Wingman

Zapata 2009

2012-02-14T13:45:00.001-08:00

Digging through receipts while doing taxes, I re-discovered a notepad I had forgotten. Good times.

I like LIFT!

I like the abrupt ending - Hwy 20, 816pm, 5 miles E (of Big Spring)... then silence. I was almost at base, the sun was almost on the ground, and it was almost good enough. Laura, the legendary chase driver, was in the field near Ackerly when I touched down. Too windy to walk the glider to the car without wire assistance.

Cool Stuff for Sale

2012-02-07T13:40:00.000-08:00

Cleaning out the closet and trying to fund the upcoming comps. Here's what I've got:

One brand new over/under tandem harness. All black, 600 denier outer, antron inner, 1/4" volara padding. Continuous webbing construction, Austri Alpin quick disconnect buckles on leg and back straps, cushy padded shoulder straps, rubber gripped passenger handles, 8000 lb mains, biner and hook knife included. Ropes are adjusted, harness is ready to hook in and fly tandems. Fits little kids on up to about 6'6". Has accommodated bigger though. After years of flying tandems and wanting to improve the over/under system, and based on the feedback of many tandem instructors with my earlier models, this is the latest model that incorporates all the features:

Rotor Vulto-S racing harness for 5'10.5" and 160 lbs. I added some trick arm fairings, it has a super-thin main, and it fits like a glove. Well used and worn, but has a season left in it. This is the harness:

Pre-production instrument pods in BLACK. I have a couple of the new Flytec 6030/Garmin 76 pods ready to go. Not carbon. All black gelcoat finish ONLY. I have in-stock carbon mounts for Aeros, Moyes, and Wills carbon bars ONLY. The production pod is a couple weeks out still. These protos may have very slight blemishes from hanging around the shop the last few weeks. Here is one of the proto pods:

Finally, the original 6030/Geko mold has been refurbished and is turning out new pods. They are still available thru Flytec USA/Steve Kroop.

Email me with questions. flydustin@gmail.com

The last 3 weeks

2012-01-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

Winter break is traditionally a time for me to dig in work hard to fund the upcoming season. This holiday I was adopted by the Pearsons and spent every waking moment at the Wills factory while all their employees were away, allowing me to work on a lot of projects without getting in the way too much.

The pod mold is done, jigs are built, an infusion pump arrived, and it's just a matter of ordering a few bits of material and glue to start the transition to resin infusion. Looking forward to that, but the need for $$ has shelved the project for another few weeks.

The primary project last month was to build four tandem harnesses - that is, eight cocoons. Feedback from my last two customers resulted in some major improvements this time around. I was using a straight pattern to build the last few harnesses but switched to a pattern Steve Pearson gave to me that's basically the bottom half of a Z5. The harness seems a little more supportive than before.

After shipping the harnesses and building one more just to have in stock, I started in on some of my own projects. My covert got its annual overhaul with an updated foam liner, new teeth on the pitch lever gripper, and new bungees throughout, along with a vacuuming and a wash. Looks amazing as it just about finishes two years and 500 hours of flight.

Final piece of business was to make a cocoon for myself. I've been talking about it and talking about it, but wasn't ready to pull the trigger until the trip to point of the mountain a couple months back. I got to get hands on with some of the latest ultralight paragliding gear and that's when the weight of all of our hangie gear just came crashing down on me. I think ultra weight reduction and return to simplicity will be a theme for me this season. I begin with this:

Using the same pattern as used on my tandem harnesses, with an eye for simplicity and minimalism in every aspect of construction, I managed to finish this cocoon at just a hair over four pounds. Weight in a drawstring, ultralight bag, with lara gold 175 chute, 5/16 quicklink as biner, and lubin helmet: under ten pounds.....

It turned out extremely comfortable and, even more than the weight savings, it's compactability is crazy:

Using scraps of odl06 literally from the trash can, along with other scrap laminate cloths in places where heavier woven fabric wasn't necessary helped save a little here and there. I went without legstrap padding or buckles, and the backstrap cincher is aluminum. The interior cloth is light but could be lighter! There is plenty of room for improvement but for now it will be cool to put the entire harness kit in my backpack in the overhead compartment..

Mold Surgery

2011-12-12T17:52:00.000-08:00

Things were going so well..

After buffing the mold halves to a fine shine, I layed up the first part. Anxiety was relieved when it practically jumped out of the mold the next morning. The first thing I did was trim the flashing and squeeze the 76 into its slot - and I really had to squeeze it - both hands, one on the back of the pod, one on the front of the 76. Unfortunately removing it basically required a crowbar. That was not going to work - this was supposed to be a friction fit, tool-less removal slot. The project came within a breath of being abandoned after weighing my limited options.

I won't go into the numbing details of the mold modifications. It's enough to say that had it been too big a slot, a little sanding and polishing would have done the trick. Since it was too small, I would have to add material. Adding to a mold is the worst possible outcome and that's what I spent last week doing! A thick spray of gelcoat in the concerning area (about 20 mils) followed by about 40 hours of blending and refinishing brought the mold back to life and as good as new:

Masking the offending area in prep for gelcoat.

Bringing the width to within 1/50th of a mm along the length of the GPS box.

