NATIONALNEWSLETTER

SEPT 1992 THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE HANG GLIDING ASSOCIATION OF CANADA VOLUME 6 ISSUE 3

This newsletter is produced by the Hang Gliding Association of Canada andis published and distributed quarterly to it's members through the ProvincialAssociations. The views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarilythose of the Hang Gliding Association of Canada, its directors or the editor.Anyone may contribute articles to this newsletter although generally twopages are set aside per Province. The Editor reserves the right to editcontributions. This Newsletter is produced on a IBM compatable computeruseing Microsoft Word and Aldus Pagemaker. Contributions may be sent ona 5.25" or 3.5" kbt disk as an ASCII file or in any of the major word processingformats. Disk will be returned if accompanied with a stamped addressenvelope. Written and typed contributions will also be accepted. Send themto;Barry Bateman, 21593, 94a Avenue, Langley, BC. V1M 2A5. (604) 888 5658Published on 1st March, June, Sept, Dec. Deadlines are two weeks prior.

Provinces who # of times # of timescontributed Province HAS they HAVE NOTthis month; contributed; contributed;

----> HGABC 23 0----> ALBERTA 23 0

SASKATCHEWAN 12 11----> MANITOBA 14 9

ONTARIO 17 6QUEBEC 14 9NEWFOUNDLAND 14 9

Canadian Hang Gliding Champion, Mark Tulloch flying his Moyes XS 142 at Golden during the 1992 Canadian Nationals

page 2

CONTENTS

HGAC/AVLC Directors Reportsby HGAC Directors .................4

1992 US Region 1 Regionalsby Dan Keen......................8

A Canadian Paragliding Recordby Peter Maclaren..................9

Owens Valley '92by Randy Haney ..................10

Speeds to Flyby Stewart Midwinter...............13

1992 Canadian Championshipsby Steve Best ....................14

An Interview with Mark Tullochby Steve Best ....................19

Brief Overview of the '92 Can Natsby Stewart Midwinter...............20

A New Club in Albertaby Adam Hunt....................21

Okotokes Air Extravaganzaby Richard Gibson ................22

Western Canadian PG Champsby Stewart Midwinter...............22

Western Canadian HG Champsby Ken Shackleton ................23

Heli Hang Gliding in Blue Riverby Bob Hanlon ...................25

Report on GPS Trails in NZby John Roake ...................26

Grouse Mtn Paragliding Launchby Barry Bateman .................28

From Across the Countryby Barry Bateman .................29

To Drink or Not to Drinkby Christine Klassen ...............30

Other Generous Contributions from;Vincene Muller and Janet Moschard

President: Martin Henry3595 Old Clayburn Road, Abbotsford, B.C., V2S 6B7home; (604) 854 5950

Vice President West: Mia Schokker3595 Old Clayburn Road, Abbotsford, B.C., V2S 6B7home; (604) 854 5950

Vice President East: Jacques Fontaine981 13th ave, Fabreville, PQ. H8R 4N5home; (514) 627 1444

Secretary/Treasurer: Martin PolachBox 1442 Cochrane, Alberta. T0L 0W0home; (403) 932 3680

Ratings: Rick Miller10435 79th Ave, Edmonton, Alberta. T6E 1R7home; (403) 461 3592

Competition: J.C. Hauchecorne1735 Dublin Street, New Westminster, B.C.. V3M 2Z9home; 521 1559: days; 1 800 283 8530

Airspace/Saftey/Aero Club: Stewart Midwinter444 23rd Ave N.W., Calgary, Alberta. T2M 1S4home; (403) 230 7769

FAI/Records: Vincene MullerR.R. #2 Cochrane, Alberta. T0L 0W0home; (403) 932 2759

Insurance: Kevin Thomson30 Thistledown Dr., Kitchener, Ontario. N2E 3C3home; (519) 742 5744

HGAC Editor: Barry Bateman21593 94a Ave, Langley, B.C. V1M 2A5home; (604) 888 5658

Instructor Committee Chairman: Ron Bennett339 Hawkhill Place, Calgary, Alberta. T3G 3H7home (403) 239 7378; fax (403) 221 6950

Paragliding Committee Members;Chairman/Exam Revision: Janet Moschard

Box 1097, Whistler, B.C. V0N 1B0home (604) 932 7052; fax (604) 932 8750

Instructor and Pilot Ratings: Heinz Hefti113, Rue Guy, Iberville, Quebec, J2X 4W5. (514) 358 2151

US & International Recognition: Pierre Laplante5344 Fabre, Montreal, PQ, H2J 3W5. (514) 523 8489

Competition: Sean Dougherty7128, 21st Ave NW, Calgary, Alta, T2M 1K2. (403) 288 9485

Tandem Rating: Joris Moschard(Address same as Janet Moschard)

Hang Gliding Association ofBritish Columbia

1367 West Broadway, Vancouver,British Columbia,

Alberta Hang Gliding AssociationBox 2001, Stn M, Calgary,

Alberta, T2P 2M2

Saskatchewan Hang Gliding Association303 Main Street South, Moose Jaw,

Saskatchewan S6H 4V8

Manitoba Hang Gliding Association200, Main Street, Winipeg,

Manitoba R3C 4M2Ontario Hang Gliding Association1220 Sherpard Avenue East, Willowdale,

Ontario M2K 2X1

L` Association Quèbècoise De Vol Libre4545 Pierre de Coubertin, C.P. 1000, Succ, M,

Montrél H1V 3R2

Hang Gliding Association of NewfoundlandBox 122, Churchill FallsLabrador A0R 1A0

PROVINCIAL ASSOCIATIONS

Hang Gliding Association of Canadac/o Aero Club of Canada,306-1355 Bank Street,

Ottawa Ontario

page 3

WILLS WING FALL SALE!All I want for Xmas is my new Wills Wing Glider? It's time for our annual Wills Wing glider sale!

Order your new Wills Wing glider NOW for Xmas delivery!

HP AT 145 & 158The HP AT is currently the top selling high performance glider on the market. The choice is not wether to purchasea HP AT BUT do you need a 145 or 158! The unique VG system allows pilots to optimize the glider tuningconfiguration for climbing flight or gliding flight. With the VG in the loose setting, the HP AT provides exceptionallight and responsive handling for situations in which immediate and reliable response is imperative. In the VGtight adjustment, the HP AT still provides positive control; authority, along with an extra measure of glide ratioperformance for penetrating through sink or headwinds. The two position system insures that the pilot will alwaysfind the gliders handling to be consistent and predictable. This innovative VG system is backed up by a bridleadjustment compensator system, which connects the bridles directly to the crossbar center through an internalsystem of cables and pulleys inside the kingpost. This system maintains precisely the correct bridle adjustmentregardless of crossbar setting, without excessive slack in the front to rear wire loop found on other compensatorsystems. The result is positive bridle compensation and a more connected feel to the handling. Also unique onthe HP AT is a revolutionary new leading edge construction, in which a light weight, extremely strong and highlyrigid leading edge telescopes down to a more flexible rear leading edge, providing for unprecedented control ofthe distribution of strength and flexibility along the leading edge with extraordinary lightweight structure.

THE SUPER SPORT 143; 153 & 163The Super Sport series was designed for the recreational pilot who enjoys XC flight. The sink rates are nearlyidentical to the HP AT series until you are flying in the mid to upper speed ranges. The Super Sport series areeasier to land, lighter weight, quicker to assemble, less expensive and less tiring to fly than other gliders of similarperformance.

SPECTRUM 144 & 164The Spectrum series was designed for the entry level pilot. A double surface glider that will take new pilots fromthe training hill to ridge soaring and XC flight. This series is lightweight, has good handling but allows for the slowerreaction time of the new pilot. The Spectrum also features the same easy to land characteristics and quickassembly as the Super Sports.

HP AT 145 & 158 reg. price $4,780.00 SALE PRICE $4,300.00

SUPER SPORT 143; 153 & 163 reg price $4,320.00 SALE PRICE $3,900.00

SPECTRUM 143 & 164 reg price $4,200.00 SALEPRICE $3,600.00

Order to be received together with $500.00 deposit by OCTOBER 15, 1992Delivered by Santa

NEW FOLDING BASETUBE OPTION $90.00 with glider order.The folding base tube is a slick new design innovation! The control bar corner fittings remain attached duringbreakdown. The basetube folds in the center with a quick push of a button. It removes the possibility of improperassembly at the control bar corner during setup.

Muller Hang Gliding Ltd, RR#2 Cochrane, Alberta. T0L 0W0 Canada.phone or fax (403) 932 6760

page 4

HGAC/AVLCDirectorsReports & Updates

1992 3rd Quarter Safety Report

BY STEWART MIDWINTER

Demon decided to test-fly a newer AirwaveMagic 4 at a ridge-soaring site nearKamloops. He got into severe yaw-roll oscil-lations (the "watusi") and struck the groundout of control; he spent a week in hospital.Here is a strong argument for trying newgliders at the training hill in calm conditionsbefore going off a taller site in windy condi-tions. Also, many pilots used to gliders withstrong bar pressure have had problems whenswitching to gliders with light bar pressure.

An intermediate pilot in Alberta popped offthe tow truck and his wink link failed. Heprepared to land in a field beside the road, butfell down on landing, broke two downtubes,took a strong blow to the head and cut hisscalp open. He had bought small safetywheels a few months earlier but didn't botherto install them. Weak-link failures can hap-pen any time and pilots should be prepared toenter landing mode immediately after liftingoff the truck. In some places, the pilots actu-ally practice this skill by releasing from thetruck with no tow rope attached to the glider.

A paraglider pilot had enjoyed a first-eversoaring flight and top-landing earlier in theday, and re-launched later as winds pickedback up. But soon the lift and the wind grewstronger and the pilot was getting higher butnot penetrating. The pilot may have wanted totry a circle to lose altitude, but for whateverreason turned downwind and flew into theground in a 35 km/h tailwind, narrowly miss-ing a house; although taken to hospital over-night for observation, the pilot suffered noserious injury. PG pilots need to learn or betaught high-wind and high-lift escape tech-niques. (such as big ears, B-line stall, spirals)before the first soaring flight.

An intermediate PG pilot scratching at Co-chrane in light crossing winds made a down-wind pass and crashed into a fence, slashinghis harness and cutting his leg. Pilots shouldexpect sink when flying across the gullies andnot scratch so close on the downwind leg,when the groundspeed is high and so is therisk of injury if a mistake is made.

A PG pilot tried launching off the ramp launchat Golden and had a major wing-fold just as helifted off, resulting in a spin into the rocks and

major sail damage. PG pilots are advised notto use this launch, especially in S winds.Instead, use the slope to the right of the rampif the wind is NW, or use the new slope-launchthrough the trees below the cabin.

An intermediate PG pilot tried the new NWslope launch at Golden. Circling just abovelaunch, he experienced a major wing fold onhis Class 2 glider, could not maintain head-ing, and turned back into the hill, breaking hisleg as he fell between logs. The trees belowthe new launch act as a thermal trigger. Theair between the trees and the launch is fre-quently turbulent; avoid lingering there.

An BC HG pilot with 50 hours decided to dosome wingovers at 400' AGL. However, dueto a combination of stalling his Magic Kisstoo hard and pulling in too hard while theglider was rotating downward it caused hisglider to tuck. He then fell into the sail and sohe threw his 'chute, which opened below tree-top height. The glider was destroyed but hewas unhurt. Two points here: any aerobaticsat low altitude is a bad idea, and don't pull inhard when your glider is already rotatingnose-downward. Modern gliders are not tuck-proof!

An intermediate PG pilot was flying a Class 3glider at Cochrane and experienced a wingfold, turning him toward the hill. He overre-acted in braking to recover, the glider stalled,then recovered and surged forward. He didnot brake quickly enough to stop the surge andthe canopy hit the hill before he did. He brokeboth ankles and a heel and compressed hislower spine. Should low-time pilots fly ad-vanced gliders?

An inexperienced PG pilot was scratching atCochrane in a crosswind and while flyingdownwind hit firstly sink and secondly thehill, slamming his seat into a rock. He se-verely injured his spine. In downwind flight,things go wrong very quickly with severeresults. If you must scratch, do it only theupwind leg, and be aware that each gullyproduces rotors which can upset your glider.

A visiting PG pilot was scratching at Co-chrane and realised too late that there wasbarbed wire between those fence posts. To

Another 3 months, another crop of accidents.We are now embarked on the worst year since1976, back in the dark days of the sport. So farthis year, there have been four, no, make thatfive, fatalities in Canada, all of which in-volved pilots flying in high winds or strongweather. Two of these pilots were HGACrated, three were not. A technical analysisback in the mid-70s by aerodynamicist PaulMacCready pointed to the dangers of turbu-lence in high winds; 20 years later we're stilllearning the same lesson.

The latest fatality occurred in Québec at MontSt-Pierre, where Stéphane Cliché hit thecliffs. More details later.

The second-latest fatal accident took place inOntario, where pilots were flying on a day thatsaw high winds clear across the province.John Popp tried to self-launch at the Kimber-ley site, which has a sheer or even undercutcliff for a launch site. He started back severalmeters and took a run at the edge; when he hitthe wall of air, his nose pitched up, the gliderstalled and spun, and he ended up at thebottom of the cliff, fatally injured. There isonly one way to launch on a cliff in wind, andthat is with a nose-wire man to hold the noseas far out as possible into the airflow, and withthe nose low. Better yet, just don't do this typeof launch: there's no margin for error.

In Québec, a wuffo bought an old hang gliderout of a newspaper and took it to a training hillupon which a thunderstorm descended. Hedied.

Earlier in the year, a Québec pilot soared a skihill on a day when winds were up to 60 km/h.He had trouble penetrating then tried to landin a tiny parking lot surrounded by tall trees.He was rotored in and died.

In February, several paraglider pilots flew offa mountain in BC when it was too windy at thetop to take off. They launched from lowerdown, then tried to penetrate across a lake.Several landed in the water, and one died ofhypothermia within minutes.

Perhaps all that reading about fatalities is toodepressing. Perhaps you'd prefer accidentswhere the pilots lived. Read on.

An intermediate pilot with a Flight Designs

page 5

HGAC/AVLCDirectorsReports & Updates

avoid damaging his canopy, he hit the strandswith his body -- while wearing shorts. Ouch!Check the local hazards before you fly.

An intermediate pilot on a recently purchasedolder glider was ridge-soaring a mountain inKananaskis Country and when the windpicked up he blew over the back, damaginghis tailbone on impact. Ridge-soaring a par-aglider in the mountains, especially in older,slower gliders, is probably a form of Russianroulette. It's only a question of time until youget hurt. Don't fly anywhere in wind unlessyou can safely blow over the back.

A visiting HG pilot from Washington wasflying down the range at Golden on a typicalday where west winds increased above thepeak-tops. He drifted too far back in a ther-mal, then couldn't penetrate back in the head-wind and sink, and landed on the backside ofthe peaks near Parson. He spent the entire nextday with two helpers retrieving his glider.Another day, a BC PG pilot on his 1st xc flightdid the same thing, but landed above tree-line.He hiked up to the summit and took off on theColumbia River side, landing safely at Har-rogate.

A Calgary HG pilot at the xc camp in Goldentried to land in a small field and hit a fence-post, breaking his arm. Another Calgary-areaHG pilot at the Nationals tried to land in asmall clearing in a forest and hit a tree with hiswing-tip, then yawed sideways and slashedhis sail. A Vancouver Island pilot at theNationals tried to land in a small field andslammed the ground hard, knocking himselfout. Looks like pilots are pushing too hard fora little extra distance.

Two BC pilots had a mid-air collision at10500' ASL above Mt. Seven and came downunder canopy onto the eastern slopes of themountain. Two PG ran several km across themountain to offer assistance but the pilotswere uninjured, although the gliders weredestroyed. One of the two parachutes' linewere 25% wound up: a para-swivel wouldhave been prevented this. The accident hap-pened when a pilot joined a thermal belowanother who was already circling. He climbedup and after 5-6 turns was struck by the toppilot, who said he did not see the lower untilseconds before impact. You may be sayingthe higher pilot was to blame, but the lowerpilot could have prevented this accident aswell by not circling directly below the upperpilot, so as to always keep the other pilot in

view. Another good idea would to be blow awhistle anytime you near another pilot: don'tassume he can see you, or has seen you.

