoring school on the Arkansas/Oklahoma state line in Fort Smith. More information: www.RvPPG.com

CALIFORNIA

AIRJUNKIES PARAGLIDING - Year-round excellent instruction, Southern California & Baja. Powered paragliding, clinics, tours, tandem, towing. Ken Baier 760-753-2664, airjunkies.com.

EAGLE PARAGLIDING - SANTA BARBARA offers the best year round flying in the nation. Award-winning instruction, excellent mountain and ridge sites. www.flysantabarbara.com, 805-968-0980

FLY ABoVE ALL - Year-round instruction in beautiful Santa Barbara! USHPA Novice through Advanced certification. Thermaling to competition training. Visit www.flyaboveall.com 805-965-3733.

FLY AwAY HANG GLIDING - Santa Barbara. Best hill/equipment, glider shuttles up hill, tandems, sales, service, 20 years experience, Instructor Administrator Tammy Burcar, 805-403-8487, www.flyawayhanggliding.com

THE HANG GLIDING CENTER - PO Box 151542, San Diego CA 92175, 619-265-5320.

MISSIoN SoARING CENTER LLC - Largest hang gliding center in the West! Our deluxe retail shop showcases the latest equipment: Wills Wing, Moyes, AIR, High Energy, Flytec, Aeros, Northwing, Hero wide angle video camera. A.I.R. Atos rigid wings- demo the VQ-45' span, 85 Lbs! Parts in stock. We stock new and used equipment. Trade-ins welcome. Complete lesson program. Best training park in the west, located just south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Pitman Hydraulic Winch System for Hang 1s and above. Launch and landing clinics for Hang 3s and Hang 4s. Wills Wing Falcons of all sizes and custom training harnesses. 1116 Wrigley Way, Milpitas, CA 95035. 408-262-1055, Fax 408-262-1388, [email protected], Mission Soaring Center LLC, leading the way since 1973. www.hang-gliding.com

ToRREY PINES GLIDERPoRT - NEw NEw NEw - we have been working hard to bring you more! Let's start with the LIVE music and off the charts BBQ festivities happening every Saturday during the summer months. For all you snow birds, call us this winter for details on our domestic and international thermaling clinic/tours we are now offering. Speed Flying your thing? Come test fly our new mini wings from Little Cloud. USHPA certified instruction for ALL ratings including Tandem and Instructor Clinics, SIV and PPG. We have expanded product lines to include Triple 7, Little Cloud, Aircross, SkyWalk, Niviuk, Ozone, UP, Plussmax Helmets, Paratech, Independence, Crispi Boots, Black Hawk Paramotors, GatorZ, FlyMaster, GoPro, Flytec, Ki2Fly, Sup Air, Dudek, MacPara, Woody Valley, Maillon Rapide, and much more! Our full service shop offers reserve repacks, annual glider inspections, repairs and more. We also carry an extensive certified used invemtory of gliders and harnesses. Check us out at flytorrey.com or give us a call 858-452-9858.

sePTember 28 - ocTober 4 Owens Valley, CA. Fly one of the best sites in the US with one of the best pilots in the world. Kari Castle is a Bi-wingual pilot and a 3-time world champion, World Record holder with multiple national champion titles under both of her wings. Let Kari’s 30 years of flying and 23 years of living/flying the Owens Valley, be your guide! I will help customize your 3-4 day adventure to fit your needs whether you want one on one or a group setting. We will work on everything from take offs to landings, high altitude launches, dust devil awareness, reading the sky, how to map a thermal, goal setting and cross country. For more information contact: [email protected], or 760-920-0748, or sign up at www.karicastle.com

sePTember 20-22 Northern California. Over-the-water Maneuvers Clinics with Eagle Paragliding. America’s top all-around acro and competition pilot Brad Gunnuscio will be coaching with our state-of-the-art towing setup. Visit www.paragliding.com, or call 805-968-0980 for more information.

sePTember 23-25 Northern California. Over-the-water Maneuvers Clinics in Northern California with Eagle Paragliding. America’s top all-around acro and competition pilot Brad Gunnuscio will be coaching with our state-of-the-art towing setup. Visit www.paragliding.com, or call 805-968-0980 for more information.

ocTober 6-8 Owens Valley Thermal and Cross Country Clinic with Eagle Paragliding. Many pilots are sure to get personal bests. View photos and videos from our last clinic at www.paragliding.com, or call 805-968-0980 for more information.