Sanded to 1500 and ready for endless polish and wax - two days of just waxing.

SUCCESS tonight!

Since I was in remodel mode, I brought both mold halves to an even finer finish than before. Next two photos are directly out of the mold, no polish.

Garmin 76 slides in - and out - by hand, all is well in Scottsdale, AZ.

I'm setting up the shop for resin infusion to reduce exposure and have an overall cleaner work environment. As soon as that's done, production will begin. Should have parts rolling by new year's.

Opening the mold

2011-11-17T08:39:00.000-08:00

After repeating the process for the back half of the mold, this morning I went out to the shop and separated the mold halves to see if I was successful.

The anxiety with molds, especially multi-part molds, is the investment of time. You have to completely finish the project before you can know if the very first layer of gelcoat actually cured out.. or if the plug was prepped well enough to release from the tool.. or if print through has ruined the mold surface.. etc.

This mold was a six week project. The details between all of the steps have been skipped here. Between each picture there were usually days of sanding or spraying or buffing or sweating, often just to fix a mistake. Each small step took a painful amount of time.

Another week will be spent improving the mold surface for production quality - and constructing jigs and flanges that will allow me to pull a joined and fully completed part from the mold without any work after the layup process beyond drilling a few holes and buffing out the finish.

Cross-bracing the back side mold, just like the other side. Bondo is used to space the wood away from the glass, preventing print through and pooling of resin under the wood - which would go nuclear during the curing process and compromise the mold surface underneath.

The final step: glassing the cross-braces on as well as the 16 tee nuts that will align and join the mold halves later. Bolts are already holding everything together and will be broken free of the resin with an impact drill later.

Sneak peak.. All is well inside the mold. The roughness and flaking is left over mold release film that hasn't been cleaned off. The mold surface looks awesome. The plug broke in half in the process of removing it, but I was expecting that considering the lack of relief in the gps and vario boxes. Same thing happened on the Geko/6030 mold.

mold making pt.2

2011-11-11T07:18:00.001-08:00

The front mold half is finished and being prepared for the layup of the second this weekend.

Stabilizing boards were added to prevent warping and curving. Attached with bondo first to insulate them from the glass itself and prevent resin from pooling underneath and printing through to the mold surface.

Next, they're glassed on.

Fender washers are glassed around the perimeter to give perfect bolt alignment later.

Here's the mold fresh off the parting tray after some wet sanding. Next, wet sanded down to 1500, polished, and then waxed endlessly.

Here's the front side mold after two days of waxing.. two more coats today and the gelcoat for the back mold gets sprayed.

2011-11-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

The mold for the new 6030/garmin 76 pod is cruising along. The new pod features a pressure fit for the 76 just like my Geko pod (except the 76 has a slot for securing a safety cord). The 6030 slot also has a cutout to allow downloading without removing the instrument. Mounts will be the same, but the rod will be grade 8 instead of stainless in order to support the greater mass of the new pod.

First step: rough cut and generous bondo use.

This is what it looks like after hitting the belt sander and rounding the profile a bit.

Gray primer helps show irregularities in the shaping process.

A parting tray is built to create a line for dividing the two mold halves.

The plug is positioned and dammed up with bondo to create a perfect parting edge.

Primer is sanded and polished to create a nice finish on the parting flange. A huge flange was chosen to allow for resin infusion process if I decide to go that way.

I walled up the parting tray to avoid the mess of spilled resin, overspray, and cutting the mold edge after layup.

Black tooling gel was sprayed through a siphon gun until about 20 mils thick to create a hard, durable surface capable of producing many parts.

Two layers of resin and chop fiber were layed up on the tacky gelcoat to stabilize it and prevent shrinkage overnight. This is where it's at now.. more later.

2011-09-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

Rollin into Phoenix before the practice day. Epic conditions

SCFR sunset from the roof of the hotel

The SCFR wraps up a long season of comps for me in 2011. I have been on the road since March. There were seven competitions. If I wasn't flying, I was building harnesses. If I wasn't doing that, I was flying a towplane. Around the edges of this schedule, the Wills team also managed to squeeze in a ciniflex helicopter shoot in Big Sur and many late nights of partying..

Growth is difficult.

I am satisfied with my performance this season and feel like I made a small breakthrough in Brasilia on the second last comp of the year. Rooming with Michel and Davizinho, I was on their schedule for the duration of the event. That meant early to bed, early to rise, every day. Not a single late night, easy on the alcohol, and I felt relaxed and confident throughout all the flights. I brought that method back to Casa Grande and it worked equally well.

Breakthrough..

After the comp, Jamie, Ben, Jochen, and I went north to check out some of the sights. Starting out with a drive through Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon, we took our first full day to hike the highest point in the state. Condtions were perfect.

Entering Sedona with Ben, Jamie, and Jochen at the start of a week long tour.

On top of Humphrey's - more hypoxic than I've ever been on foot.

Next day we headed straight for the south rim of the Grand Canyon with eyes bigger than our lungs. We managed to drag ourselves clear of the rim again at about 5pm after setting off down the trail at 930am. We did play in the river for a couple hours though..

The rim of the canyon at South Kaibab trail. After a roundtrip to the river in a day, one day after climbing Humphrey's, the highest peak in the state.