An beginner PG pilot was sold a Class 3 gliderand, after flying it on small hills for a year,flew it at Golden in strong thermals. While1000' higher than Mt. Seven and over theHorse Creek canyon, he hit some turbulenceand lost control of the canopy. In the ensuingseries of stall, spins and other assorted col-lapses, he lost 1800'. Here's an occasion torepeat the words of Mike Meier of WillsWing: "a pilot is not ready to fly a Class 2glider (let alone a Class 3 model) unless he notonly has done every type of maneuver (stalls,spins, etc) on a Class 1 glider, but is comfort-able doing them". In very blunt terms, dealerswho sell advanced paragliders to pilots whohave not done all the maneuvers on a Class 1glider are signing a death warrant for theircustomers.

PG pilots who want to move on to advancedgliders should get instruction in all maneu-vers, and take an advanced maneuvers course,like the one offered by Kelowna's WayneBertrand in July at Sicamous. At that course,at least one pilot had to deploy his 'chute afterentering an uncontrollable spin during mildwingovers; he landed safely in the water.

A PG pilot was on the back range at Spillima-cheen and wanted to cross to the front. He hitheavy sink and descended at a 2:1 glide untilhe hit trees in a canyon. When some localsarrived with a chainsaw and cut the tree down,the glider was shredded. Many, many pilotshave had scares from turbulence or sink be-hind the front ranges between Spillimacheenand Brisco. Do yourself a favour and stay onthe front!

Our final story is one I actually got a report on,from Adam Hunt at the Cold Lake Condors (isthat an oxymoron?). A pilot took off on tow ina light NW, so he landed the same direction.However the wind was light SE so he broke adowntube. Winds do change direction fre-quently, so always check the windsock sev-eral times.

1992 CANADIAN XC LOG

HANG GLIDINGAND

PARAGLIDING FLIGHTS

Don't forget to log all your XC flights for 1992and send them in at the end of the season.DEADLINE IS NOVEMBER 1, 1992

DON'T BE LATE!All flights over 1 mile (as long as the landingis 1 mile further than the regular LZ).

The advantages of the XC list is that you canlook at the previous year's flights and you canjudge your progress each year. Stewart Mid-winter does graphs each year to accompanythe list and from these graphs you can seewhich are the best months to fly particularsites. this can help pilots plan holidays or daysoff. Pilots can decide whether to attend com-petitions or possibly just free-fly to get thebest mileage.

PLEASE LIST FLIGHTS AS FOLLOWS:Hang GlidingOpen Distance - measure in a straight line.Out and ReturnTriangleFeminine (as above)Tandem (as above) (name passenger.)

ParaglidingOpen Distance - measure in a straight lineOut and ReturnTriangleFeminine (as above)Tandem (as above) (name passenger)

Include month of flights and site of launch(including province).Out of Country flights are on a different list.(Name of country of launch site)

The list for Open Distance, hang gliding andparagliding will be published in the Spring1993 Muller Hang Gliding Newsletter. Thelists for the following: Out and Return, Tri-angle, Tandem, and Out of Country Flights,- will be published in the March 1993 issue ofthe National Newsletter.

Attention Meet DirectorsPlease send distances, miles or Km (completeresults not required) of any meets that youhave run this year. Send to:

Vincene MullerRR#2, Cochrane, Alberta, TOL OWO

fax (403)932-6760

page 6

HGAC/AVLCDirectorsReports & Updates

Joris Moschard HGABC PGary Nesbit HGABC PSimon Pascal HGABC PMike Roberts HGABC PMike Sadan HGABC PPatricia Sadan HGABC PElke Socher HGABC PMark Tullock HGABC P5AKevin Zucht HGABC PAlex Bahlsen AHGA PStu Cameron AHGA P4Glenn Comfort AHGA PGlenn Derouin AHGA PGarth Henderson AHGA PAdam Hunt AHGA PADarcy Lalor AHGA P4AChris Muller AHGA P1Willi Muller AHGA P5AMary-Ann Podgorski AHGA PJacek Chodanoski OHGA PAnton Tyukodi OHGA P3ARene Arnet AQVL PARobert Bergeron AQVL PClude Chauvin AQVL PSylvie Cote AQVL PJerome Daoust AQVL PMarie Desavbliaux AQVL PClaude Fiset AQVL PIsabella Goudreau AQVL PAGuy Goupil AQVL PGilbert Grenier AQVL PEric Meunier AQVL P3ARichard Roussin AVLQ P4ACharles Turcotte AQVL P

Rating: P = Paragliding# = H.G. RatingA = Air reg exam

Below is a list of ALL current HGACofficially rated Paraglider pilots. If anyonebelieves that they should be on this list andis not, please contact your local examineror Provincial ratings officer.

For those pilots who do not yet have aHGAC paragliding rating, please supportyour National Association by finding thetime to get rated.

Janet MoschardHGAC Paragliding Committee Chair-woman

Richard Auer HGABC PRosco B. Barker HGABC PRonald Blanrue HGABC PSteve Cousins HGABC PAnthony Detering HGABC PTom Duguid HGABC PChris England HGABC PThomas Erler HGABC PJayson Faulkner HGABC PPaul Feeley HGABC PRussell Fretenburg HGABC PAlan Gelfand HGABC PD.R. Groves HGABC PRoger Hollingsworth HGABC PPaul Karlsen HGABC PCameron Mackenzie HGABC PPeter Macloren HGABC PBrent Martin HGABC PJanet Moschard HGABC P

ParaglidingUpdate

Canadian Out-Of-Country Record Notifica-tionFeminine; Open distance 146 kmFeminine ;Declared Goal 44 kmMia Schokker, "L" Road tow site - Creston,Washington

PARAGLIDINGCanadian Record NotificationOpen DistancePeter MacLaren - 120kmFlight June 25, 1992

Jim Houghton has been awarded hisDelta Silver Badge for a flight made inChelan, plus he has also been awarded aCanadian Out-of-Country Open Dis-tance Record.

HANG GLIDINGWorld and Canadian Record Notification- 100km Our & Return Speed RecordMartin Henry - Golden, B.C.

RECORDS Canadian Record NotificationOpen DistanceChris Muller - 146kmFlight July 11, 92

World & Canadian Record NotificationFlight to a Declared GoalChris Muller - 146kmFlight July 11, 92

Vincene MullerRecords and Badges

HGAC RECOGNIZEDPARAGLIDING

SCHOOLS & EXAMINERS

British ColumbiaAerial Sensations Paragliding

Wayne BertrandBox 2039, Stn R, Kelowna, BC V1X 4K5

phone: (604) 765 2FLYfax: (604) 765 8200

First Flight ParaglidingCameron Mackenzie4470 Prospect Road

North Vancouver, BC V7N 3L7phone (604) 988 1111

Parawest ParaglidingJanet & Joris Moschard

Box 1097, Whistler, BC V0N 1B0phone: (604) 932 7052fax: (604) 932 8750

ALBERTAMuller Hang Gliding & Paragliding

Willi MullerRR #2, Cochrane, Alberta T0L 0W0

phone or fax: (403) 932 6760

Paragliding CanadaAlex Bahlsen

RR #2, Cochrane Alberta, T0L 0W0phone: (403) 932 4603fax: (403) 932 4656

Rocky Mountain ParaglidingGlen Derouin

P O Box 2660, Canmore Alberta, T0L 0M0phone: (403) 678 4973

page 7

Airmail.....

What's in a name!

Dear Barry:This newsletter needs a name! Apparentlyyou haven't received too many suggestions inresponse to your call. So I humbly put forththe following name. It is intended to reflectthe rich Canadian heritage and linguistic du-ality we have in this country:

"Take Off, Eh!" / " Décollez, by gar!"

Bob and Doug Mackenzie would be proud.

Yours sincerely,Stewart Midwinter (alias, Midtoad)Calgary, Alta

(Nice suggestion Stewart, I wonder what gaveyou your inspiration, it almost seems like aname I would come up with............ eh!!!!ed.)

I am writing with regards to your request forsubmissions for a new name for the "NationalNewsletter".

I agree with you that calling our nationalnewsletter" The National Newsletter" is a bitdull, not to mention obvious! Therefore, Iwould like to submit the following suggestionto the HGAC/AVLQ for your concideration:

"Silent Skies / Ciel Silencieux"

I hope that your search for an acceptable newname is successful!

Adam HuntMedley, Alta.

Regarding the official name of the HGAC/AVLQ National Newsletter, please find myattached submission.- Change the name of the HGAC/AVLQ tothe "Gliding Association of Canada" TheFrench version can remain the same, "VolLibre".

- Redisign the HGAC/AVLQ graphics(logo) to enclude paragliding.

- Rename the National Newsletter;

"The Glider / "Vol Plané"

I belive that the redesign is very appropriatefor both wings of the sport and in both Frenchand English.

Mike SiskaVictoria, BC

We tried coming up with a new name for theNational Newsletter out here on the eastcoast. After 6 beers around the campfire at 1o'clock in the morning all we could come upwith was ;

"Flatlands & Cliffs"

Not a real winner but at least we're trying.

Chris WaltersCorner Brook, Nfld.

OK guys 'n girls, out of all you Canadians, thisis the total submissions for a new name forthis rag. Does this mean that nobody reads thismag, or if you do, couldn't care a hoot?

Come on folks, spend 5 minutes to jot downyour suggestion or pick up the phone and giveme a call, right now, number is:

(604) 888 5658

You have until the end of December this yearto get your suggetion in to me, hell, I'll evenpay the HGAC membership fee to the winnermyself. If no other thoughts on a new namereaches me by the deadline, I'll chose thewinner or pick one myself, and you'll be sorryevery time you recieve this mag and have tolook at it!!

You have been warned......Barry BatemanYour humble editor

When I told Willi Muller what I will call this newsletter if I don't get any responce,he fell off his chair laughing and broke his leg. You think I'm kidding?

photo by Barry Bateman

page 8

The Hang Gliding Associationof British Columbia

The United States is divided into twelve glid-ing regions, with Region 1 being comprised ofWashington, Oregon and Alaska. Althoughthere were no pilots from Alaska, two pilotswere from Canada, Mike Harrington andmyself. The regionals were held in Chelan,located in central Washington, along the Co-lumbia River gorge, 100 miles south of theborder. It is the presence of this gorge whichmakes flying here real interesting! On thewest side of the gorge are the Cascade Moun-tains, with launch from the Chelan Butte at3800 ft. Six miles across and 3000 ft down isthe Columbia River gorge with very limitedlanding zones. Back up at 3000 ft, on the eastside of the gorge, is the start of the "flats",prairie and dust devils as far as the eye cansee. To reach it is a seven mile glide with onlya 800 ft drop through a sink hole!

Day 1After handing out free film at the pilots meet-ing, Meet Director, Davis Straub, called a 45mile triangle task with the towns of Withrowand Mansfield as turnpoints. Because wewere using an aerial start gate, most pilots hadlaunched before the tarp was rolled out at 1:00pm. I must say, it was a unique experience tobe in a 35 plus gaggle in strong lift, knowingevery pilot around had only one hand on thecontrol bar as he peered through a holesmaller than a dime! Fumbling with twocameras, I was finally off to the races in thefirst gaggle of about 10 gliders. After crossingthe seven mile gorge in 600 ft sink, we arrivedat the lip of the flats with under 1000 feet toplay with. I spent a few minutes of bobbingthermals, until I hooked the big apple andheaded out into the flats. I was the first pilotat the Withrow turnpoint, climbing to 8000 ftbefore blazing the trail to Mansfield. Mikewas about 5 minutes behind; the only twoCanucks entered are in front, one and two. Wewere first again to round the corner atMansfield and were heading down the homestretch. The westerly flow had developed inthe afternoon and so did the headwind sink. I

was at McNeil Canyon turnoff and goal was insight! "Oh, Baby! One more thermal anddaddy's coming home!" I said to my wife whowas still at the Chelan beach with the kidswhile monitoring the radio along the course.But, down, down, down, I went. I found whatseems to be a dead spot between the lip of thegorge and 2 miles back at the power lines ontop. Never count your eaglets before theyhatch! About half an hour later I saw sometriangles floating overhead. One pilot had topush out to clear the barbed wire fence on the

edge of the canyon, then fall into the gorgeonly to climb out and head for goal. I saw mypotential 1st dwindle down to 10th with my 38miler. Four pilots made goal that day. DavisStraub (author of the technical article in theUSHGA magazine, "The Final Climb andGlide") landed 500 ft short of goal! Maybe heforgot to calculate in the square root of the"oops" factor.Back at the motel, Mike and I discussed theday's strategy in the hot tub and concluded

that we had done every thing right except forthe finish. If we were to have had somemarkers in front of us, our chances wouldhave increased. So, tomorrow a bit moreconservative...... maybe in front is not thesafest place to be. A Chinese food feast for ourdriver and go-cart racing for the kids wrappedup a full day.

Day 2Happy Birthday to me! What every pilotsooner or later needs, socks and a sparedowntube! Today is HOT. 105°F HOT!

In the launch line-up, I feel like a dry roastedpeanut. Task today is an out and return toSimms Corner - distance 64 miles. The cycleswere coming in few and far between. The oneo'clock start gate is rolled out beside me, so Itook my photo from 5 feet up. I finally got inthe air but could only get up to 7000 ft beforeI crossed. On the rim of the flats I caught abroken piece of garbage and drifted throughthe dead zone until I finally found a nice 600up which took me to 7000 ft. I could see lotsof markers and dust devils ahead, and usedthem like stepping stones all the way to theturnpoint at 9000 ft. The westerly flow hasreally set in today and gliders are falling out

of the sky. I was down to 4000 ft when I catcha good one, but the drift is so strong I end upback at turnpoint 1/2 hour later at 9000 ftagain. Still more gliders fall from the sky. Itis one step forward, and two steps back. BobSummers entered a dust devil at 600 ft, did acouple of high banked turns but became in-verted. Both of his top wires failed and thenboth leading edges snapped like stale breadsticks. He quickly threw his chute but foundhe was still coming down too fast, so he let off

The 1992 U.S. REGIONALSREGION 1

BY DAN KEEN

Dust Devil ripping through launch at Chelan. Photo by Barry Bateman

page 9

his ballistic chute also. Amazingly, he walkedaway unhurt and flew the next day.

I fought on to Mansfield, but was down below4000 ft when I locked onto a beauty that tookme over 11,000 ft! At 6:00 pm, a 7000 ft gainsure feels fine! My kids at the beach began tosing happy birthday to me over the radio. That11,000 ft turned into a final glide which putme at the bump in the road, west of Mansfield,for a 50 miler in 5 hours. Good for 3rd place,just 4 miles shy of 1st. Mike got a 46,er for5th. Back in the hot tub, the jets were on atwarp speed, until my muscles turned to butter.A nice long walk in the warm night breezealong Chelan's boardwalk added a specialglow to the day.

Day ThreeTask this day was an out and return to thebump in the road with a goal at Chelan Air-port, for a total distance of 24 miles. KevinBye was in first place after the first two roundsand I was sitting in fourth. My strategy fortoday was to set up beside Kevin so that I cankeep a close eye on him. At the last minute, Iremembered to photo the task board and whenI returned he was already gone! I quickly gotinto the launch line up but it was not moving.Six gliders were really high over launch buteveryone else was real low. One pilot toplands yelling "Down cycle!", which froze theline up. The start gate was rolled out and thefirst gaggle took off. Another ground photostart for me. Launch cycles were strong butswitching 90° both ways. Some pilots won'tlaunch until all 14 streamers are straight in.