ocTober 12-15 Owens Valley, CA. Fly one of the best sites in the US with one of the best pilots in the world. Kari Castle is a Bi-wingual pilot and a 3-time world champion, World Record holder with multiple national champion titles under both of her wings. Let Kari’s 30 years of flying and 23 years of living/flying the Owens Valley, be your guide! I will help customize your 3-4 day adventure to fit your needs whether you want one on one or a group setting. We will work on everything from take offs to landings, high altitude launches, dust devil awareness, reading the sky, how to map a thermal, goal setting and cross country. For more information contact: [email protected], or 760-920-0748,or sign up at www.karicastle.com

ocTober 19-22 & 26-29 Owens Valley, CA. Fly one of the best sites in the US with one of the best pilots in the world. Kari Castle is a Bi-wingual pilot and a 3-time world champion, World Record holder with multiple national champion titles under both of her wings. Let Kari’s 30 years of flying and 23 years of living/flying the Owens Valley, be your guide! I will help customize your 3-4 day adventure to fit your needs whether you want one on one or a group setting. We will work on everything from take offs to landings, high altitude launches, dust devil awareness, reading the sky, how to map a thermal, goal setting and cross country. For more information contact: [email protected], or 760-920-0748, or sign up at www.karicastle.com


HANG GLIDING

PARAGLIDINGRTNG REGN NAME CITY STATE RATING oFFICIAL

RTNG REGN NAME CITY STATE RATING oFFICIAL

P-1 1 Benjamin Leibert Federal Way WA Bob HannahP-1 1 Robert Campbell Jacksonville OR Kevin LeeP-1 1 Adrian Farrell Williams OR Kevin LeeP-1 1 John Rush Port Townsend WA Chad BastianP-1 1 Toby Rice Laconner WA Marc ChiricoP-1 2 Michael Henderson Soda Springs CA Fred MorrisP-1 2 Charles Kurlinkus Sacramento CA Mike SteenP-1 2 Jace Gerock San Luis Obispo CA Patrick Eaves

P-1 2 Darren Senn Stateline NV Mitchell NearyP-1 2 Ethan Rublee Mountain View CA Richard PalmonP-1 2 Robert Rawlinson Reno NV Ray LeonardP-1 3 Thad Martin Irvine CA Jerome DaoustP-1 3 Eli Himelstein San Diego CA Roy ZaleskiP-1 3 Peter Siebold Tehachapi CA Rob SporrerP-1 3 Nicholas Perocco Santa Barbara CA Chad BastianP-1 4 Jeff Hollenbaugh Marble CO Etienne PienaarP-1 4 Dustin Martin Scottsdale AZ Chandler PapasP-1 4 John May Morrison CO Jonie MillhouseP-1 4 Clark Tayler Salt Lake City UT Jonathan JefferiesP-1 4 Daniel Hagood Santa Fe NM T Lee KortschP-1 5 Sean Chuma Twin Falls ID Justin BoerP-1 9 Drew Richardson Greenville VA Peter HumesP-1 9 John Bishop Washington DC Terry BonoP-1 9 Syrus Mesdaghi Centreville VA Peter HumesP-1 10 Anthony Fabiszak Huntsville AL Rob MckenzieP-1 10 John Kaelber Weston FL Rob SporrerP-1 11 Terry Wallace Benbrook TX Ron KohnP-1 12 Evgeny (gene) Panov Jersey City NJ Rob SporrerP-1 13 James Baldwin Barrigada GU Patrick EavesP-1 13 Leandro Deambrosi Montevideo Alejandro PalmazP-1 13 Mateo Deambrosi Montevideo Alejandro Palmaz

RTNG REGN NAME CITY STATE RATING oFFICIAL

H-1 1 Beth Thibodeaux OR James TibbsH-1 2 Lukasz Lempart Sunnyvale CA Eric HinrichsH-1 2 Sharon Cox Sunnyvale CA Eric HinrichsH-1 2 Angela Dirocco Berkeley CA Barry LevineH-1 2 Yun Suk Kim Fremont CA David YountH-1 2 Ziyad Ibrahim San Francisco CA Patrick DenevanH-1 2 Jason Thomas San Jose CA David YountH-1 2 Robert Rawlinson Reno NV Ray LeonardH-1 3 David Hogan Santa Barbara CA William DydoH-1 5 Austin Forbes Boise ID Mark WindsheimerH-1 10 Scott Simpkins Ft Walton Beach FL James TindleH-1 10 Christoffer Trydestam Hunter Aaf GA Daniel ZinkH-1 10 Joseph Olson Huntsville AL Daniel ZinkH-1 12 Brian Scarpati Wantagh NY Bryon EstesH-2 2 Kym Ryan Oakland CA Harold JohnsonH-2 2 Edwin Romero Richmond CA John SimpsonH-2 2 Michael Wiest Seaside CA Harold JohnsonH-2 2 Christopher Mathews Walnut Creek CA Harold JohnsonH-2 2 Ethan Rublee Mountain View CA Richard PalmonH-2 3 David Hogan Santa Barbara CA William DydoH-2 5 Austin Forbes Boise ID Mark WindsheimerH-2 9 Ryan Tosto Boalsburg PA Randy GroveH-2 10 Scott Simpkins Ft Walton Beach FL James TindleH-2 10 Christoffer Trydestam Hunter Aaf GA Daniel ZinkH-2 10 Joseph Olson Huntsville AL Daniel ZinkH-2 12 Jay Jansen Patchogue NY Bryon EstesH-3 12 William Becher Hoboken NJ Bryon EstesH-3 12 Steve Webb Gardiner NY Bryon EstesH-4 3 Greg Firth Vista CA Rod Mitchell