Last stop was Meteor Crater to see a 50,000 year old hole in the ground. The surviving pieces of iron are so heavy that they don't secure them against theft. They just lower them onto the display case and trust that you won't be able to get away with them.

Highest range in the state and starting point for the longest flight ever in Arizona. As seen from the rim of Meteor Crater observatory deck.

2011-09-06T10:01:00.000-07:00

After a season of intense windshield time and some.. questionable comp conditions abroad... I finally stumbled onto one of the few decent events of the year - Brasilia. The comp was scheduled from August 21st-27th and, although the second day was cancelled, all seven days were flown. Conditions were spectacular with 6 m/s thermals to over 12,000 feet on the best day.

I went into the last day with a 27 point lead over Nene, followed by the Moyes boys in 3rd and 4th. The last day had amazing conditions but was unfortunately cancelled due to an accident before the first start clock. About half of the field was unaware of the incident and flew the course all the way to goal at the Esplanada. So, with a huge shadow hanging over the day, and the loss of our humble friend Enio, we cancelled the day and the awards ceremony and left the Esplanada all going our separate ways and coming to terms with what had happened.

It was a Wills 1,2 finish with my first Brazilian comp win, Nene very close in 2nd, Andre 3rd, Jonny 4th in his last comp of the season - on his way to get knee surgery after flying all of 2011 on a non existing ACL, and Michel blazing the final cancelled day on his T2C, a 121 km task in under two hours.

I am looking forward to Santa Cruz Flats edition 5.0. We're pretty certain to have good, long, flyable days. We're even more assured of closed courses ending up in the laid back luxury of a resort that caters to all our desires. As usual, I will be the one pushing for long, open tasks in all sorts of odd directions so we can see new terrain. In the end we will probably only head outbound on one day, but no doubt we will still walk away with 20-30 hours more airtime than at the start of the week.

As usual, at the end of the season my plans include a new pod design. The difference this year is that the traveling has been so intense that I have decided not to fly the Canoa race just to have some precious idle time... or was Daniel Velez getting just a little too fast?? hmmm...we'll never know! This means the 6030/Garmin 72/76/96 pod is likely to finally become reality by winter. One change is the mount for Wills gliders - I have replaced the carbon with a a smaller, tougher delrin version by modifying the existing basetube skid stock. Lastly, the new model will have a slot for downloading and charging without having to remove the 6030/Compeo.

2011-07-19T03:07:00.000-07:00

Day one of the worlds - cancelled due to wind.

Basically the first half of this year has been spent chasing down cash to fund the finale: the worlds. Arriving, unwinding, and flying the big air of Fiesch was a welcome decompression. To then reach Sigillo find the welcoming committee to be represented by the sprog police, Tomas Pellicci in particular, was an unfortunate twist in an otherwise sweet trip. Some people radiate positive energy; others are a drain on the world around them. If you are a comp pilot interested in having a hand on the wheel, I highly recommend joining a growing group of pilots who have become weary of the growing strangle hold on competitors at top level events. Go here with your comments: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/groups/118763844883239 We can go down with the current ship or put pilots in the driver's seat - comps should be for pilots, by pilots. Think: Hang Gliding World Cup...

My sprogs were deemed acceptably high. They are always among the highest. But off to the story:

Directly after the mid west comp in Illinois, I joined the Whitewater, WI crew as temporary tow pilot. The crew is awesome and things were starting to go well financially and weather-wise, but the slow start to their season forced me to abandon them and cruise over to Missoula to sew up Coverts. I wish I had less obligations and more free time because Whitewater and Madison would make a nice summer home. Greg Dinauer and Rich Cizauskas hosted me and we partied it up.

The next three weeks were spent feverishly constructing Coverts for more than a dozen customers on the waiting list. We made a huge dent in the now very short list, and each successive harness gave me ideas for my new harness - after Santa Cruz I plan to incorporate a few changes into my own harness and see how they fare in Canoa.

Fiesch was the first stop in the Euro itinerary. After a night in Swiss Nic's house in Baden, a hip little town close to Zurich, Blenky took a day to drive all of us and our huge pile of harnesses and wings to Fiesch, about four hours away. As we approached the Alps, it was clear we were in for some amazing views and huge air later in the week. Aside from one very rough day and a cancelled day, the flying was awesome. You need only to climb a thousand or so feet over launch to find yourself perched above a collision of three separate glaciers, sliding forever from the peaks around the Eiger. My bump tolerance is up a few notches or more after last week's event. Modern gliders are amazingly forgiving of unbelievable turbulence. We met some cool pilots, some of them flying their first comp ever. Quite an indoctrination.

And now we await the first task of the 18th worlds. For now, it's an ongoing party as old acquaintances keep reappearing in corners of the small village of Sigillo. We were fortunate to get a few days of great flying off the south launch up on Cucco before the start of the comp. The rest of the nights have been spent partying, and the days hiking - there is a trail from nearby Costaciarro up to the top of Monte Cucco that has one of the best continuous inclines I've ever found. More than 3000 feet of punishing single track with probably 95% of the trail at a continuous grade. Yesterday my mom and I made the climb to the 1566 meter peak in a little under 1:30. Clouds were raging by starting about 50 meters below peak height as they joined a growing cu nim between the mountain range and the Adriatic sea.