One hour after the start gate opens I finally gotto launch and hooked the first thermal I couldfind up to 8,500 ft and crossed the gorge. AsI crossed I could see a few gliders crossingalso,....... the other way! Great! my time isshot, so, my strategy now is just to make sureI get to goal and hope my points don't drop toomuch. I photo turnpoint at 8000 ft and hearthat Mike is still stuck on launch. The gliderin front of him mushed off launch andsnapped his keel. I made it back to the edge ofthe gorge and remembering Kevin's map,which I had peeked at, saying you need 5200ft to make gaol. I thermaled back up to 6000ft to be on the safe side. Mike is now inMcNeil Canyon and scratching for his life. Ihead across to the airport, getting unwantedlift all the way, and arrive with about 3000 fttoo much. Making lots of noise for the goaltimer, I dropped a smoke bomb for a gloriousorange plume. Mike Daily won the day andmy own was good for tenth place.After one and a half hours of scratching in thegorge, Mike finally got up and headed for theturnpoint. Goal closed at 6:00 pm, Mike waslast to cross the line at 5:37 pm.

The only two Canucks to enter the U.S. Re-gion 1 Regionals ended up in the top ten. Mikeplaced seventh and I placed fourth. Chelanhas got to be one of my favorite places to fly.You can fly north or south and mountain fly,or you can cross the gorge and prairie fly. Justdon't enter the dust devils too low.

Final Standings.1 Kevin Bye2 Dave Little3 Davis Straub4 Dan Keen5 Paul Gallagher6 Don Wanlin7 Mike Harrington8 Mike Daily9 Terry Taggert10 Lional Space

CANADIAN PARAGLIDING RECORDBY PETER MACLAREN

Finally a windstill day. Theprevious three had tested mynerves with strong northwinds resulting in shreddedthermals, rotor scares andtime spent hitch hiking fromwell down range. The task forJune 25th would be differentwith a 100km speed out andreturn.

It had been cycling up for thepast half hour on the Mt. 7launch in Golden, B.C. but Iwas still completing docu-mentation. Once launched ittook minutes to go from1800m to 3500m and soonthereafter the first valleycrossing was complete. Downrange a large cloud was block-ing out my future thermalpoints. I pushed through thisshady area finally receivingsome lift from a sunny for-ested patch on the valley floor.

Arriving at my intended turn-point of Mt. Spillimacheen Inoticed that in fact a north driftwas prevalent. I chose to abort

my task and go for open distance. Theflying wasn't difficult up until Mt. Swansea(105km) where I dropped below 2000m. Idecided to head out in the valley as themountains were some distance from theroad. I managed to gain 500m in very lightlift in the valley, but that was it. I followedthe highway looking for landing fieldsknowing that I also needed a landing wit-ness. Nobody around except for vehicles onthe highway so that was my best bet. Iworked for a clear stretch and put it downon the shoulder. I flagged the next motorhome which thankfully stopped. The occu-pants agreed to be my landing witnessesand took pictures of me with my Edel Racer25 on the side of the highway.

The flight took 4hours 20mins and covereda distance of 120km. It also took me an-other 3 hours to hitchhike back to Golden.(I hope we get some out and return type ofweather soon!).

page 10

Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse werewailing out about the Cinnamon Girl andCowgirl in the sand over and over again as wewere driving through the desert and on pastthe infamous China Lake Military airbase. Ithought I was going to go nuts! Looking outover the dry lake bed I remembered back towhen I had read "The Right Stuff" and "ChuckYeagers excepts", about all the wild flighttesting he had done there, then wondered howguys like that ever lived to be so old.

We were on our way to Mecca - "The OwensValley" and around China Lake is just wherethings start to get interesting. I was looking atmy map and recalling all the names of themountains and places which were sparselydistributed along the Owens. It was for me agreat excuse to get "Caddy" (my buddyTomas Geissel) to turn the blaring stereodown while I explained to him about a few ofthe towns and launch sites we were drivingthrough on our way to our final destination ofBishop, Look Cad!, there's HorseshoeMeadows! That's where both Larry Tudor andKari Castle had set their respective men andwomen's World record flights of well over200 miles. "Yah gut, cool!" says Caddy,looking up at the awesome peaks. Myreprieve is short, five minutes out of LonePine the stereo volume is back up and NeilYoung is relentlessly wailing out somethingabout, "knocking on a cellar door".

Especially for those not ever having had theexperience of the Owens Valley, I can easilyunderstand that it could be hard to imagine thepower of the impression the Owens imprintson a persons memory. The size-scale andmagnitude of this sprawling desert, the hugesheer gray and distant granite peaks and thefrequent, "Big Weather" is stunning. Theclear and dry desert air allows you to seeincredibly far down lonely roads and acrossmany empty miles of sand, where not even aheartbeat exists. In fact, judging both scaleand distance is incredibly hard in the Owensand it is something to watch out for, the bestthing is to refer constantly to maps for the firstwhile.

Clouds were forming and I guessed them to beat least 18,000 feet - much like every day theprevious year. upon arrival in Bishop it was

obvious, "this was the place". Dusty Hangglider vehicles of all types were parked infront of stores or roaming the few streets intown. Getting a bed to sleep in proved to betough as we were among the last to arrive andhad not bothered with the formality ofreservations. Wandering through town andvisiting a number of over-booked Motels wemet a lot of pilots just laying around theirrooms. Having arrived early, they were takinga break from all the sun and dust. They hadalready flown some days and needed time torelax before the meet. We began to hear a lotof wild stories about dust devils, upside downgliders, Military jets and flat tires as wepassed from Motel to Motel. It was lookinglike things were going to be interesting.

Finally we found our place at the Piute Lodgewhere we unloaded and began to work on ourgear. Oxygen bottles, regulator systems,Camel Backs (water container). Camera'ssecured - working? Ballast containers, radios- extra batteries - check, first aid kits, hookknifes, Granola bars, Gah!, where does a guyfind the space! Our harnesses were soontransformed into something which moreclosely resembled an astronauts space suit!We would only have a few days of rest beforethe meet, after a treating ourselves to greatMexican food at "La Casita" we crashed outfor the night.

Day OneBasalt - Coaldale - Mina JunctionDust devils on launch and good going on theWhites! One could see that there was a realrace on and from this pilots perspective it wasexciting - that is at least, until halfway toCoaldale, where in the flats the lift wasbroken and drifting towards the north - andaway from our precious last turnpoint. Basaltwas easy and everybody snapped their photo'spretty high, but after that, talk about ̀Bumpand Grind!' Being one of the first few pilotsout on the flats I ended up with a few others -including Pendry, low, turning climbing anddrifting in weak, small and punchy thermals.The trick here seemed to be leaving thethermal before the wind drift began to becometoo much than the rate of climb - which thenput you in the awkward position of actuallyloosing ground. About every 5 minutes a fewgliders would break and sprint towards the

turn point with many others following in hotpursuit desperately trying not to be leftbehind. While the majority of pilots lost a lotof time in the flats, some of the later arrivalswere in luck and able to make up somebecause conditions had improved immenselyby the time they arrived. After making theCoaldale turnpoint the run to goal wasdownwind and plain easy.

At the goal line it was hectic, with most of the40 finishers arriving within 10 or 15 minutesof each other. Shortly after the last pilotlanded at goal, a large gust front (pushing aseveral kilometer wide band of dust up intothe air), came ripping through and blew somegliders around. The wind was so strong that itwas not possible to put a glider on the roofracks without at least two or three people.Fortunately because of all the dust, everybodycould see the front coming and were (for themost part) prepared for the wind, which feltmore like a big sandblaster than anything.

Day TwoWhite mountain Ranch - DarwinA long one! The task was 12.5 miles north toWhite Mountain then a turn south back pastlaunch across Westguard Pass and onto theInyo Range. Getting to the goal of "Darwin"involved flying completely off the end of theInyos and 15km east into a headwind whichsurprized most pilots. Getting up on the southside of Westguard Pass was not always soeasy either, in fact, some pilots didn't. Severalpeople landed high on the Plateau - at 7000 or8000 ft and there were some others wholanded far from the highway (or any road forthat matter). Tulio Gervasoni (the onlycompeting Italian pilot) landed "off road" andspent the night out in the desert floor"admittedly" a bit restless thinking about allthe snakes out there. Yet another pilot landingout ̀high and far' in the back range, walkedout but on the eastern, Death Valley side ofthe Inyos. After running out of water he wasmore than lucky to have been found andpicked up by an old miner who gave him a rideout the next day. Having spent the night out hedidn't make it back to Bishop until 3:00 pm thefollowing afternoon.Later, on the Inyo mountains, before LonePine, I watched first hand as Bruce Goldsmithentered a thermal about 100 meters in front of

OWENS VALLEY '92(Fasten Your Seat Belts!)

BY RANDY HANEY

page 11

me. Suddenly his glider pitched straight overand tumbled forward violently. Thrown hardinto the sail Bruce lost the control bar and theglider stabilized momentarily upside down.As he was still in the sail the glider made yetanother turbulence related maneuver androtated hard into an inverted, backward tailsliding and oscillating position. All the whileI was waiting to see a parachute come flyingout but it was not to be. Still full in the sail theglider rotated again hard, yawing andtumbling again but it appeared "amazinglyenough" that Bruce caught the top of thecontrol bar on the way past and come out in ascreaming dive 100 meters over themountain....... Later Bruce flew to goal. Firstin was John Pendry, then Tomas Suchenek,Chris Arai and myself. Pilots were coming inuntil 7:45 pm finishing this 116 mile task.Interesting point here was that 5 Germanpilots were among the 20 who made goal, BobBaier being the first of them. On the longdrive home one could see the majority ofpilots, (many of whom who had worked hardand flown until dusk) were lined up in thedark all along the last twenty miles to goal.No vehicle with a conscience found its wayhome without a full complement of glidersthis night.

Day Three100 mile race to GabbsForecast - Moderate southwest winds to 20knots with turbulence down low. Again a longtask at one mile less than one hundred fromthe start gate to goal. Many pilots complainedabout turbulence over the White Mountainsthis day. Thermaling to over 16,000 feet atlaunch things were looking good and we wereable to cross the start gate high despite thestrong southwest winds. It was on return tothe Whites that things were less impressive -more turbulence and wind. Down low it wasunusual - not offering any saves and severalpilots were washed out before MontgomeryPass. Up on the Range it was a big race butthings immediately thinned out upon leaving

Boundary Peak. For those who found the rightline the going was not so bad and for the firsttime somebody beat the Swifts!!!! (a ridgedwing hang glider) - Rich pheiffer and myselfstreaked in - first and second across the line infront of the Swifts with times of around 2 1/2hours. Ten minutes later Bob Baier flewacross the line with Pendry and a small gaggleof gliders. On course clouds wereoverdeveloping and there was virga, rain andgust fronts etc. On the ground the wholeGabbs local police force (all two officers) hadcaught site of the first pilots coming to goaland must have been pretty entertainedbecause they stayed out there parked in thesand until the last pilot came to goal, carefullysurveying everything. All in all, 73 pilotsmade it in, arriving at all altitudes from theincredibly high to the extremely low. "DesertDog" Drew Cooper flew in only just finishingthe task, 1 meter over the goal line, making acontrolled cross-downwind crash landingwhich farmed a few resident sage brush out bythe roots, but looked absolutely spectacular!

One of the Canadian pilots - Mark Tullock,had an interesting experience on this daywhile landing out at an old Ghost town in thehills before Mina, a gold mining community.On his final approach Mark noticed that theblack sand he was about to land on wasrippling in the wind just like water. Hey! thatis water! Mark had just enough altitude andtime to re-setup his approach for a landing bythe black pond. Later he discovered to hishorror that if he had actually landed down inthe black water that is would have been hislast one. The grimy liquid was a settling pondof concentrated cyanide fluid - which is usedby mines to wash out and separate the goldfrom the other minerals. A definite close onethere!A rest dayToo much wind. Chance of overdevelopment.In fact only about half of the days were flyablethis year and on those days pilots were able toexploit the freedom to entertain themselves

with all what the area had to offer. Hiker typeswent up into the Sierras where there areendless high altitude trails which sport allkinds of nature and offer incredible views.Others went to Yosemite, Mammoth Ski areaor played golf in Bishop etc. Hot springs andswimming holes saw action on these days aswell. About 50% of the pilots were too tiredfrom all the action of the previous days to domuch of anything and just lay around theirMotels staying cool and getting some rest.

Day fourBishop Airport - Basalt - Tonopah RestArea (Dry Lake Bed)It was a strange day on the Whites today.Some wind shears seemed to be working andthe lift seemed to come out of some prettyunconventional places. After a bit of a slowstart everybody climbed easily to 16,000 feetover launch, the only difficult thing about it isthat the southwest wind and thermal drift wasstrong which made getting to the start gateeither high or fast, impossible. Upon return tothe Whites many pilots were at nearly halftheir original climb out level or "just abovelaunch" but once actually on the mountainthere were frequent thermals (although theywere coming from almost unpredictablepoints on the mountain). By the time mostpilots had made the first turnpoint andreturned past launch even the thick "Start gategaggles" had for the most part dispersed.

Flying off the end of Boundary Peak onecould see that there was again a noticeablechange in condition with a lower cloudbaseand wider thermal spacing. Visibility in theflats was so good (especially to the north) thatit appeared as though you could see to the endsof the earth. A few people, surprised by the"fickle" conditions, were to busy to notice thegreat views. Willi Muller got so low at Basaltthat you could almost read the road signs inhis "Basalt" turnpoint photo. Luckily, just

.....continues

page 12

after he opened his harness to land he caughta thermal - got up and flew to goal. Once in themountains past Coaldale everything wascooking, even cycling too the point of over-development. Pulling on speed from here,Pendry, Arai and myself were the first pilotsto make it across the line with over 70 othersfollowing on the final 25 km to goal.

Notable on this day were all the hard landingspilots were making on the dry white lake-bedof Tonopah. Robin Hamilton and anotherBritish pilot made a spectacular finish whenthey both streaked across goal dumping theirsand ballast which dispersed itself in aspectacular flash. It reminded me of theCanadian water bombers I used to watch backhome when they would come roaring in lowover the forest fires and dump their coloredwater ballast which then crashed heavily intothe flames. On the way home we stopped tohelp Glen Dagenais break his glider down ina raging gust front. While there a US F-15fighter aircraft came by and made what wasthe "best show of the day", absolutelyhowling past at 100 meters over the ground"contour flying" and looking absolutely wild.

Day FiveRace to DarwinLots of excitement today, pilots had the extrafeature of watching two gliders coming downunder canopy, - unfortunately, one of themwas me! Initially the climbs out of launchwere slow, but by 1:30 pm they had picked up,by 2:30 pm things were booming. Lying therewatching everybody skying out under healthylooking clouds, I felt lousy, it was nearly aspainful as the steady throbbing of my brokenfoot. After being mid-aired (thrown into acompletely head down position) I hadobserved that the ground was very close and

went directly for my chute. Mountains beingmountains (composed largely of granite) Ilanded directly on some unfriendly rocks atabout 8000 ft msl - therefore the broken foot.

For the others it was fast flying on the range,many times glides were easily 20 km longwith no turns necessary. However, if you keepflying long enough the Owens Valley alwayshas an unexpected change in the hand andagain today most pilots were washed out inthe strong east winds at the end of the Inyo's.Only 12 pilots made goal, Robbie Whittle wasfirst and Tomas Rauch (D) was a surprise witha well deserved second. Until this timeRobbie had been flying only every second daybecause of a previously injured wrist, whichmade it impossible to fly for extended lengthsof time.

Back at headquarters the map was a sea ofpins, with an unbelievable numbers of gliders(pins) within a 1cm square. The followingmorning when the results were passed aroundon launch there was some grumbling about"traveling pins", it seemed there were somelittle kids who had found there way to the mapand thought it was good fun to pull the pins outand move them around some! Eventuallythings were straightened out.

Unfortunately for some pilots like ChrisMuller, Glen Dagenais and Dr MarkMoscovitz, there was not even the chance tomake goal. To my good fortune they had cometo my rescue, but of course in doing this theyhad committed themselves to hopelessly latestart times, having run down the mountainnearly a kilometer to where I was. Gettingback out to the nearest road took nearly threehours.