RATINGS I S S U E D D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1

P-1 13 Robin Gurung Pokhara David HanningP-1 13 Dilan Benedetti Porticcio David HanningP-2 1 Benjamin Leibert Federal Way WA Bob HannahP-2 1 Robert Campbell Jacksonville OR Kevin LeeP-2 1 Adrian Farrell Williams OR Kevin LeeP-2 1 John Rush Port Townsend WA Chad BastianP-2 1 Toby Rice Laconner WA Marc ChiricoP-2 2 Juan Becerra Mtn View CA Jeffrey GreenbaumP-2 2 Michael Henderson Soda Springs CA Fred MorrisP-2 2 Charles Kurlinkus Sacramento CA Mike SteenP-2 2 Jan Bielawski Fremont CA Klaus SchlueterP-2 2 Nidhi Kalra San Francisco CA Klaus SchlueterP-2 2 David Ferguson San Francisco CA Klaus SchlueterP-2 2 Kyle Bjordahl San Francisco CA Jeffrey GreenbaumP-2 2 Jace Gerock San Luis Obispo CA Patrick EavesP-2 3 Thad Martin Irvine CA Jerome DaoustP-2 3 Carey Briggs La Jolla CA Bradley GearyP-2 3 Eli Himelstein San Diego CA Roy ZaleskiP-2 3 Peter Siebold Tehachapi CA Rob SporrerP-2 3 Nicholas Perocco Santa Barbara CA Chad BastianP-2 4 Jeff Hollenbaugh Marble CO Etienne PienaarP-2 4 Dustin Martin Scottsdale AZ Chandler PapasP-2 4 John May Morrison CO Jonie MillhouseP-2 4 Clark Tayler Salt Lake City UT Jonathan JefferiesP-2 4 Daniel Hagood Santa Fe NM T Lee KortschP-2 5 Sean Chuma Twin Falls ID Justin BoerP-2 9 Drew Richardson Greenville VA Peter HumesP-2 9 John Bishop Washington DC Terry BonoP-2 9 Syrus Mesdaghi Centreville VA Peter HumesP-2 10 John Kaelber Weston FL Rob SporrerP-2 12 Evgeny (gene) Panov Jersey City NJ Rob SporrerP-2 13 James Baldwin Barrigada GU Patrick EavesP-2 13 Leandro Deambrosi Montevideo Alejandro PalmazP-2 13 Mateo Deambrosi Montevideo Alejandro PalmazP-2 13 Robin Gurung Pokhara David HanningP-2 13 Dilan Benedetti Porticcio David HanningP-3 1 Scott Mcallister Bellingham WA Delvin CrabtreeP-3 1 Ben Cochran Ashland OR Kevin LeeP-3 2 Charles Kurlinkus Sacramento CA Mike SteenP-3 3 Thomas Moorhouse Indio CA Ken HudonjorgensenP-3 3 Mateo Manzari San Diego CA Max MarienP-3 4 James Borders Albuquerque NM Charles (chuck) WoodsP-3 4 Jason Jones Alpine UT Stephen MayerP-3 4 Jason Boyd Flagstaff AZ Chandler PapasP-3 4 Paul Morgan Snowmass Village CO Alejandro PalmazP-3 5 William Baker Jackson WY Scott HarrisP-3 9 Didier Godat Washington DC Hadley RobinsonP-3 11 Jesse (keith) Cockrum Goldthwaite TX Jonie MillhouseP-3 12 Faruk Gocmen Beacon NY Ciaran EganP-3 12 Eugene Gleason Hoboken NJ Terry BonoP-3 12 Rafael Zakota Brooklyn NY Ciaran EganP-3 13 Leandro Deambrosi Montevideo Alejandro PalmazP-3 13 Mateo Deambrosi Montevideo Alejandro PalmazP-3 13 Robin Gurung Pokhara David HanningP-3 13 Dilan Benedetti Porticcio David HanningP-4 1 Jared Anderson Medford OR Kevin LeeP-4 1 Frank Sihler Wasilla AK Chad BastianP-4 2 Dave Turner Sacramento CA Jonie MillhouseP-4 3 Jeffrey Boehler Loma Linda CA Jonie MillhouseP-4 3 Tom Swanson Riverside CA Jonie MillhouseP-4 3 Bonita Hobson Kaneohe HI Pete MichelmoreP-4 13 Leandro Deambrosi Montevideo Alejandro PalmazP-4 13 Mateo Deambrosi Montevideo Alejandro PalmazP-4 13 Robin Gurung Pokhara David HanningP-4 13 Dilan Benedetti Porticcio David Hanning

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hang gliding & paragliding vol42/iss04 apr 2012

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