Tomorrow looks a little worse for weather but we expect to fly on Thursday. I'm just happy to be here with the health to do what we do. Here are a few pics of the journey - and my new sail. The Wills crew hooked me up with the best flying T2 I've ever had. Totally stock sail that has the most balanced and lightest steering yet.

Florida comps

2011-05-17T12:29:00.001-07:00

Our approximate track over the course of the Rally

Paris on opening day launching out of Quest

Shapiro launching out of Live Oak on day 2

Couple of T2s in goal at Moultrie municipal

Launching off the taxiway at Americus airport in southern Georgia

Aerial view of the Americus apron

Taking the day win on the 194k task from Americus to Vidalia

The Vidalia welcoming committee

Curt, Lou, Wylie, and crew after a long day

Jonny departing on the last day of the Rally on his way to Allendale, SC

The combined weather for the Ridge and Rally comps had to be about the best I can remember in Florida. The ridge was tricky as usual with some light days and lots of wind but we still managed several 100k + days and had a strong field with jr. and the rest of the moyes boys there as well as the wills team. The US team got great practice for the upcoming Italian worlds and I think we have honed our radio comm at this point. Several new gliders were delivered at the ridge comp as well, and Miguel Molina and Mike Glennon were stoked with the way their new 154s were going. Fillipo, Stinnet, Bunner, Bostik, Davis, and others all seemed to be nearby when the going was good.

The rally had basically the best weather I've ever flown in the east. Mostly 6-700 up with the occasional 9 up just to keep it interesting and allow you to leapfrog from behind if you got lucky.

Coming off of a light spring schedule, I was a bit worried about how I would settle into comp mode. Two weeks of 16+ hour days working in the Shapiro harness shop right before the comp weren't the best training I could have been doing, but it seemed to be working for the first 3 days of the ridge... there's no doubt our T2s are going as well or better than they've ever gone with zero issues gliding with anyone out there. By the end of the 2 competitions, Jonny had 5 day wins, I had 4, and Paris and Curt each snagged a day win, both after a long absence from the US comps. When it was done, Jonny's consistency had won him both comps, however I am super happy with my performance and can narrow down my mistakes to just a couple over the entire two weeks - which is a rare thing.

The ridge comp marks one year since I first flew my proto covert, and after a solid season of racing it is looking pretty much new. I'm taking it to the worlds along with a new sail on my current frame (T2Cx...after a little skunk working). Looking forward to a full season of comps..

Fastest hang glider in the... WORLD??

2011-02-06T18:56:00.000-08:00

Hmmmm... seems as though the rumors are true. Shapiro would like to remind me that he beat me in Santa Cruz as well as the pre worlds, but it must have just been that I was flying the FASTEST HANG GLIDER IN THE WHOLE WORLD at less than its top speed.
And since my current glider is, well, FASTER... hmmm....

Full moon..

2011-01-19T16:36:00.000-08:00

I heard Alex Cuddy www.alexcuddy.blogspot.com is glider mulin' down in southern Brazil. Their weather has been crap but just 7-800kms to his north, I'm glider-less and in agony watching day after endless day of streeted up cumies from horizon to ocean zing by overhead. It's a bit flat around here.. I've done a sweet 100k flight... http://www.willswing.com/blogs/PilotBlogs/tabid/38/EntryId/251/Classic-Route-Medianeira-Brasil.aspx ...from a nearby (hour away) hill but launch is about 300 feet high; definitely not comp worthy. Aero tow would be the go.
I'm guessing this moon can't hurt Alex's mojo..

and since they haven't been getting many flights in down there, I'm sure he is slayin it as we speak (11pm). Yea champion!!

Canoa '10

2010-11-27T15:56:00.000-08:00

evolution of a coastal slayer..

the morphed keel pocket/haulback fairing

hidden nose cone top attachment

seal for the main center zip

first - neoprene inner seal where the main suspension enters the sail. next - milling off the front of the hang tee to get enough vg travel to bring the sail to its knees

looks bad ass, worth taping on just for that

pip pin surgery successful, also taped the gap around the tang/bracket interface

took a chance on a new tip cut... may be the beginning of something? I like the aesthetics.