Day SixBasalt - Coaldale - Goldfield

No sunshine on start but all the pilots startedanyway. Tom Kreyche was thrilled at thechoice by the task committee. A completelynew task. Conditions were easy enough untilthe Coaldale VOR, 25 km west winds toBasalt then turning south east from there.Towards Coaldale were mostly bluethermals. Most pilots were densely "littered"along the VOR. Larry Tudor showed hisextreme brilliance today and was the onlyhang glider to make goal which astoundedeverybody and moved him directly into 5thplace. Pendry was not so lucky on this day,losing ground, placing between 30th and 40thplace for the day which made things begin toget interesting. The only other things whichmade it to goal today were the two Swifts.Because of the previous days "traveling pins"problem several teams drove up and down theCoaldale VOR road writing the numbers ofgliders down in order. These were handed into the meet headquarters that night.

Day SevenRace to LuningAt the pilots meeting Larry Tudor wascongratulated on his outstanding flight of theday before, "the only pilot to make gaol", lotsof applause. Grumbling and complaints fromthe Swift pilots who had arrived at goal twohours before Larry.

The day was not looking great with verystrong winds forecast, therefore the short 70mile task to Luning. Many pilots did not getout of the valley due to conditions. EricBeckman and his Swift spent several hoursbelow launch finally landing at Chalfont.Other pilots had exciting experiences tryingto stay out of the rotor of the Whitemountains. One pilot landing by the highwaybelow literally backed up into the fieldamazing some tourist who had stopped to seehim come in.

continues.....

Above: The goal at Tonopah dry lake bed; Previous page: Henry Hauck (producer of "Themik" doessome filming on launch while the Canadian Team wait for the pilots briefing before setting up their gliders.

page 13

Most pilots who got out over MontgomeryPass made goal (only three didn't) and landedat luning in 30-40 mph winds. Due to the highwind conditions at goal there was nosocializing - it took two people to safely breaka glider down and tie it to the retrieve car.Back at headquarters Tom Kreyche askedsome of the pilots if they thought it wouldhave been possible to have had Gabbs as agoal that day - it seems he likes those 100 miletasks!

Day EightAt the pilots meeting Tom announces that heneglected to congratulate the Swift pilots formaking goal on day 6 - (big applause).

Weather conditions were stronger than theywere on day 7 however a task was called toGabbs anyway. A few wind dummieslaunched but they were not able to get up or goanywhere. A better day to play golf or be atourist.

Due to weather there was not to be any moredays flying in this meet. The American Team,who for the first time in many years placedfirst, ahead of the British and the Aussies,went crazy and had a big party which went

right into the next day. In the individual class,John Pendry, who had flown an excellentmeet, being extremely consistent placed first,followed by Tomas Suchanek, Carl Bradenand Chris Arai - who had for the better part ofthe meet been flying extremely well and insecond place. Even though many days had notbeen flyable this year I think that most pilotswould agree that after 7 days and over 1000km in completed task, that this was indeed avalid meet.

As for me, I am working towards getting backon my feet and back in shape because you canbet your last dollar I want to be back in theOwens and flying next year. Its a rare chanceto fly in some of the Biggest conditions in theWorld, in competition with the best pilots inthe World, and I love it.

J.C. Hauchecorne between rotors atthe Pre-Worlds in the Owens Valley.

Photo by Donna

There we were on August 3rd, the final dayof the twin competitions at Golden, theWestern Canadian Hang Gliding & Par-agliding Championships. The ten parapen-ters at goal and several others all watcheda distant speck on the range. Was it anotherparaglider? No, it was a hang glider, cir-cling up higher and higher above the peaks.

Suddenly the glider turned and flew towardus. Even at a distance of 10 km, it wasapparent to us that the pilot intended to flydirectly to our location. As he approachedwe were impressed by his blazing speed,for he seemed to be judging his sink andglide precisely to as to arrive at our positionat the maximum speed to fly. As the pilotgrew closer, we recognised the glider asthat of Davis Straub. Now there was nomistaking the masterful brain at work,reading numbers off charts on his basetube,mentally factoring in tailwinds, elevationand air humidity to reach the goal field asquickly as possible.

But wait! At a height of less than 1000 ft.AGL, Mr. Straub seemed to suddenlychange his mind, for he slowed and began toweave around the sky, with an air of appar-ent desperation, as though perhaps hewanted to climb back up. For whateverreason, he soon stopped weaving, passedover the goal field at 500 feet, turned onfinal, then... turned downwind and went toland in an adjacent logging yard. But why?

In a flash of insight, suddenly the mysterywas revealed, comprehensible to even "noframe, no brain" paraglider pilots like our-selves: Davis Straub was actually research-ing material for a new 'Hang Gliding' articleto be entitled "Best Speed to Fly to theWrong Goal". You see, the goal field for thehang gliding meet was another 25 km downthe valley!

Stewart MidwinterMeet head, Western Canadian ParaglidingChampionship

SPEEDS to FLY(To the Wrong Goal!)

Sailplane flying in Golden

The Rocky MountainSoaring Center

Few Canadian soaring pilots haveyet taken advantage of the excellentpossibilities for record flying of-fered by the opening of the RockyMountain Soaring Center inGolden. Operator Uwe Kleinhem-pel has mapped out all of the housethermals for 100 km in every direc-tion, from the Rogers Pass to theHowse Pass, from Lake Louise toLake Windermere and other pointsalong the Columbia River, theBeaverfoot and the Kicking Horse.A few cross-over pilots from hanggliding seem to be having the skyover Golden largely to themselves,with one or two preparing for anattack on the SAC record books nextspring. Can this challenge go unan-swered?

page 14

Golden, B.C. is the Mecca of hang gliding inCanada. The Columbia Valley, and the awe-some ranges of the Rocky Mountains whichflank it, are the place to go if you want to putsome miles on your hang glider in the moun-tains. Launch is at 6300' ASL on the shoulderof 8000' Mt. Seven (the valley floor is about2600'), and a string of 8000' peaks stretchessouth as far as the eye can see.

For several years now, Ron Bennett has beenrunning the Golden Open, a loosely-struc-tured week-long meet in mid-July, designedto encourage participation by pilots withvarying levels of experience. Ron agreed tohost the Nationals at the '92 Open, providedhe could run them according to "Ron's Rules".As it turned out, Ron put on an excellent meet,with pretty good cooperation from theweather gods.

Forty-seven competitors and several free-fliers gathered to try their luck in the Rockies.There was a seven-pilot team from Quebec,several pilots from Ontario, several fromEdmonton, and four Americans. The remain-der were Calgary-area and B.C. pilots.

The town of Golden put on a warm welcomefor the pilots, with special coupons for localestablishments, a pancake breakfast, a steakbarbecue, and articles in the local papers.Golden's citizens are excited by their popular-ity as a flying site, and it is nice to fly a placewhere hang glider pilots are so welcome.

Day 1. Round 1.Race to Edgewater. 81.5km.The meet started off with a "Golden Day", thekind of cross-country conditions Golden isfamous for. Reigning B.C. Champ "Sparky"Hines punched off first at 2:37, a patternwhich would continue as the week went on.After scratching below launch for about 15minutes, Sparky climbed out and the rush tolaunch was on.

Cloudbase was at 12,500' ASL over the range,and the lift was good as pilots raced south. Theonly glitch in the meet organization turned uptoday, when it turned out that the field se-lected for goal was being cut and baled, andthe farmer didn't want us to land there thatday. Those pilots on Roger Nelson's fre-

quency got to hear the exchange with his sonSean, the landing timer, as a nearby alternatefield was selected as goal. It was eventuallydecided that times to both fields would count,and that co-meet director J.C. Hauchecornewould attempt to land in the original goal fieldand take times there. As it turned out, J.C. gotshot down 7.5km short of goal, but it didn'tmatter, as everyone who made it to Edgewatermanaged to find the new goal.

Sixteen-year-old Chris Muller is hot! TheCochrane Kid was the top Canadian at thisyear's Pre-Worlds, and a week before theNationals, Chris set a paragliding world rec-ord to a declared goal, 145km from Golden toCanal Flats. Golden is Chris's backyard, andhe smoked to goal with a time of 1hr 41min.New Hampshire pilot Randy Adams was sec-ond with 2hr 3min, and your faithful scribefound himself in an out-of-character thirdplace with 2hr 12min.A total of thirteen pilots made goal, with

Mark Tulloch in eighth. The last pilot to makegoal, Darryl Ross, overshot goal by 12kmbefore his driver got him turned around atRadium and headed back toward goal. Highsurface winds and a small, turbulent L.Z.made landing at goal entertaining. Fortu-

nately, everyone walked away relatively un-scathed.

Day 2. Round 2. Out and return.Golden - Harrogate Store - Nicholson L.Z.86.8km.Day 2 had a lower cloudbase of 10,500', andan easterly flow aloft, pushing the clouds outtoward the valley. Sparky Hines repeated hisperformance of the previous day, launching at2:48 pm and scratching for half an hour beforegetting up. Then the pack was off, climbingout, and running down the range.

Lift was good at the start, with a cloudstreetrunning south from Kapristo (the next peaksouth of Mt. Seven) toward Parson. MarkTulloch was working thermals farther out inthe valley than the other pilots nearby, and Ijoined him for several thermals near Parson.Mark would climb very efficiently in eachthermal until the lift would begin to slacken,and then shoot off to the next thermal. I got

cold feet when I saw two gliders down reallylow ahead, and worked some light lift backtoward the ridge. Meanwhile, Mark rocketedoff, confident of finding the next thermal.

The meet directors used a 180 degree line

The 1992 CANADIAN CHAMPIONSHIPSJuly 18 - 25, 1992, Golden BC

BY STEVE BEST

Socializing on launch before the window open

page 15

coming off the store as a turnpoint, whichmeant that pilots did not have to leave the lifton the range to get a photo of a turnpoint in thevalley. Thirty-eight pilots made the turn-point, and thirty-two of them made it back togoal.

Chris Muller again showed his speed, win-ning the day with a time of 2hr 24min. KevinCaldwell was second with a time of 2hr30min, and J.C. Hauchecorne was third with2hr 35min. Mark Tulloch was in a three-waytie for seventh for the day. The last pilot tomake goal, Hardy Hall, straggled in at 8:22pm, after a 4hr 42min flight. Dead calmconditions in the L.Z. led to a mixture of crisplandings and whacks, as tired pilots wrestledtheir gliders to the ground.

At the end of the day, Chris Muller was firmlyin first place overall, with two wins. RandyAdams was second overall, and Sparky Hineswas third, despite all his time spent scratchingbelow launch. Mark Tulloch was fifth overall.

Day 3. Round 3.Golden - Brisco - return to Harrogate.91.5 km.Again, cloudbase was at 10,500', but condi-tions on launch were trickier, due to a southwind (you have to watch out for the kite eatingtrees to the left). Martin Henry had just shownup from Chelan, and he took over ̀first-to-launch' honors from Sparky, launching at

1:37. The meet director's response to Martin'sludicrously early launch was to extend thelaunch timing window to two hours from itsnormal hour-and-a-half. ("Ron's Rules!")We all got to watch the Emperor scratchingreal low for about an hour before he, Sparky,

and Stewart Midwinter started climbing outon the next ridge south, and the pack startedlaunching. The tricky conditions sloweddown the launch sequence, and those pilotswho were toward the back of the line-up foundthemselves out of luck, the good lift was gone.

The ridge at launch was not working, andpilots headed straight across to the next ridgesouth, thermalling up the main face of Mt.Seven. A large section of the range ended upin shade, and a number of pilots got stuck atvarious locations down the range, until itturned on again. Chris Muller fell victim tothe shade, sinking out and landing at goal, butonly having completed half the course.

The range divides at Spillimacheen, and theBrisco turnpoint was the last rocky peak onthe lower front range. The first several pilotsto reach the front range found cummies over-head and workable lift. Twelve pilots man-aged to get the turnpoint and make it back togoal. The last couple of pilots who got to thefront range found the cummies gone, and onlythe occasional bubble of zero sink. They gottheir turnpoint photos level with or below the6500' turnpoint peak, and glided back northabout halfway to goal.

J.C. Hauchecorne had the fastest time for theday, with a winning time of 3hr 16min. KevinCaldwell was only one minute slower forsecond place. Lionel Space was third with a

time of 3hr 22min, and Mark Tulloch was oneminute behind Lionel for fourth.

Chris Muller's bad day dropped him to fifthplace overall. Mark Tulloch took over firstplace overall, J.C. moved up to second, and

Kevin Caldwell was third.

Meanwhile, back at the Nicholson L.Z. (thisis the regular landing field for Golden), therewas a little excitement with a chute deploy-ment. A relatively low airtime pilot decidedto do some wingovers about 400' over thelanding field. He initiated things with anaggressive stall (described by witnesses as awhip stall), and the glider responded by tuck-ing, stabilizing upside-down, and folding awing. The pilot threw his chute, totalled hisglider, and walked away with a sore arm. Iwill leave it to Stewart to pontificate on thewisdom of whip stalls and low level aerobat-ics.

Day 4. Round 4. Out and Return.Golden - Spillimacheen - Nicholson L.Z.107.5km.Another sunny day with good developmentover the range. Again, lift was spotty aroundlaunch, and the pack headed to the next ridgesouth to thermal up the face of Mt. Seven.Cloudbase was about 12,000', but the ther-mals tended to get ratty and hard to followabove 10,500'. A large thunderstorm builtover the next range east, but never quitereached the cu's above our range.

As the pilots headed south they were treatedto the sight of a single-place glass sailplaneworking his way north through the pack fromInvermere. Once again, a 180 degree turn-point line was used, coming off the bridge atSpillimacheen. Your author choose to stay onthe back range to get his turnpoint photo(probably a mistake - lift was good in frontand it was shorter), and I found myself cir-cling 1,500' above a herd of fourteen moun-tain goats. As I climbed out in my best thermalof the day I watched them kicking up dust,clambering over rocks, and doing mountaingoat-type stuff. Not a sight you get to seeevery day at your local flying site.

Thirteen pilots made goal. As the day woreon, overdevelopment to the west shut out thesun and the lift, and the rest of the pack gotflushed along the course.

Chris Muller was back in form, winning theday with a time of 3hr 8min. Mark Tullochwas second with a time of 3hr 20min, andKevin Caldwell was one minute behind forthird. Mark's second place kept him in firstoverall, Chris had climbed back up to second,and Kevin was holding steady in third overall.

Looking south down the Columbia Range

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Clockwise from top left: Kevin Caldwell & J.C. Hauchecorne prepare for record attemptGliders collecting UV's; Greguiore Guillemette; Fresh food on launch courtesy of the Qu

Tullock receiving his winning trophy from Meet Director, Ron Bennett; "Dangerous D

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Days 5 & 6.After four "Golden Days" in a row with 50+mile tasks, most pilots were ready for a break,and they got it when a weather system movedin bringing rain. Martin Henry ran towingclinics both mornings at the airport, doingboth single and tandem tows from his trailer-mounted tow rig. By the end of the secondday, the other airport users were very favora-bly impressed with the professionalism andsafety of the Emperor's towing operation.There was also a tandem discussion session,where tandem pilots discussed proposed stan-dards for tandem ratings.

Day 7.Race to Juniper Heights. 101km.After two days of rainpilots were pretty hornyto go flying again. Day7 had low cloud in thevalley and some spec-tacular higher levelconvective cloud. Themeet directors optimis-tically called the long-est task of the meet, arace 100km down therange.

Earlier in the week ithad overdeveloped tothe east of us or to thewest of us. Today ournumber came up and itoverdeveloped right ontop of us. Most pilotssank out fairly close tolaunch after scratchingfor 45 minutes, and sev-eral got rained on asthey packed up theirgliders.

Despite the marginalconditions, Roger Nel-son actually managedto make goal after a te-nacious 5hr 20minflight. Unfortunatelyfor Roger, five pilotshad to make it past Par-son (30km fromlaunch) to make the dayvalid, and only twoother pilots made it pastParson, so his win didn'tcount.