It's my favorite event of the year, but we were missing the rest of the Wills team and Sylmar crew for sure - after losing the entire 2010 posse to financial problems or doubts about the stability of Ecuador, I finally decided to go alone and forget my problems on the beach in Canoa rather than in Florida mid winter.
It was a shaky start after being turned away at the check in counter by American Airlines in MIA. Customer service has finally been completely extinguished in Miami but I had a smooth (last ever) flight on AA a day later.
Arrival was traditional Guayaquil - the welcoming committee of hang pilots was in attendance and, in typical style, we drove straight from the airport to the club for an all nighter downtown.
Next day was perfect for assembling the glider, nursing the hangover, and making the half day drive to the cliffs. The weather when we arrived that night could have been any year I have ever been there. It is always the same - wind is always on, temp is always where you would have it if you could control it, the best seafood is always a couple minute walk down the sand...
The practice day is historically the day we flex our glider muscles and pose as hard as possible to crush the spirit of any wanna be podium finishers. This year was no different and, realizing Daniel Velez was the nearest opponent, I made sure he was crying by landing time. The truth is you never know how the glider goes until practice day drag races.
The race went for two days with the third drizzled out (we still flew the third day, but pilots were nervous about cloud flying with the misty, low bases). First day was a race, wind was on, pilots were keen. I am usually good at the start gate but spent too much time practicing a critical move on the new course so I was out of position for the first clock. Diving down to the compression behind Daniel and crew, I knew it would be too much work to catch up and I wanted to crush them the first day to have some breathing room for unexpected conditions the following days. I returned to launch for the next clock slightly humbled and ready to nail it. We were both in front of our respective groups so had identical zero-wake conditions and i got him by a little over three minutes on the approximately 40 minute course. Party time.
Hard to wake up on day two, clouds seemed lower or it could have been my vision. Wind was *light*... Effed the start again... Needed to relax. Daniel left nearly his entire gaggle on the ground at the first turnpoint.. it looked like a diver cemetary and the vario was silent for several kms. Definitely the lightest day of racing I have ever had in Canoa and both Daniel and I were alone on our own private race wondering if we would close the course. The T2 that I had labored over for so many late night hours at the factory prevailed with another one minute lead. Party time.
Day three - drizzle. Perfect conditions for a north cliff run after the day was cancelled. Decided to do a wave skimmer and flush some pelicans about 10 k's from retrievable territory just to see what the sensation would be. It's strange the sound of your own breathing inside the helmet visor when your powerless aircraft is zinging over the waves, vg rope skipping off the sea foam, the cliff wall that's towering above you is approaching .... and the beach you just sailed across is inescapable except by boat.. only tomorrow if they decide to look for you. Aaaaah..perfect. Party time.
Next day was a lesson in what should have been last night's moderation. Just like every year. Can't wait for 2011, bring it Moyes Boyz!

Quest - Venice Beach

2010-11-14T07:39:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we all decided to try for Venice, probably the last chance this year for such a long flight. Last month the Quest crew tried for Venice but ended up leaving at 230pm and just ran out of daylight before making the final glide numbers. Yesterday we were prepared early and had favorable winds and clouds so the mid-November sun gave us just barely enough time to make the beach before sunset. The landing conditions were the typically perfect Venice sea breeze - 15mph mostly down the beach, slightly onshore. Pretty sweet to crack a hundred in the winter.

Quest - New Smyrna 2nd attempt

2010-07-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

Relaxing at JB's Fish Camp across the street from the beach south of New Smyrna

The first try a few weeks ago got me less than half way with heavy over development on course and all around. Yesterday, conditions lined up perfectly with breezy WSW winds, plenty of clouds and no overdevelopment on course.

After a morning of towing and tandems I was able to talk Mitch and Campbell into attempting the New Smyrna route. We all checked out the sectional and plugged in key airspace locations and set off around 2pm.

Mitch had bad luck and landed early, while Campbell and I blazed the first leg - it seemed too easy, and it was. From the moment we turned the corner at the edge of Sanford airspace and started heading east to the beach, the lift turned to crap and the clouds were rarely working. Nothing was making sense to me and I spent an hour stuck just southeast of Deland airport while Campbell eased ahead as if he was in completely different conditions.

After dodging the huge Deland jump plane on its five mile finals and sawtoothing back and forth into the wind in order to stay out of Daytona airspace, the fourth or fifth perfect cloud I flew under started to work. 3000 feet seemed high by then and this allowed me to head south back onto the original course and get into good clouds again. I took a very conservative 5200 foot final glide in case the seabreeze was strong. I made it at 6pm with 2000 feet to play over the Atlantic before landing on the white sand and having a bucket of shrimp across the road. Even swam with a random manatee that was cruising the waves heading south.

Turns out Campbell couldn't get high in the last climb and was being conservative as well, aborting his final across the 1.5 mile swampy inland waterway thinking there could be a strong seabreeze. The seabreeze ended up only being from the south and what got me there so high could have carried him over the swamp as well, but he ended up landing on 95 in the end.

Two coasts in three days, attempting Cuba tomorrow.

Quest - Venice Beach

2010-07-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

The daily storm pattern took a break yesterday and the wind clocked around from the east northeast so I decided to head down to Curt's homeland 200kms to the southwest for a swim and some seafood.

Thermals were very rarely 5-600 fpm, more often 2-300. Wind was cross from the east but always had some sort of tailwind component. Cloudbase rose from 3500 feet near Quest at takeoff time to 5500 feet at the coast at 6 pm.

Conditions at the beach were identical to the first time I flew there with the Brits and Davis last year. The convergence line was within a couple miles of shore and the seabreeze was more cross than onshore so final glide and landing conditions were awesome.

Outskirts of Lakeland looking back north toward Quest and thinning clouds.

South of Lakeland heading into sparsely populated areas. Asphalt roads under me the entire way.

Getting into the convergence line for the drag race down the coast, looking west into Sarasota.

Final glide into the seabreeze over the Curt Warren spawning grounds.

Fisherman's Wharf right in the center of the picture, better food than Sharkey's.

Looking south down the coast to Venice airport.

Playing chicken with the coast, landing was at Sharkey's restaurant on the pier.

Quest - New Smyrna beach

2010-06-15T19:01:00.000-07:00

Didn't quite make it due to the daily storm line convergence but got some cool shots. Went there anyway by car and it is the nicest beach I've seen in Florida. This is over Groveland heading northeast:

The route is tight and interesting weaving under and between some class b and c, some bombing ranges then a very tight final glide to the beach wedged between New Smyrna airspace and the space shuttle restricted area.

Coring....

2010-05-31T17:32:00.000-07:00

..the elusive water devil

Estancia Pindoty

2010-05-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

A weekend at Bebe's farm in Paraguay: cold night sipping wine around the fire next to the hacienda followed by a day in the sky with 4 m/s thermals to cloudbase on a great out and return. All flights thanks to Bebe's farmer - who has learned to fly the dragonfly.

Classic Route - Medianeira, Brasil

2010-04-07T14:00:00.001-07:00

Here is a photo log of a classic route from a very infrequently flown hill near Foz do Iguaçu in southwestern Brasil. The altitude from the manicured grass launch to the freshly cut lz is 100 meters. You dont launch until you see birds climbing out front, but if you get a good cycle its full on.

"Free flight club - West SIDE"

The view from launch. The hill isn't as low as it looks - it's lower.

Finally getting high enough to look downwind for a minute.

All good at cloudbase.

Epic scenery.

Loooong glides and loooong cloud shadows late in the day with amazing views ahead...

Sexy curves meet steel hard lines..

Goal, Aeroleve Airpark in Cascavel, the end of another classic route...

Brasil update

2010-02-02T09:47:00.000-08:00

Quick update from Brasil:

Jack Simmons and I flew down here for the first stage of the nationals in Sapiranga. Most locals don't like it for the lack of big distances and powerful air but I think it's heaven. Jack agrees. Out of 9 days we flew 7, probably around 3 hours average each day. Unfortunately the comp committee only thought 2 days were suitable for a task. The tasks were slightly overcalled given the fact that we were running over saturated ground, mostly rice fields. Goal was never made but the flying was still moderately fast and fairly tactical. Ferro is the current Brasilian champ and walked all over everyone else, winning both days. He wasn't gliding the best and he wasn't climbing the best (nearly), but he was clearly making the best decisions of anyone and walked away with the trophy.

The day after the comp we headed north with Eduardo from Mato Grosso and his awesome driver Flavia. We were intent on bagging a site on the precipice of the Atlantic range overlooking the ocean 50km distant. We arrived a day and a half later to find three wile e. coyote concrete ramps hanging over the edge of a cliff completely socked in by cloud. Long story short, we all flew, it was epic, and I consider it one of my best flights ever. About three hours after launching I landed just short of the beach in a beautiful field in a tiny village.

Next stop Betinho's chalet in Garopaba. Betinho Schmidt was good enough to lend us his chalet overlooking a lake next to the beach Praia do Rosa. We spent a day hiking the coastal cliffs and soaking up the sun. Betinho is doing great and planning a stand-up paddle from Floripa to Garopaba...too much open ocean for me. Good luck man.

Then Floripa - I had planned to show Jack some great island flying at some of the best beaches of Brasil. The wind swung too north after a frontal passage and left us stranded on Praia Mole, nothing to do but soak up the sun, sand, and surf for a day. I made a go at the PG launch above the beach but by the time I got up there it was simply unlaunchable. The guy up there saw me shouldering the wing on to the launch and questioned the wisdom of flying a hang glider there. He told me in all his years there he had only ever seen one hang glider fly there.. about two years ago.. gray top, yellow bottom with blue stripe? Yeah. Looping out over the surf for a couple hours? Yeah.. Ahh those were good times..

The group had to split up at that point. I headed due west to Foz do Iguaçu, and currently Jack and Eduardo are near the Pantanal and planning to fly Corumbá tomorrow.

Back in one week to Quest to take care of tandems and harness back plates. Deep in materials research right now, and after several protos the harness appears to be nearing production.

2010-01-09T09:58:00.000-08:00

Stepped out of the house this morning and the next step was 6 feet lower - where I landed on my side after slipping on ice covered steps. Busted the guard rail out with my leg and slid to a stop, pinned down by the rusty pointed end of the rail, with another 6 feet to go if I went any further. The only sharp pain was my ground down knuckle, grated by the diamond plate stair surface. This is the most significant crash since the mountain bike wipe out that wrecked the same shoulder years ago. Good thing nothing is broken...

Because I'm heading off to Brasil next Thursday - fully loaded. Glider, harness, backpacking gear, and a bike.. Jack Simmons is joining me for the 3 week trip. First week will be at the competition near Porto Alegre, then we'll head north up the coast at a leisurely pace, checking out site after site and meeting up with old friends along the way. Uruguay and the Pantanal may find their way into my itinerary as well, but plans are still in the air and funds are limited. At some point I hope to slip away on the bike with my backpack and get a closer look at one of my favorite areas for a while - the high plains just behind the coastal mountain range at the RS/SC border. I've only sped through in a car a couple times and I'm sure there is a lot more to it.