One of the three to getpast Parson was ChrisMuller. Chris landed in

a field where he had previously landed aparaglider, but it proved a bit small for Chris'Foil Combat. A broken leading edge resultedin the sail having to be sent back to Australiafor repairs. Fortunately, Chris' dad showed upthat evening with a new HP AT 145 on top ofhis truck, and Chris was back in the race.(Willi had broken his leg paragliding a weekbefore the Nationals, and had to sit the seriesout.)

Day 8. Round 5.Race to Spillimacheen. 50.8km.Weather conditions for the last day of themeet looked like a carbon copy of the morningbefore. The meet directors called a short taskfor the final day, a 50km race.

High cloud cover in the afternoon made thelift light and hard to find. The marginal con-ditions were marginally better than the daybefore - six pilots made it past Parson and theday was valid. Four of those six made goal. Atotal of eighteen pilots managed to land some-where other than the regular landing field,outnumbered by the twenty-three pilots in theNicholson L.Z.

Mark Tulloch had an 80 point lead going intothe final round, and had to do reasonably wellto hang on to first place. Mark did better thanthat, winning the day with a time to goal of 1hr47min. 19 minutes behind him was J.C.Hauchecorne in second place, and DarrylRoss was 12 minutes farther back in thirdplace. Stewart Midwinter was the last pilot to

continues.....

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up in front of the north ramp; Guy Aubin & Maryse Perron, 2 of the 6 pilots from Quebec;ent; The "infamous outhouse"; Hang waiting; Your author, Steve Best; Chris Muller; Marksented with his "fishing trophy"; Alan Faulkner, Nfld, getting dressed for flight.

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make goal, with a time of 3hr 44min. Stewarthad launched late, and spent a lot of timescratching, arriving at goal at 7:00 pm. Wordthat Stewart had made goal and needed a rideback reached the rest of the pilots as they wereenjoying a steak dinner back in Golden. Ste-wart's retrieve was, needless to say, put onhold.

Mark's win cinched his position as CanadianChampion, the only pilot to make goal everyday. J.C.'s second for the day moved him backup to second place for the series, having madegoal in four of the five rounds. Making goal onthe last day moved Stewart Midwinter up tothird overall. Chris Muller had a bad day onthe last day, with a tenth place finish (13.5km)which dropped him to fourth overall, despite

winning three of the five rounds.

Wrapping Up.The town of Golden put on an excellent steakbarbecue for the pilots in the town park onSaturday evening. The following morning thepilots gathered for breakfast in the TurningPoint Restaurant for the awards ceremony.Stained glass trophies were given out forLightweight (under 100 hours airtime), Mid-dleweight (under 400 hours), and Heavy-weight (400+ hours) categories.

The Lightweight category was won by Ed-monton pilot Ken Holman. Ken had his first50 mile flight during the meet, and finishedthirtieth overall. Second place in the Middle-weight category was taken by Ottawa pilot

Ian Ewens, who was twentieth. First place inthe Middleweights was taken by your author,thirteenth overall (I never really thought of300+ hours as "middleweight"). The Heavy-weight winners were as noted above: first -Mark Tulloch, second - J.C. Hauchecorne,and third - Stewart Midwinter.

A special award for perseverance was givento Roger Nelson, for his long flight to goal onthe non-valid seventh day. Another specialaward was presented to a pilot who had themisfortune of losing his driver's keys downthe outhouse at launch. The "Dangerous DaveFishing Trophy" was presented to the persis-tent pilot, who retrieved the keys with the aidof a long batten, some wire, and a miner'sheadlamp. His acceptance speech was very

brief and to the point -"Shit happens."

The 1992 Canadian Na-tionals was an excellentwell-run meet, atCanada's premierecross-country site.There were four"Golden Days" of fabu-lous cross-countryweather, and the meetorganization was low-key but effective.Thanks go out to meetdirectors Ron Bennettand J.C. Hauchecorne,to landing timer SeanNelson, to Jacques Fon-taine and GregoiureGuillemette who de-signed, ordered andsold the T-shirts and tothe cute lady with theQuebec contingent whowho kept the pilotshappy by supplyingthem with good freshfood every day onlaunch. And congratu-lations to MarkTulloch, the new Cana-dian Champion!

(The daily and totalscores appear on thefollowing page.)

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1992 Canadian ChampionshipsOrganized by Current Standings Scoring Totals as of Day 5

Pilot TotalName Prov Glider Points Rank Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5===========================================================================================Mark Tulloch BC XS 142 4439.3 1 701.4 832.4 965.5 940.0 1000.0JC Hauchercorne BC AT 158 4137.1 2 504.4 929.0 1000.0 854.5 849.2Stewart Midwinter Alta AT 145 578.7 3 564.2 867.5 762.6 638.4 746.0Chris Muller Alta Foil 152 3557.3 4 1000.0 1000.0 358.9 1000.0 198.4Darryl Ross Alta AT 158 3472.5 5 555.5 738.5 813.3 611.7 753.5— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — - — — — — — — — — —— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —George Borradaile BC AT 158 3391.4 6 711.3 742.3 928.9 725.9 283.0Kevin Caldwell Ont AT 158 3365.0 7 460.1 960.0 994.9 935.3 14.7Roger Nelson Alta AT 145 3096.3 8 561.1 778.4 762.6 773.7 220.5Sparky Hines BC Magic 43015.3 9 748.1 857.1 429.1 789.9 191.1Randy Adams N.H. AT 158 2872.5 10 821.1 847.1 206.3 806.9 191.1— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -Dan Keen BC AT 158 2862.1 11 453.3 782.6 796.7 638.4 191.1John McClintockK BC K2 22775.9 12 716.3 709.4 738.5 611.7 0.0Steve Best BC AT 158 2703.5 13 765.2 672.9 635.4 574.9 55.1Jacques Fontaine Que Kiss 154 2701.8 14 721.4 818.2 806.6 340.9 14.7Lionel Space Wa. AT 158 2687.5 15 6.8 268.6 970.3 912.6 529.2— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -Serge Lamarche Alta Sport 2266.2 16 631.2 742.3 107.3 638.4 147.0Barry Bateman BC Kiss 154 2169.1 17 134.6 809.0 185.7 874.4 165.4Davis Straub W a AT 158 2073.3 18 276.0 822.9 255.8 718.6 0.0Glenn Dagenais Alta Foil 1970.2 19 159.2 809.0 210.4 776.9 14.7Ian Ewens Ont Kiss 154 1950.7 20 660.1 241.9 499.2 534.8 14.7— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -Martin Henry BC AT 158 1916.3 21 0.0 0.0 790.3 843.0 283.0Peter Warnes BC AT 158 1841.1 22 114.5 692.3 148.5 367.7 518.1Barb Kramer N.H. AT 145 1757.1 23 240.3 782.6 8.3 534.8 191.1Maryse Perron Que K2 1671.9 24 182.7 832.4 107.3 534.8 14.7Bob Newbrook BC TRX 1662.4 25 214.7 672.9 225.3 534.8 14.7— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -Guy Aubin Que AT 145 1577.5 26 146.5 774.2 107.3 534.8 14.7Chris Florkow BC Magic 4 1481.8 27 95.4 832.4 165.0 374.3 14.7Borge Host BC Kiss 154 1474.6 28 146.5 666.7 8.3 638.4 14.7Ken Nicholson BC HP-1 1408.1 29 0.0 0.0 755.0 638.4 14.7Ken Holman Alta Formula 1312.4 30 95.4 587.8 8.3 429.8 191.1— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -François Belair Que K2 1236.3 31 6.8 757.9 107.3 349.6 14.7Rick Miller Alta Kiss 154 1148.6 32 6.8 689.0 8.3 429.8 14.7Rick Pumple BC Kiss 154 1091.8 33 0.0 441.7 635.4 0.0 14.7Richard Ouellet Alta AT 145 1067.6 34 95.4 541.4 8.3 407.8 14.7Ron Bennett Alta K2 1067.3 35 214.7 822.9 8.3 6.7 14.7— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -Darcy Lalor Alta K2 1043.5 36 276.0 519.9 8.3 239.3 0.0Pierre Marsolais Que K2 899.5 37 95.4 296.5 8.3 484.6 14.7Greg Guillemette Que Sensor 618.8 38 276.0 313.1 8.3 6.7 14.7Randy Galisky Alta Ace 574.9 39 0.0 0.0 0.0 574.9 0.0Tom Swift BC XS 155 558.2 40 6.8 5.9 144.4 386.4 14.7— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -Hardy Hall BC Kiss 154 544.5 41 6.8 514.7 8.3 0.0 14.7Les Sainsbury BC Kiss 154 514.5 42 0.0 260.9 8.3 230.6 14.7George Mackenzie Alta HP-2 497.8 43 0.0 260.9 8.3 213.9 14.7Martin Quinn Alta Foil 112.4 44 6.8 75.9 8.3 6.7 14.7

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S.B.: Congratulations on winning the Nationals, Mark. How long haveyou been flying hang gliders, and how did you get your start?Mark: I started training in June 1983. I worked with Jim Houghton atthe Parrot House Restaurant, the only rooftop restaurant in Victoria.We could see the guys flying Dallas Road in the evenings. It lookedlike something we really wanted to do.

The only schools available were in Vancouver, and we workedevenings and weekends, so that wasn't going to work into our sched-ules. We eventually found an unemployed hang glider pilot, a goodpilot, who taught us the basics, plus things I wouldn't teach people now.So we went out and somehow managed to not kill ourselves. I wentthrough a lot of aluminum because he taught us that training wheelstaught bad landing habits. Jim started high-flying that fall, and I hadmy first high flight in March of '84.S.B.: You've been competing pretty heavily for the past few seasons.How much airtime do you get a year, and how many competitions doyou get to?Mark: I sort of go in spurts, compete a bit and then don't as much. Iprobably go to 4-5 competitions a year, from fly-ins to real seriouscompetitions. At thispoint I probably averagearound 100 to 140 hoursa year.S.B.: How many hoursdo you have in total?Mark: A little over 700.S.B.: You went down tothe Owens this year.How did the '92 Pre-Worlds go for you?Mark: I went this yearand last year. I flew a lotbetter last year than I didthis year down there.The conditions are very,very different. Most ofthe Canadian Teamseemed to get off to a bitof a bad start, and thenjust tried to improve onwhat we were doing.There's a noticeable dif-ferent caliber of pilots,with all the best in theworld being there. It's really interesting to learn what could be done oncertain days.

I wasn't really happy with how I flew down there. I flew prettywell when I was in Sandia, which was my warm-up for the Owens.S.B.: How did you do at the Sandia Classic?Mark: I was thirteenth out of a field of fifty-seven pretty hot pilots. Imissed goal by about 1/2 mile on a couple of days, which dropped medown a bit.S.B.: You flew the Chelan Classic after the Owens. How did Chelan gofor you?Mark: I flew really well three of the four days. I had driven all throughthe night to get there from the Owens, so I was really tired the first day.But I flew really well three other days. I flew a personal best 136 mile

An Interview withCANADIAN NATIONAL CHAMPION

MARK TULLOCHGiven by Steve Best

flight one of the days, I won two of the other days. I was happy withthe way I was flying, I just wasn't as consistent as I could have been.S.B.: You and your partner, Jim Houghton, run a hang gliding schooland sell Moyes gliders.....Mark: We also sell Wills Wing, UP, Apco..... we sell about sixdifferent manufacturers' equipment. I fly the Moyes in competition,and my tandem glider is a Pacific Airwaves.S.B.: How much time do you spend teaching and doing tandems?Mark: Right now I'm doing 40 - 60 tandems a year. Teaching varieswith the time of year. As an example, over the last month I spent threeto four days a week on the training hill with classes.S.B.: Do you find living on Vancouver Island limits your flying at all?Mark: Actually, no, quite the opposite. Southern Vancouver Islandhas more sites than Vancouver does. Within an hour and a half ofdowntown Victoria we have ten sites. We have excellent inland sites,we've been over 11,000', we have excellent coastal sites. We haveexcellent sites for beginner pilots right up to experienced pilots.S.B.: You were 4th at last year's Nationals, and finished just out of themoney in a few competitions.....

Mark: I was tired ofbeing 4th.S.B.: What was dif-ferent about thisyear?Mark: I wanted it alot more. I went to theNationals with theidea that I reallywanted to do well. Ihad a lot of warm-upby going down toSandia, the Owens,and Chelan. I tried torelax a lot before themeet. The three days Iwas able to fly beforethe meet I did a coupleof days of tandems,and then I went par-agliding the day be-fore the meet, took abreak from flying fastdown the range.Once the Nationals

started I just sort of got better each day: I was 8th the first day, then 5th,then 4th, then 2nd, then I won the last day.S.B.: You won the last day of this years Nationals in very marginalconditions, when most pilots sank out. I remember seeing you at lastyear's Nationals, about 500' off the deck, 5 miles from goal, and youmanaged to scrape it in to goal that day. It would seem that one of yourstrong points is being able to tough it out and still get to goal when it'sreal scratchy. How would you describe your approach to flying, andyour flying style?Mark: I think living on the Island has actually helped me a lot in flyingin really weak conditions. Quite often we're working really light lift,

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Mark Tulloch with his Moyes XS at the Canadian Nationals.Photo by Steve Best

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1992 Canadian NatsA Brief Overview

BY STEWART MIDWINTER

Mark: The next goal is to go to the World Championships nextyear and do well, and learn more. I really enjoy the competitions,but right now I'm focusing less on competitions for the rest of thefall, and concentrating on building the school up. This is the firstyear where we've tried to increase the school into a full timebusiness, so that is taking a lot of work and effort. We'll see howthat goes.S.B.: Do you have any suggestions for other pilots who are tryingto do better at competition or cross-country flying?Mark: If you learn something from every flight, that the real key.If you go for a sled run in stable conditions, there's things you canlearn, about turning your glider, about speed and sink rate of yourglider. Even if it's not the greatest day, always try to learnsomething every flight, try something different.

I was flying up a Lake Cowichan a week or two ago withseveral pilots. One pilot just stayed in the house thermal for twohours and was really thrilled about his flight. I tended to try andexplore more, because I'm trying to learn to fly cross-country. I tryto cruise off in different areas, go in the back, cross the lake and goon the other side. I'm always trying to learn something about flyingin the area, or about flying in general. There's so much that youlearn from one site that you can apply to another site. I always tryto sit down after a flight when I write my log book, and think aboutwhat I've learned.S.B.: Thanks, Mark, and congratulations again on winning theNationals. Good luck with your school.

flying thermal lift at coastal sites, and I think that has given me anadvantage over the last few years in sticking it out in light stuff.

Too many times I've forged ahead in weak stuff, or not forgedahead and stayed with weak stuff. This year's been a good learningyear for me, learning to fly a little faster, a lot faster in some cases,realizing what gliders really can do. I had always gone by "fly bestglide between thermals", and I learned that that's really not the bestway to get anyplace quickly. You can fly a lot faster than yourmanufacturer's stated best-glide speed, and do a lot better.S.B.: You do a fair bit of paragliding. How much paragliding doyou do, and how has it affected the way you fly?Mark: I don't really do a lot of paragliding. In the winter, whenwe're in really calm conditions I often fly the paraglider, knowingthat I'm not going to soar anyway with the hang glider.

I don't think I've had the opportunity some of the other pilotshave to learn to fly better because I fly a paraglider. As an example,Chris Muller has had numerous flights down the Golden range witha paraglider, and he feels that has really helped him get to knowevery nook and cranny along the way.

I can't really say paragliding has helped me a lot. It has mademe realize how stable a hang glider really is. Is that helping me?Maybe it is. I'm a lot more confident in the structural integrity ofhang gliding equipment now.S.B.: Now that you've won the Canadian Nationals, what is yournext goal?

continued from previous page.....

Day 3: race to Brisco and back to Harrogate,91.5 km, 12 finishers. Slow going knocked afew pilots out, but there were many smilingfaces at the cold beer store after more than 4hours in the air for some. Fastest time was3:16 (28 km/h) and slowest 4:31.

Day 4: O/R to Spillimacheen, 101.5 km, 12finishers. Another long task, and slow goingas thermals were weak. In late afternoon athunderstorm over the Bugaboos anvilled andthe cloud deck spread over the course, flush-ing the slowpokes out of the sky. Fastest timewas 3:08 (34.3 km/h) and slowest was 4:27.