Here is Morro do Ferrabraz in Sapiranga, site of the nationals last year, and again this year. Just perfect:

photo by Manu Sanches

More from Puerto Rico

2010-01-04T12:11:00.000-08:00

6500 feet just northwest of Caguas, PR

View of San Juan looking to the northeast

North shore with the deserted landing strip in the upper left of the photo

A few more pics from the last week in Puerto Rico. The dragonfly had to be flown back to Arecibo from Humacao and I ended up flying it over the edge of San Juan and out to the north shore for a quick swim at a deserted beach before hopping back in for the last leg to the Arecibo airport. Flew past a two lane drag strip lined on both sides with bleachers and completely blackened by burned rubber. I couldn't resist one quick run before heading home.
For who hasn't been down there, it has some great flying and is a really cheap roundtrip ticket from anywhere in the states. I will probably be back at some point now that we have the dragonfly available, to attempt a true end to end crossing of the island - towing up over the east shore and landing on the western beaches.

Puerto Rico

2009-12-22T20:05:00.000-08:00

On Thursday I set the new Puerto Rican distance record as I passed the 52 mile mark, over the west end of Ponce - a town named after the first governor of the island (de Leon) - elected just barely 500 years before my overflight.

After meeting a local Puerto Rican pilot in the process of buying a Dragonfly, I decided to go and help out with the set up of his new flight park. He decided I needed to break the long-standing XC record to maximize publicity of the grand opening.

Just about five hours after getting off a plane and taking a nap, we were on the morning sports radio show speaking prophetically of my still unflown record. It seemed like dangerous shit talk to me, considering the extremely small chance of encountering the necessary conditions to complete the task. For the rest of the week the station would advertise our upcoming event - and air my shit talk.

Five days later, after sorting the tandem glider, tug, accessories, potential tow sites, etc - a couple of locals felt like flying Cubuy and I figured I should give it a try. After all, if I flew a record that day I wouldn't have to worry about it on the weekend of the grand opening.

We headed up a little late to the sweet grassy launch overlooking the east shore. Clouds were streeting and it was definitely go time if I wanted to make the west coast before sunset. Conditions were (apparently) epic, because 3.5 hours later with little trouble I was in a farm field a short distance from the southwestern corner of the island, with 84 miles in the bag. It felt about like an 84 mile comp task normally feels - about a dozen thermals from 3-600 up, long flat glides, and great clouds.

Below is the photo-tour, tracklog coming..

Various

2009-11-19T12:38:00.000-08:00

Tool of the trade:

On Tuesday I came back from lunch and decided I didn't feel like working on pods, so I hopped in the T2 without my wallet, phone, or packup gear. The lines worked so well that after a few minutes I was on my way to Wallaby. I just couldn't give up such a good day this late in the year. On my way down an Atos passed under me heading the opposite direction. After turning at Wallaby I soon found myself on a 15 mile final from about 4700 feet into a light headwind. My wing ate that for lunch and had about 500 feet to spare.
Joe Bostik came over Wednesday and took my glider out for a test fly and didn't come back until late in the day after doing basically the same exact flight with a similar late day long final. Two days of out and back about 45 miles each time in late November. That's pretty sweet.

Here's the pink Dragonfly being packed into a 53 foot sea container for it's journey to Puerto Rico. Jamie, Ricker, and I are going to down there next month to do some tandems, freeflying, charity work, and party. This is just the beginning:

2009-11-18T15:15:00.000-08:00

Terry and Bud: the bird tolerates him as a beneficial partner in a food gathering relationship - for now. He seems almost cuddly in this picture.

Bud in real life:

This is without a doubt what he was designed for. If he does anything more efficiently and effortlessly than flying, killing is it. I imagine that a wild hawk would stun with its skill.

2009-11-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

This is Bud

He lives with a Terry Reynolds. Pretty cool bird, I think I might go watch them hunt tomorrow morning. I have some good pictures of him that I will edit and put up tonight.

2009-11-08T16:11:00.000-08:00

Coming back from Ecuador is typically a letdown, but this was my view on my first night back.. a good way to ease back into the states.

Former US champ Joe Bostik is jumping back into the game this season and his first stop is Australia for the comp series starting this winter. I've got a 6030/Geko pod on rush for him and took some pics of the process. I popped it out of the mold this evening and when I get another 4 or 5 layed up and popped out, they're going to the clearcoater. When I can find the time I will begin the plug for next season's pod... bliNG BLING

T2C - Winning Edition

2009-11-06T17:47:00.001-08:00

Here she is:

I went with a slightly different approach to Canoa this year - instead of just tweaking and polishing, which I also did - I headed out to Orange County and worked alongside Steve Pearson in an effort to incorporate some small ideas from last year's winning wing into this year's glider on the sail table. For my part, I only refined the existing air seals from last year and added some arm fairings to my rotor harness. Steve, however, had some big plans with new exotic sail materials, batten density experiments, and some general clean-up of the current T2 sailcut.

Some of these were already incorporated in the glider that Jeff Shapiro flew in Canoa, the rest were put into action on my wing. Jeff O'Brien came on a stock 144 produced earlier in the year, so the playground was ripe for objective performance comparisons.

Both Shapiro's and my glider seemed to handle just a touch too well to have real glide performance. That would be the first misconception shattered on the first practice day in Canoa....