Day 5: race to Spillimacheen, 50 km, 4 finish-ers. A big down-cycle (a combination ofshade and thermal-sweeping south winds)soon after most of the field launched flushedover twenty to the impact zone, includingseveral big guns. Other field leaders racedthemselves to the ground under cloudpatches. Your correspondent spent 11/2 hoursscratching up to the summit of Mt. Seven aftera low save and then spent another hour stuck

This year Golden, BC, was the site of theCanadian hang gliding championship, and agood choice it was, for the meet offered fiveexcellent rounds of cross-country racing forthe 43 competitors. Making use of the terrain,meet heads Ron Bennett and JC Hauchecornecalled out-return races three of the five days,with races to goal on the first and last days.Victoria pilot Mark Tulloch edged out Van-couver's JC Hauchecorne for 1st place, whileCalgarian Stewart Midwinter placed 3rd.

The tasks and results were as follows:Day 1: Race to Edgewater, 82 km, 13 finish-ers, fastest time 1:41, slowest 3:38, fastestaverage speed 48.4 km/h. Strong winds at thetiny, tree-ringed goal field created dangerousturbulence for the finishers.

Day 2: O/R to Harrogate, 88 km, 32 finishers.This was possibly the best day of the meet.Lift up 1900 ft/min and cloudbase at 13 000'ASL allowed inter-thermal speeds up to 90km/h on the return leg. Fastest time was 2:24(36.1 km/h) and slowest was 4:42.

in shade on a low treed ridge half-way to goaluntil the sun returned to fire up the thermalsagain. Fastest time was 1:47 (28.4 km/h) andslowest was 4:00.

There were no serious accidents, though onepilot had to switch gliders after dragging hiswingtip across barbed wire on a tiny clearingin a forest near Edgewater. Also an interme-diate pilot had to deploy his parachute afterlearning the hard way not to pull in hard (i.e.stick full forward) after whip-stalling a tail-less flying wing; he tucked the glider at 400'AGL and his parachute opened at tree-topheight!

A week after the meet, two pilot mid-aired at10 500' ASL over Mt. Seven and both de-ployed their parachutes, landing uninjured onthe eastern slopes of the mountain. A goodlesson for all soaring pilots here: the lowerpilot assumed that the upper pilot saw himcoming up (hang gliders have excellentdownward visibility) and would get out of theway..... Defensive flying technique herewould have involved remaining on the otherside of the thermal, and even radioing hisapproach. Never assume anything.

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record the first hang gliding soaring flight inthe area.

The Cold Lake area holds promise for goodsoaring conditions. The local sailplane flyers,The Cold Lake Soaring Club, have loggedmany good cross country flights. Summerwinds aloft often produce seemingly endlesscloud streets that inspire dreams of crosscountry flying.

Towing rules in effect at the tow site requireliability insurance and so all club membersare also members of the Alberta Hang GlidingAssociation and the Hang Gliding Associa-tion of Canada

The future of the new club seems bright.There maybe quite a number of members ofthe Baden Hang Gliding Club (a Canadianclub located at CFB Baden in Germany) mov-ing to Cold Lake in the next year or two, whenthat military base closes. The condors cur-rently lack an instructor, so new recruits to thesport are referred to clubs and schools on theEdmonton and Calgary. It is hoped that asexperience and ratings are gained some of ourmembers will qualify as instructors.

If readers plan to be in the Cold Lake area,please get in touch with the club. We arealways happy to have Quest come out and fly!Contact:

Club President; Neil Smith,2008 3rd Ave, Cold Lake,

Alta. T0A 0V1(403) 639 2397

Club Secretary; Adam Hunt,Box 1768, Medley,Alberta, T0A 2M0(403) 594 5258

club. The members wanted to include bothhang gliding and paragliding while avoidingsomething as cumbersome as "The Cold LakeHang Gliding and Paragliding Club" (toomany initials!) At the March meeting thename "Cold Lake Condors" was selected.

A newsletter, "Condor Quips" was started inMarch 1992 and proved very popular. Cur-rently it goes out to many more individualsand clubs outside the Cold Lake area thanClub members.

The club's first event was to send four mem-bers to the "Rob Kells Reserve ParachutePacking Seminar" held at "Muller Hang Glid-ing and Paragliding" in Cochrane, Alberta.The new club received a lot of support andadvice from the other clubs and pilots there,as well as from the Mullers.Finally in April ,1992 the TBT payout winchsystem was delivered and the trailer com-pleted. The weatherabated and the clubmembers set out tolearn how to use theequipment. Hangglider training wasdone first, on May2nd. The memberspacked up all theirgear and drove the400 km to the wellknown Torfield towsite to fly with theNorthern LightsHang Gliding Cluband instructor RickMiller. Two mem-bers of the club hadtowed with theNLHGC during theprevious season and so it remained to brush upon techniques and finish learning all the de-tails. Rick Miller kindly consented to test outthe new tow trailer for the first time. He hadthree good tows and pronounced the systemsafe to use.

Paragliding tow training was conducted onMay 10th near Calgary with Alex Bahlsen ofParagliding Canada. A lot of miles were puton the tow trailer during May - most of themgetting to where the training could be done.Finally, by the end of May the club wastowing at its own site near Cold Lake, with itsown equipment. On May 30th Neil Smithsoared his hang glider for 14 minutes to

Some people say that hang gliding is dyingout in North America, but it certainly isn't inthe north eastern part of Alberta.

The first hang gliding enthusiast in the ColdLake area, 300 km north east of Edmonton,was hang glider pioneer Gus Larson. A hangglider instructor and test pilot, Gus startedflying in Edmonton, some twenty years ago.When work took Gus to the Cold Lake area hefound no one else hang gliding and very fewuseful hills. Unduanted he collected up a fewpotential students and began training them onthe small hills that he could find. Gus left thearea to retire to the town of Belmont, Alberta,near Edmonton, in 1991. Gus's students GilLongden, Gerald Fehr and Chris Haymankept on flying their hang gliders. Gus nowmanages his photography business and flieswith the Northern Lights Hang Gliding Clubat their Torfield tow site and ridge site nearCamrose.

The fall of 1991 saw the three remainingstudents that Gus taught, plus one paragidingpilot, join Neil Smith, newly arrived fromEurope. He brought foot launch and tow expe-rience, along with his glider to Cold Lake. Thearea's sole paragliding pilot, Adam Hunt,realized that without towing the future wasn'ttoo bright for flying in the area. There seemedto be just enough people to make towingviable and so he arranged to buy a tow system.

The story of finding an economical tow sys-tem and the trailer to mount it on is a long andcomplex one. Anyone who has done it willknow the work involved. The system selectedwas the Larry Keegan designed TBT payoutwinch system. It was chosen because it wasthe best system at the right price.

The next stage was to get a club organized.The club would act as a gathering point for theexchange of information, recruiting newmembers to the sport and publicity, not tomention organizing social gathering. Allavailable enthusiasm was rounded up and ameeting was called for a clod January eveningin early 1992. Six people showed up and votedthe club into existence. Neil Smith was votedpresident and Adam Hunt was voted as secre-tary. The club continued to meet monthly todeal with the usual issues - writing a clubconstitution, towing procedures, site availa-bility, airspace, liability insurance, etc. Videotapes were shown while winter dragged on. Acompetition was held to choose a name for the

A New Club in ALBERTABy Adam Hunt

The Cold Lake Condors towing rig set to go

page 22

The AlbertaHang Glider Asso-ciation

Western Canadian Paragliding Championships;Overall standings:

Pos Pilot Town Prov Glider Points1st: Chris Muller, Cochrane, Alta, Apco Astra, 12002nd: Peter MacLaren, Vancouver, BC, Edel Racer, 11293rd: Bill Gordon, Oregon, USA Nova Phantom, 11154th: Sean Dougherty, Calgary, Alta, Apco Astra, 10915th: John Bouchard, E. Coast USA, ITV Alcor, 1036

2nd WESTERNCANADIAN

PARAGLIDINGCHAMPIONSHIP

BY STEWART MIDWINTER

Arguably the best day of the year arrivedon the first day of this contest (August1st), to the delight of the 34 competitorsfrom across Canada, the USA, Britain,France and Switzerland. A plannedshort race was dropped to allow pilot togo for open distance -- and distance iswhat they got. At day's end, there weresix pilots over 100 km (never beforeachieved in a competition), with Al-berta's Chris Muller leading the way at119 km. Bill Gordon from Oregon wassecond with 108.5 km and Sean "InSearch of Cold Beer" Dougherty was3rd at 107 km. Several pilots were in theair over 6 hours, and John Bouchardappeared a little hypoxic after a stay at12,999' ASL. More than half the fieldlogged their longest, highest, farthestflights ever.

Day two brought thunderstorms with it,so pilots rested and tried to recover theirstrength. Day three had a similar fore-cast but stayed sunny longer, so a 25 kmrace to Parson was called. Meet headStewart Midwinter used a mass start, somost of the field was in the air at thesame time, which added to the excite-ment for the competitors. With the aid ofa north wind, Chris Muller smokedacross the finish line after a little morethan an hour, with Peter MacLaren just45 seconds behind and newcomer EricOddy third.

The argument over the best day of theyear arises because a week before themeet, Chris Muller declared and flew anew (claimed) FAI paraglider Flight toGoal distance: 146.5 km from Mt. Sevento Canal Flats. Though this was a greatflight, Chris had to cross under the edgeof a cumulus congestus which dumpedhail on a pilot who followed soon after.The cloud then drifted down the range,blocking all others for an hour whileChris made good his escape.

The OKOTOKES AIR EXTRAVAGANZA

BY RICHARD GIBSON

The atmosphere was friendly and casual.The weather was hot and sunny.There were lots of small aircraft to see andpilots to talk to.

It was the 1992 OkotokesAir EXTRAVAGANZA.

This annual event which is about 20 km southof Calgary was held on June 7th, and attractslots of people who take advantage of thiscountry type air fair to see up close manysmall aircraft and talk to the people who flythem.

Admission is free and for a few dollars break-fast and lunch is served outside in front of thecontrol tower.

The entertainment was; Ultralights,homebuilts, helicopters, a cropduster, a Har-vard trainer, hot air balloons, sailplanes, agyrocopter, shydivers, R.C. model aircraftand of course, Hang Gliders.

They would all take their turn at flight demon-strations then taxi back by the spectatorswhere the pilots would answer questions.There was even a $10,000 orbitron (a machinewith a series of hoops which allow the personwho is strapped in the center to rotate in everypossible direction) for those interested intesting their limits of spinning before throw-ing up.

The Rocky Mountain Hang Gliding Leaguerented a tow truck system and demonstratedhang glider towing along the runway. This

system of launching never fails to attract lotsof interest as people try to figure out how atruck with a hang glider on it can possiblywork.

Fourteen tows averaging 700 ft from the smallrunway were demonstrated throughout theday, including a very competitive spot land-ing contest which resulted in Rod Porteoustaking home the prize money after a tapemeasure decision. Doug Keller had a 30minute flight with an altitude gain of 3700 ft.When asked why he did not leave, he said hewanted to stay around for the fun. Jeff Runci-man also pooped around in the air above thecrowd for about half an hour in buoyant airtaking pictures.

The league, through pilot Mitch Nixon, hadT-shirts printed for the occasion, they provedso popular with the spectators that it resultedin back orders.

It was a fun day and an opportunity to demon-strate out type of aviation to other pilots andthe general public.

My thanks go to Ken, our energetic Pres.,Rod, who lucked out with his best landing thisyear, Jeff, who managed to stay up, evenwithout a Rumour, Wayne, who came all theway from Edmonton, Mitch, T-shirt hustler,Karen, League motivator, Doug, who makesit look so easy and the many League membersand their women who helped make a greatday.

page 23

The 4th Annual Western Canadian Champi-onships, hosted by the Rocky Mtn. HangGliding League at Golden, BC this past Au-gust long weekend was a great success. It alsoproved to be quite a learning experience forme as well since this was the first meet that Ihave organized.

The turnout this year was outstanding, with 32registered pilots, many from the UnitedStates, including among others, Mike Daily,Davis Straub, and Roger (I'd rather eat wormsthan fly Wills Wing) Hoyt.

For those of you that have not had the pleasureof flying Golden, here is a brief description.

The launch is located on Mt.Seven at analtitude of 6250' MSL. The landing area be-low (flat and huge), at Nicholson is 2600'MSL. Mt.Seven is part of the Beaverfootrange that runs south along the ColumbiaValley. The peaks on this range average about9000' MSL. Cloudbase on an average goodday being at 12-14,000' MSL. There are tworamps as well as a dirt path to launch from,one ramp faces north, the dirt path faces NW,and the other ramp faces west through toSSW. Plans are in the works to extend thisramp NW as well.

The set-up area is not very large, 40 set-upgliders is about the practical limit, althoughthere have been over 60 (very crowded!). Thedrive up to launch takes about 25 minutes,with some 4-wheeling required near the top.There is also a paraglider launch farther up themountain, just above the tree line. This allowsthe hang gliders and paragliders to stay outeach other's way, and the paraglider pilotsenjoy about a 1200' advantage over the hangglider pilots.

Flying XC from this site is fantastic, thehighway runs all the way down the valley,making for easy retrievals, and there areplenty of safe fields along the way if youhappen to sink out. The mountains in thisrange are tree-covered up to about 7500-8000'MSL. Above that the peaks are jagged gran-ite. Golden Eagles and hawks are plentiful aswell, you will probably see one or two as youtravel south along the range. Big lift and bigsink go hand in hand as well. Thermals can be1600'/min or more, and sink can be easily asstrong, which makes for interesting flying.Pilots routinely pass through lift that is less

than 500'/min up on good days, because a1000' boomer will probably be nearby.

It is easy to navigate on this range. Afterlaunching and working your way aboveMt.Seven, you hop a short gap south to Mt.Kapristo. Once you are high over Kapristo,you are on your way. The first distinct land-mark is the sawmill at Parson (28 Km), thenthere is the Harrogate store (green roof, 44Km). The range splits a little while later atSpillimacheen (53 Km). Out front, the rangeis tree-covered to the top, the back-range ishigher, but is more intimidating, because nowthere is a small range between you and a safefield. Pilots flying the back-range are advisedto maintain plenty of altitude to get back outfront.

The next landmark is the sawmill at Brisco,after which comes Spur Valley, then Edgewa-ter. There is a gap from Edgewater to the nextarea at Radium. Pilots are advised to getplenty of altitude at Edgewater before at-tempting Radium. There are several forbid-den fields between Edgewater and Radium.The owners of these fields do not like hangglider pilots, and will assault those who landon their property.

After Radium is the field at Juniper Heightsnear Invermere (over 100 km). This locationis a typical race to goal task on a good day, itcan be completed in as little as 2.5 hours,although typical times are well over 3 hours.This valley is a beautiful place to fly, andsupplemental oxygen is usually not required.

In the Western Canadians, pilots competedfor trophies in First, Second, and Third placecategories. The trophies were supplied byRick Lecoupe. The First Place trophy was ahand-made wooden model of a glider perchedon a pedestal. The Second and Third placetrophies were plaques.

Three-man teams were formed for teamstandings. The purpose of the team event is toput one lower level pilot on a team with twolevel IV/V pilots, so that the lower level pilotmight gain from the knowledge and experi-ence of his teammates. The League team meettrophy is a perpetual trophy with the names ofpast winning teams engraved on it.

DAY 1: Saturday, August 1At the registration meeting a task committee

was formed of myself, Ron Bennett, GeorgeBorradaile, and Jeff Runciman.

The task decided on for the day was an out/return race with Harrogate store being theturnpoint, total distance 87.5 km.

I was first off the ramp, and paid for myimpatience by scratching around belowlaunch and in front of Mt.Seven for 48 min-utes before sinking out to the Nicholson LZ.Others who launched later faired much better,with fifteen pilots completing the task. RogerNelson, J.C. Hauchecorne, and Mike Dailywere the top three for day one.

Roger Hoyt was too high to see the turnpointclearly when he arrived at Harrogate, so hedecided to forget the task and continue downthe range. He ended up 5 km past Windermere(125 km total distance), and reached a max.altitude of 15,560' during his five hour flight.Although this feat did not do him well for thecompetition, he did tell me that it was hispersonal best.

Kevin Caldwell and Ken Hill won the heart-break award for racing each other into theground on final glide. Both pilots landed inthe same field 0.5 km short of Goal.

Another heartbreak award goes to Mia Schok-ker. who was attempting to set the woman'sworld record for out/return distance, flyingwith Martin Henry. Mia did make her turn-point at Spillimacheen and flew back toNicholson, but was unable to first make itback to launch to validate the task.

DAY 2: Sunday, August 2This day was marginal. The cloud cover wasdeveloping very quickly and it soon becameapparent that pilots should soon get off themountain. The task called was out/return withthe bridge at Parson being the turnpoint.

Conditions began to OD soon after pilotsstarted to launch, and rain was working itsway up the valley from the south. No pilotscompleted the task and only 9 were even ableto get away, 16 ended up in Nicholson asconditions deteriorated, and 7 pilots wereunable to launch as the rain closed in on them.

Luckily enough for the ones that got away, theday was valid. The minimum number of pilotsdid go XC for at least 15 km, and the launch

1992 WESTERN CANADIANHANG GLIDING CHAMPIONSHIPS

BY KEN SHACKLETON

.....continued on next page

page 24

window was open for the required time before conditionsshut it down.

I think that I may have set a record for a race to Nicholsonwith a time of 6 min 44 secs. I launched, felt the rain shortlyafter, and stuffed the bar to the LZ. Only 2 or 3 pilots wereable to launch behind me as conditions closed in. Thestandings for Day 2 were Mike Daily, George Borradaile,and Howard Vandall in the top three.

That evening the League put on a fire-side beer bash for thecompetition pilots. Most attended, told flying stories, dis-cussed technique, and had a great time until the party shutdown at around 3 AM.

DAY 3: Monday, August 3The weather prediction for day three was a copy of what wasexperienced the day before. Although some pilots decidednot to fly this day, the rest were willing to at least go up tolaunch to give it a try.

Once up on launch things were looking much better thanexpected, there was some cumulus development, but nothinglike the day before.

The task called was a race to Spillimacheen, with 7 pilotscompleting the task, 6 pilots ended up at various fieldsdownrange, and 9 ended up in Nicholson field. 10 pilotschose not to fly this day.

The top three for this task were Mike Daily, J.C. Hauchec-orne, and Doug Keller. The time separating Mike and J.C.was only 1 min 2 secs.

Davis Straub would have faired much better had he raced tothe correct field. The sight of all those neon paragliders atParson proved to be irresistible for Davis as he zoomed in tohis mistaken goal, realizing only too late that this was not theplace to be. Maybe a new set of rose-coloured glasses wouldhelp.

The final results were Mike Daily, J.C.Hauchecorne, andRon Bennett, taking First, Second, and Third places respec-tively. The first place team was the Dirty Wombats; consist-ing of J.C. Hauchecorne, Kevin Caldwell, and Ken Hill.

This event was a great experience for me. I plan to organizeit again next year, and hope to see as good a turnout as thisyear.

1992 WESTERN CANADIANS LEAGUE TEAM MEET

1. DIRTY WOMBATS KEVIN CALDWELL 1197.69J.C.HAUCHECORNE 1736.07KEN HILL 926.70

TOTAL PTS. 3860.46

2. THE MONUHWAS MIKE HALEY 1752.80DAVIS STRAUB 1012.18BRYAN STEUBS 543.83

TOTAL PTS 3308.81

3. CANNON FODDER RON BENNETT 1508.25ROGER NELSON 1195.33GEOF SCHNEIDER 368.61

TOTAL PTS. 3072.19

4. THREE AMIGOS GUY BEAUDOIN 364.69BORGE HOST 770.86DARRELL ROSS 1219.45

TOTAL PTS 2355.00

5. FRANGLAIS HOWARD VANDALL 1197.69CONNECTION RICHARD OUELLETT 310.25

SERGE LAMARCHE 814.05TOTAL PTS. 2321.99

6. PIG EATING DOGS DOUG KELLER 1495.11KEN SHACKLETON 310.25ROB SIVELL 404.92

TOTAL PTS. 2210.28

7. SCUM-SUCKING GEORGE BORRADAILE 943.06PIGS II WAYNE BLUMSTENGEL 691.29

HARRY GRIFFIN-BEALE 259.72TOTAL PTS. 1894.07

8. TEAM SMUT MARTIN HENRY 577.11MIA SCHOKKER 589.32RODGER HOYT 387.94

TOTAL PTS. 1554.37

9. TEAM KETCHUP ROD PORTEOUS 725.13JEFF RUNCIMAN 251.04RICHARD GIBSON 310.25

TOTAL PTS. 1286.42

10. SKY-PIGS CHRIS BEEBE 375.89HANK BUTZEL 227.59DON LEPINSKY 481.97

TOTAL PTS. 1085.45

PARAGLIDING TANDEM INSTRUCTORS CLINICSept 26 - 27, 1992 in Kelowna, B.C.

This is for those presently offering tandem paragliding flights who would like toshare information, discuss a National Tandem rating system and prehaps even fly!

For more information and to registrer contact;Joris Moschard, Box 1097, Whistler, BC, V0N 1B0 (604) 932 7052

continued from previous page.....

RECORD UPDATE

Word has just been receivedthat Chris Mullers FAI Paragliding World Record, Race toa Declared Goal has now beenofficially accepted. Ed.

page 25

In August some local Kamloops pilots and Iembarked upon a scouting project to look atsuitable Hang Gliding areas from Clearwater,B.C. to Valmont. Several helicopter access-able launch sites have great potential; thereare a few driveable sites as well. On August16th, several pilots were helicoptered up to a7000 ft launch site on Mt Cook, S aspect. (NWof Blue River in the Caribou MountainRange). Rob Palmer launched first and had anhour long flight reaching 10,000 ft ASL.Everyone who flew that day had a great time.They landed at the Blue River Airport. (Note:Prior notification is required for notams, ad-vising local air traffic of Hang Gliding activi-ties.

On August 23rd, Rob Palmer, Terry Palmerand I were helicoptered up to PtarmiganMountain's 7500 ft launch site in theMonashee site just SE of Blue River, SWaspect. This is an excellent thermal site, threesteps and we were all airborne. We all hadgreat flights and I got up to 12,200 ft ASL, andflew for an hour and a half!

The best part about these flights was that theywere first flights for this area; and the localresidents & businesses were very supportiveof our sport. Mike Wiegle, who owns a HeliSkiing Resort, is offering a great rate onaccommodation in his luxurious guest lodgesfor approximately $65 per couple, or $35 perperson with lots of extra features. The heli-

copter rate is approximately $35 per personfrom the highest logging cutblock to the sum-mit of your choice. It is a very worthwhile andrewarding experience. These rates are incred-ible reasonable! The area is magnificent andeven has cross country potential (Note: Oneday John McClintock flew 150 miles fromSavona to Blue River).

We also discovered that Canoe Mountain, justsouth of Valmont is an easy drive up to the

INEXPENSIVE HELI HANG GLIDINGin and around BLUE RIVER, BC

BY BOB HANLON

8700 ft summit with good cross country po-tential and with limited landing areas.

If you're interested in Heli Hang Gliding atsunny, "thermally", Blue River, BC, contact:

Brent Vollweitter in Kamloopsat (604) 376 7093

or, Bob Hanlon in North Vancouverat (604) 980 3207

Left: Transporting the gliders up to launch. Above: Rob Palmerlaunches from Ptarmigan Mountain at 7500 ft asl.

AHGA Hang GlidingChampionship

Sept 26-27 at Beiseker, Alta(Rescheduled from rained-out May meet)

$20.00 Entry FeeMeet at the Red Lotus Resaurant, 9:00 am Sat

HGAC/ACVL Insurance and ProvincialMemberdhip requiredBring a tow bridle

Send entry fee to: Stewart Midwinter444, 23 Ave NW, Calgary, T2M 1S4

(403) 230 7769

page 26

The trails of the Cambridge prototype record-ing GPS (Global Positioning System) werecarried out in New Zealand on 8-12 February,in time to present a report to the InternationalGliding Commission in Paris in March. Theaim of the exercise was to evaluate it's viabil-ity with the long term view of introducingthem for use at the 1995 World Champion-ships at Omarama. It is envisaged that theywill eliminate the necessity of photographyfor turnpoint verification. Cameras atOmarama are expected to be used in a back-up mode only.

The unit was brought to New Zealand byCambridge engineer, John Good and wastested in a Schiecher ASW-15, flown by Den-nis Crequer of Hamilton. The unit weighs onekilogram without battery and measures16x10x6 cm (6.3"x3.9"x2.35"), (one cm =.3937"), with the battery (on this particulartrail) weighing an additional 0.5 kilograms. Itis expected that the production unit will havebatteries built in or attached.

We were impressed with the results the proto-type produced. 3D position was recorded atall intervals between two and ten seconds,with accuracies consistently better than 50meters. The memory capacity of the unit willrecord a minimum of 20 hours, but morelikely to be nearer double this length of time.

Small antennaThe antenna was a cylinder 10 cm long by 3cm in diameter. However, the productionantenna will likely be disk shaped, approxi-mately 8 cm in diameter and 1 cm thick. Test

showed that the atenna can be successfullymounted inside the fuselage of the ASW-15.A metal or carbon fibre sailplane will requirea different mounting position but the atenna isso small and of insignificant weight, that it'smounting above the instrument panel or at-tached to the canopy would present no prob-lems.

Power consumptionThe battery power consumption of the proto-type is around 400 ma (12 volts) but has hadno engineering/research on the problem ofpower consumption and the designers expectto be able to make improvements.

More satellites yet to be launchedBecause the constellation of satellites is notyet complete, there were questions as to howmuch of the day sufficient satellite coveragewould be available. The coverage proved tobe no problem for these trails and in fact withfurther satellites to be launched, coverage canonly improve. However, the test showed thatas a sole means of monitoring competitionflights, satellite coverage will not be suffi-cient until approximately the end of 1993.There is no reason why the units cannot besatisfactory used as of now, but with a camerabackup.

In the test, there were two occasions when thetrace showed a flight gap of two kilometers,which is insignificant, but the designers areinsisting on the caution as outlined above.They are also insisting on thorough flight andcompetition trails before releasing the con-cept to production.

Overview of the features- Continuous recording of latitude, longi-

tude and altitude. (Typical accuracy 50meters)

- Post-flight downloading and analysis ofposition fix data.

This produces:- start and finish times- task speed- in the event of a landout, precise distance- the ability to analyze and confirm the

correct rounding of turnpoints- available is a plot of the actual flight path

(which can be sectionalized and explodedon the screen to any desired scale). Youcan actually step by step show the turn-

Report on GPS trails in New ZealandJOHN ROAKEfrom; NEW ZEALAND GLIDING KIWI

page 27

DATE PROV COMPETITIONSept 5-12 USA US NATIONALS Telluride, Colorado. Entry fee us$295 Contact; Nick Kennedy, (030) 728 3905Oct 3-11 USA USHGA NATIONAL FLY-IN Lookout Mtn Flight Park,Near Chattanooga, Tn. Mountain and thermal soaring.

(novice and above) Aerotowing to 3000 ft. Demo days and clinics. Swimming pool, vollybal and campimg in theLZ. Contact Lookout Mtn. Flight park (706) 398 3541

Oct 8-14 Aust VICTORIA PARAGLIDING OPEN Bright Victoria, Australia. Contact Heinz Bobner phone 03-8192717fax 03-5791839

Nov 8-14 Brazil BRAZILIAN HANG GLIDING NATIONALS Itamontes, RJ Brazil. Contact; Phil Heagler fax 55-21 242 27 671993Dec 28- Aust VICTORIA OPEN/BOGONG CUP Mt Beauty, Victoria, Australia. Contact North East Victoria H.G. Club. 2Jan 5 Drummond st, Tawonga, Victoria, Australia. 3697Jan 19-27 Aust AUSTRALIAN HANG GLIDING OPEN Mt Buffalo, Australia. Contact; HGFA tel & fax 069-472 888Jan 30- Aust AUSTRALIAN PARAGLIDING OPEN Mt Cole, Victoria, Australia. Contact; HGFA, tel & fax 069-472 888Feb 5-14 Aust AMERICAN CUP Tulmut, NSW, Australia. Invited International teams. Contact; Ian Jarman,143 Wynyard St,

P.O.Box 558, Tumut, NSW,2720 Australia. tel & fax 069-472 888

Apr 17 BC 4th ANNUAL BLACKCOMB PARAGLIDING MEET (On skies) April 18 rain day. All licienced pilots welcome.Contact; Parawest Paragliding, (Janet & Joris Moschard) (604) 932 7052

June 6-28 USA WORLD HANG GLIDING CHAMPIONSHIPS Owens Valley, California, USA. Contact; Tom Kreyche, 355Mariposa Ave, Mountain View, California, USA>. tel (415) 965 8608

1992/3 COMPETITION SCHEDLE

Some test results from the trailsThe diagram on the far left on the oppositepage is a plot of altitudes verses timesimilar to the sort of plot produced by abarograph. The diagram on the right onthe opposite page is an overview of theMatamata task area. The task of Febru-ary 11 is depicted, a flat triangle starting atpoint 1 (Matamata), north to point 66(Tirohia), south to point 18 (Atiamuri),then home. The plot represents the actualflight path of the ASW-15. It lies generallyeast of the course line because the pilotfavored the better thermal conditions tobe found over the high ground there. Thediagram above left depicts detail at aturnpoint. The circles are in kilometers toindicate scale. The incoming and outgo-ing course lines are shown along with anFAI observation zone. The flight pathnear turnpoint 66 was relatively simple,though a few turns in a thermal are plottedat the lower right. The bottom left diagramshows the flight path near the home field.It is complicated because takeoff, pre-start, start, and landing are shown. Thenearly vertical straight lines are thecourse lines.

point rounding on the screen which posi-tively eliminates any possible dispute

- a barograph style trace of height/time- the task turnpoints shown on the printout

(optional)- the flight can be analyzed and start/finish

times can be fed to the contest scoringprogram

Additional features

.....continued on page 30

page 28

For many years now (15?) the Grouse Moun-tain Flying Team has been putting up theHang Gliding launch ramp every spring andtaking it down every fall. This is becauseGrouse Mountain Resorts are frightenedabout being sued by some idiot deciding to skiof the end of it during the skiing season andinjuring him/herself. (Being a man made ob-ject, the resort could be liable).

The ramp has gone through many changesduring the years, the last being in 1985 whenyour's truly, redesigned and rebuilt the exist-ing one to facilitate easy assembly/dis-as-sembly so that only 4 pilots could maneuverit instead of the previous 12+ that were re-quired. This also had an added advantage thatthere would also be fewer pilots to share thebeer with in the Grouse bar after the workparty was finished.

This happy state of affairs continued untilalong came the paragliders. Although theparaglider pilots loved to fly at Grouse, it wasoffset by the means they had available to getairborne. They tried launching of the ramp,and although plausible, it was a bit of a strainon the nerves to say the least. Others triedlaunching of the ground with mixed successas the terrain, although steep enough, was

covered with large protruding bedrock, bigclumps of bushes, old tree trucks and generaldebris scattered about the hillside.

Along came Cam Mackenzie to the rescue. Hefigured it would be an ideal place to conducttandem launches if only there was a decentlaunch area. After talking to Grouse Moun-tain Resorts, and discussing his idea with

them he got the green light and started to puthis plan into action. His plan, to make anatural grassy alpine meadow type launch, nomore, no less!

The first thing required was dirt and fill,followed by top soil, all 36 truck loads of it!OK if you're on yer average building site butwe're talking about the top of a 4,000 ftmountain! Luckily for Cam, Grouse Resortshave an access road that runs up to the 3600 ftlevel and so was able to get his soil deliveredthere, at great expense I might add, but thatstill left 400 ft to go, and all of it up. With thehelp of a backhoe, plastic buckets, somewilling assistants, the peak chair lift and somelarge drain pipe, Cam was able to fill thebuckets, transport them up on the chairlift,and on top empty the contents into the drainpipe to slide (sort of) down the 50 verticle ftto where the proposed launch was going to be.

This effort took many many long hours tocomplete but in the end it was ready for thefinal stage, the laying of 600 rolls of turf!Have you ever tried laying turf? Those littlecritters weigh about 20 lb each and requireyou to bend over to pick them up and to placethem. Pretty hard on the 'ole back I can tellyou. Anyhow, one and a half work partieslater they were in place and with the help ofsome landscaping ties for steps and to tidy upthe edges the launch was complete.

This year many safe paragliding flights havebeen made from this launch and Cam has alsoconducted almost as many successful tandemlaunches.

The Hang glider pilots continued to use the

The GROUSE MtnPARAGLIDING LAUNCH

CONSTRUCTED BY CAMERON MACKENZIEARTICLE BY BARRY BATEMAN

Top left: Steve Best launching from the paraglider launch area. Photo by SarahBest. Above; The Grouse Mtn launch ramp. Note the vegetation that Cam had to

contend with. Photo by Barry Bateman

.....continues

page 29

From Across the Country.....

Vincene Muller reports that Randy Haney isnow back at work in Austria, still with stitchesand cast. His first week back at work wasdemo trip to Spain and France. (Life's a bitcheh!)

If any pilots are travelling to the US theyshould make sure that they carry extra medi-cal coverage. Randy had Austrian medicarebut they would pay very little as the accidenthappened in North America. Kevin Caldwell,Ont. also had a problem. He had lots ofinsurance coverage but they wouldn't paybecause it was a hang gliding accident. Thebest thing to do is when you buy travel insur-ance , check with the company (Blue Crossetc) and make sure that they note that hanggliding and/or paragliding is covered.

In Golden the road up Mt Seven has beenupgraded to two wheel drive due to the log-ging that has been going on, but the top half isstill 4 wheel drive. The forestry donated 30hours of Cat work to the section of road thatleads on up to the upper paragliding launchjust before the Western Canadian ParaglidingChampionships but there is still a 40 minutehike to get to launch. During the CanadianNationals a hang glider pilot hiked his gliderthrough to the paragliding launch which took2 hours, ouch!

and in completing it in such a relatively shortperiod of time, and also to Grouse MountainResorts for giving him the go-ahead to under-take the project.

If you are a Level IV pilot visiting Vancouver,and wish to fly Grouse Mtn, you are more thanwelcome to fly here but you must be checkedout first by a member of the Grouse MountainFlying Team. For more information contact:Hang Gliding

Steve Best#5-251 West 14th St

North Vancouver, BC V7M 1P4(604) 985 8521

or ParaglidingCam Mackenzie

4470 Prospect RoadNorth Vancouver BC V7M 3L7

(604) 980 7479

ramp but were very thankful to Cam forgiving them a nice grassy setup area, (if onlythose guys wouldn't use it to lay out theirparagliders on it!). It was only a matter of timebefore a hang glider was to launch from thereand Steve Best was the first to do so justbefore the Grouse Mountain fly-in. Helaunched in zero wind and had a perfecttakeoff

Since then a few other pilots have launchedfrom Cam's natural grassy slope (myself in-cluded) and now there's talk among the hangglider pilots of extending the paraglidinglaunch sideways and to do away with thelaunch ramp. Unfortunately, unlike the par-agliding pilots who seem to have lots of driveand enthusiasm, the hang glider pilots needvast quantities of dynamite placed where thesun don't shine to get them motivated so whoknows if this will ever come about.My hat goes off to Cameron Mackenzie fortaking on such a mega project all by himself

continues.....

In July a group of Japanese pilots spent 10days in Golden trying to set paragliding rec-ords. On July 11th a Japanese pilot flew105Km, landing at the base of Mt Swansea inInvermere, to set a new Japanese out of coun-try record.

A week later Japanese pilot, Yoko Tsucheiyaflew to Kindersly Creek for a flight of 75Km.She had declared a goal at Mt Spillimacheen(55Km), took a photo with her data backcamera and then continued on for an opendistance flight. This was good enough for 2Woman's World records (not to mention Ca-nadian and Japanese-out-of-Country records)but unfortunately, even though her entireflight was documented by a Japanese cameracrew, her electronic barograph failed to workcorrectly and she was therefore unable to filefor these records. That must have been veryfrustrating for her to put it mildly.

From the Wednesday (now called theWindsday) Club News comes reports ofRoberto and his son Alex having a greatflights with Roberto getting to 12,500 ft. Onlytrouble was his son got 1000 ft higher, and thiswithout a vario! Talking of great flights, onmonday 17th August Peter MacCleran, EricOddy and Peter B-E spent 3 1/2 hours on theirparagliders at Mt Seven in the evening glass-

off. They had to fight to get down and landedat 10:00 pm! During this flight Peter had twofirst, top landing twice on the paraglidinglaunch and then on the south side of thesummit of Mt Seven.

Off to the Owens for a weeks flying wereAndré, Roberto, Alex, Jamie, Ron Doughertyand Sean. All were equiped with oxygensystems and reported good flying. Sean had a3675m altitude gain on his paraglider, reach-ing 20,000 ft asl. This is good enough for aCanadian out of country record, an FAI par-agliding Diamond, and a shot at the WorldRecord. (Two other pending claims havn'tbeen approved yet).

George Mackenzie has just transfered histeaching job from Airdrie to Cochrane. Thegood part is that he can stop by Cochrane hillon the way home from work; the bad part ishaving to teach Chris Muller!

In B.C., this past Labour Day Weekend theCache Creek Team Meet recorded a first in it's10 year history, a non-valid meet due to rain.Only once before has it been declared non-valid and that was due to too much sunshine(ie; stable). Pilots who entered this year canexpect to receive a discount on their entry feenext year. Hopefully the weather will be backto normal.

Your scribe here also managed to recordanother first here in the Fraser Valley. Whilst4-5000 ft asl is the normal altitude reached,with 8-9000 ft asl being exceptional, yourstruly, after being flushed from take-off at4500 ft down to 2400 ft managed to claw hisway back up to 11,000 ft. Meanwhile up inPemberton, Ken Nicholson was setting asimalar record by reaching 12,200 ft asl.Thermals in both places were reported asstrong, smooth and large.

Lastly, Alan Faulkner from Nfld was spottedhoneing his XC skills down in Chelan, Wash-ington, and later was seen at the CanadianNationals on his new UP TRX. Now if only hewould brush up on his Newfonese so that wecould understand what his talking about.....

That's all the gossip for now. Haven't heardnary a peep out of Saskatchewan, Ontario orQuebec so there's nought I can report on.

Got any news, send it in, my address is on thefront cover.Barry Bateman.

page 30

Manitoba Hang Gliding Association

(Christine is the wife of Mani-toba pilot Hans Klassen, andupon overhearing some hangglider pilots discussing the pro’sand con’s of her husbands con-version from a cacoon to a podharness, was prompted to writethis article. Ed).

To drink or not to drink, that isthe question. At least that’s whatsome hang glider pilots fret aboutup in the air. Will this be aboomer thermal? Do I want to bedragged down by an insatiableneed to pee? Or is this all bush-wah, and is it as easy as they sayfrom a pod? I won’t comment onthe feelings of those below.

What wind drag factor do youallow for an attached, one literbottle of water? How much moredrag is there if attached to the down tubescompared to an attachment to the harness?

To Drink or Not to Drink

BY CHRISTINE KLASSEN

These are truly weighty de-cisions for a pilot in hopes ofa long distance flight. It’s allfine and dandy to have acool intake of liquid whilein flight but what happens tothe outlet, especially for afemale variety of pilot?

One silly solution is not toimbibe so freely while in theair, but to reserve the liquidfor a more suitable location(groundside). Mind you, anextra volume of water doesprovide an excellent sourceof ballast that is certainlyless intent than droppingrocks.

Just one final word fromthose down below. If youpilots do plan on using water

for disposable ballast, at least dispose of itbefore processing it.

Hans Klassen flying from Fliegels, Sask.in his old cacoon harness.

continued from page 27..... GPS before the contest, the unit can provideconformation of start including altitude con-trol, rounding of all turnpoints, and finishes.It also has the ability to flag any airspaceviolations.

If the start height for a task is set at a prede-termined height the unit will provide an indi-cation of a good start or an indication that thepilot exceeded the height limit. The unit willalso indicate to the pilot when he has roundedthe turnpoint.

The design engineer confirmed that Cambr-idge will soon be able to demonstrate an "add-on" feature to the package. Position reportingto an electronic scoreboard back at the contestsite is not only possible but is now a realityand so gliding will become a spectator sport,

The data on the prototype is stored on a datacard (PCMCIA - industry standard) but thedesigner is not yet convinced that this will beused on a removable basis on productionmodels.

The downloading to the IBM-compatablecomputer took no more than 10 seconds in-cluding connecting the cable. Data analysistook only a matter of seconds. If 120 competi-tors presented their GPS for downloading atthe same time, the estimate is that it wouldonly take 45 minutes to provide a completeanalysis of all flights and an official scoresheet for all classes, using only two persons.With all the turnpoints pre-loaded into the

possible by 1993, but certainly by 1995 -something many of us have dreamed about for20 or more years.

Personal observationsThe prototype does everything and more thanwhat was specified in the original overviewand is a major breakthrough for the regulationof gliding championships. The speed withwhich Cambridge Aero Instruments haveproduced the unit is indeed creditable, and asthey are the only manufacturer to present aunit for testing, they must at this stage beregarded as the preferred suppliers for thecompetition test. Units were to be tested atSwe-glide (Sweden, June 29, followingwhich a decision will have to be made as to thenext step).

page 31

ALIBI, the precision flight instrument developedby Aircotec in Switzerland. The altimeter with itsvarious adjustable references informs the pilot ofthe current altitude in one meter increments, up to8,000 meters (26,000 ft). The display on a largeliquid crystal panel is switchable between metersand feet. An integrated barometer displays the airpressure in millibars.

The variometer provides visual and audiblesignals. The actual climb or sink rate is shownnumerically in the clearly arranged liquid crystaldisplay. The novel signal variometer acoustic byAircotec is an attractive alternative to the conven-tional variable pitch interval tone. Either one canbe selected by a push button switch.

All this contained in a sturdy, hard to destructcase makes Aircotec the most reliable instrumentfor hang gliding and paragliding.

ALIBI I $523.00Single digital display includes: absolute altitude,differential altitude, temporary altitude, switchablebetween meters and feet, increments of onemeter, temporary in-flight altitude zeroing up to6,000 meters. Sink alarm, audio signals by steps,battery check.

ALIBI II+ $607.00Comes with all the features of the ALIBI I; Singledigital display includes: absolute altitude, differen-tial altitude, temporary altitude, switchable be-

tween meters and feet, increments of one meter,temporary in-flight altitude zeroing up to 6,000 me-ters. Sink alarm, audio signals by steps, batterycheck,

Plus it comes with an efficient on-board computerwhich numerically displays all pertinent flight data;Stopwatch, flight time storage up to 100 hours, flightlog up to 10,000 flights, peak values, stores themaximum altitude and highest rate of climb and thelast flight and all previous flights, stores longest flightduration:

Muller Hang Gliding Ltd. RR #2 Cochrane, Alberta, T0L 0W0, Canadaphone or fax (403) 932 6760

AIRCOTEC FALL SALE

PRIMUS $870.00Features: Temperature; Fixed altitudes; Dual Batteries;stopwatch; Carrying case; Mounting bracket for hanggliders or paragliders.

Peak Values (include)Maximum climb rate; Maximum sink rate; Take offtime; Take off date; Take off year; number of flights;Total flight time; Can be shown in meters or feet;Airspeed can be measured in MPH or Km/h or knots.

PRIMUS with BAROGRAPH $1147.00Includes printout attachment. Also includes all thesame functions as PRIMUS

Option for Primus:

Airspeed indicator $139.00

page 32

AHGA Tandem Instructor Course

October 3 -4 1992, 9:00 am - 5:00 pmat the: Calgary Outdoor Council

1111 Memorial Drive NWRegistration Fee $20Candidates must be rated HGAC/ACVL Level IVMust have 100 hours totalPlus 50 hrs/50 flights this yearCourse Instructor: Mark TullochRegistration Deadline: Sept 27thSend entry to:

Stewart Midwinter444, 23 Ave NW, Calgary, T2M 1S4

(403) 230 7769Bring a tow bridle (or purchace one at the course).Course content meets proposed HGAC/ACVLStandards

***Classified***Classified***Classified***Classified***

HGAC

ADVERTISING RATESClassified adds are free to all HGACmembers for personal adds only.Please try to keep to a max of 5lines.

Business rates:Classifieds: .25 cents per word,min $4. Photo's and special layout,$10 per column inch.Quarter page: $25Half page: $40Full page: $75These rates are for camara readyadds. If any special layout is re-quired call the editor for quote.Payment required in advance.Make checks payable to HGAC.

1987 Euro Sport 167Very good condition with only 30hours; $1750Keller Pod Harness (red)With chute. Good condition; $650Sentek Vario/AltimeterLCD digital readout plus audio.Great instrument; $300Call Drake, Surrey, BC(604) 599 4893

Wills Wing HP 1.5White in good condition; $475Wills Wing HP 2White rainbow undersurface in verygood condition; $975Kim Jenner, Cache Creek, BC.(604) 564 9915

Trilair 24 Paraglider70-100 kg. Advanced pilots only.Includes reserve chute; $2500Janet Moschard, Whistler, BC.(604) 932 7052

For Sale

HGAC FORMSThe HGAC currently has approx 40forms covering everything from aform listing the forms (!) to competi-tion committe policies to ratings tofatalities. If you require any informa-tion about any HGAC committeeand it's standards, ie badge andrecords claim form etc, contact:

Mia Schokker3595 Old Clayburn Road

AbbottsfordB.C. V2S 6B7

tel (604) 854 5950

Wills Wing Skyhawk 168 #9258Dark blue leading edge and doublesurface (Skyhawks have a little bitof double surface)This glider was stolen from the Si-camous launch (B.C.) on SundayAugust 4th 1991 from Dan Heighesof Calgary. The glider was stolenwithout the basetube , so has onlythe two downtubes. The glider wasin the usual Wills Wing bag.Anyone spotting this glider pleasecontact the RCMP and/or VinceneMuller (403) 932 2759

"NEW!!!"Skywatch "FUN" Anemometer.Swiss precision for just; $80Understanding the Skyby Dennis Pagan; $25Reserve ParachutesGerman quality, Sigma Minitex 110$595

Parawest ParaglidingBox 1097 Whistler, BC

V0N 1B0(604) 932 7052

Stolen

Dealers

Provincial

WESTERN CANADIAN SITEGUIDE

If you are planning on flying in Brit-ish Columbia the "Western Cana-dian Site Guide" published by theHGABC is a must.Contains over 75 sites, with com-plete information including; height,type of flying, xc potential, maps,contact names, even locations ofhouse thermals.The site guide comes in a stiff, looseleaf plastic binder that stands up tohang gliding abuse and allows sitesto be added, deleted as required.Only $15 + $2.50 p&h from;

HGABCc/o Martin Henry

3595 Old Clayburn RoadAbbottsford

B.C. V2S 6B7(604) 954 5950

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

The Cold Lake Condor's club secretary would liketo mention that there are still a quantity of AlbertaHang Gliding Association loom embroidered crestavailable. This is a project to raise money for theAHGA. These are top quality reproductions of theAHGA badge in four colors, 3 1/4" inches in diame-ter. Perfect for sowing on jackets, hats, glider bags,harness's etc. Cost is $4.00 per crest plus $1.00P&H per order

If you would likeone pleasecontact;

Adam HuntBox 1768Medley, AltaT0A 2M0(403) 594 5258