Kraig Coomber came sporting Moyes' latest offering, the same wing he won this year's Santa Cruz Flats on. I was nervous at the very least. Some rough wing loading chatter over shots of tequila the first night confirmed we were all very close in wing loading, with OB perhaps a bit higher with his lead diving vest. It would come down to raw glide at the course speed range, which is historically 55-90kph. I was confident but on my toes.

Day one and a wrench was tossed in the spokes: we would fly a course never before flown by any of us, and no doubt a course intensely practiced by Raul and company in the months preceding our arrival. Always a pleasure to see how their gears turn down there! After a little cloud play, the start time approached and after a furious dive to the first set of ridges south of the river, I found myself in pole position with Shapiro and OB right in line behind me. Kraig was nowhere to be seen and I smiled as I realized the fastest wingmen were with me. We flew a clean course finishing 1,2,3 and later I hung around at the finish line to time Kraig's finish. We had him by a minute plus. Day one Wills.

Day two and the final race day saw more murky cloud play with the same furious approach to the compression but this time Kraig was in hot pursuit while I gained the lead again. The wingmen were on his tail and our positions wouldn't change until near the last turnpoint where Kraig pushed harder than I thought wise out over town and I held back about 50 yards behind him. I resolved to snag the pylon cleaner than he would and with a little luck I pulled a cleaner turn and took the lead into the final 7km which would be impossible for him to reel back in. The big question was if OB's solid close third behind Kraig would make up for his gap on the first day. None of us knew until the downloading was finished, but the shots were passed around when we learned it was Team Wills 1 - 2 - 3 baby!

The really satisfying feeling was knowing that the new glider development was going in the right direction. Shapiro's and then my new glider handled progressively better and better than their predecessors and the performance likewise incrementally improved with each proto. My wing was truly a pleasure to fly all around.

Despite our rivalry, it was a real pleasure having the Moyes boys join us for such a sweet event. With some team flying, earlier in the week in Guayaquil Kraig and I managed to pull off the longest flights in Ecuador's history launching in the Guayaquil and ending up across state lines in Manabi in a tight farming valley after several hours and a final glide through an epic convergence. Etched in my mind forever for sure.

Here we go up the new road at Guayaquil's newest foot launch site 10 minutes from downtown..

And the man with the plan, spark behind the new force of free flight vs desperation in the slums, seen here warming his nipples...

Here is the light you can see in one of Guayquil's poorer areas...

Deeper inside, I found one man's pride and joy being constructed stick by stick and it hit hard. Each of us eventually had our turning point, for whatever reason this was mine. That is not grass, it is water...

Driving directly from there to town on our way to fly, we were introspecting a bit...

I won't dwell on it, because the wheels are in motion. I would say we are all more appreciative for it though. It was time to look forward...

Rest and relaxation awaited in Canoa...

Here are a few shots from James Byrd's school in Canoa...

The highlight of my year is here. Once again, I can't wait until 2011, but I doubt it will be that long before I'm back again.

AZ, Wills factory, Brazil, and Canoa

2009-10-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a trying couple of months but I feel somewhat back on my path and I'm feeling focused and confident about Canoa.

The comp in Arizona was as layed back as ever and I was able to sit back and enjoy a few years of work instead of organizing and flying the event, thanks to Jamie.

On the way to Arizona looking out over southern New Mexico.

I flew a prototype glider produced in September that had the sweetest handling of any T-2 so far. Glide performance seemed intact and I won day 2 on a blazing downwind day into the saguaro national monument area. Distraction was all it took for me to fall down on day 4 and no amount of flying was going to get me back on the podium. All that was left was to sit back and enjoy round after round of black russians in the hot tub.

The week after AZ was spent working on the latest prototype at the factory. Along with the new sail mods, I got a bunch of drag reducing tweaks done to my harness and peripheral gear so it was time well spent. Steve and I got to rap about gliders and cool aero ideas and now I'm putting some of that to the test with practical modifications for next week's race. The new wing looks HOT..

Spotted this item hanging in the airport terminal in Santa Ana on the way to the factory...

From LAX, I flew straight down to Brasil for a two week visit with Manuela. We visited Paraguay, Argentina, and all of the local attractions and had a great time.. it was a real boost of positive energy spending time with her. I skipped the comp that was happening in Carmo do Rio Claro, but I will be sure to catch the next one. It's one of the few sites I haven't seen down there but it sounds like last week's comp suffered some pretty poor weather so hopefully next season is better. Here's a shot before launching on task 6, which was eventually cancelled with a cu-nim on course. Looks amazing.

Pictures of this year's Canoa mods will be up soon (a step up from last year's mods, I'm fully aero this year).
Here is a sneak peak of a camera soon available from Flytec usa... I will be using it along with a gopro hero to capture various angles of glider mounted HD video of the race course next week so stay tuned.

And for the conclusion of my circuit, I ended up with a layover in Newark where I had hoped to go run around NYC for a few hours but got this instead:

That 757 has got to be the sweetest, slowest landing airliner I've ever been in.

Brasilia

2009-08-23T03:42:00.000-07:00

Brasilia was quite nice this year. The air was smooth, climbs were still strong to 10000 feet most days, winds were lighter than usual.
Half the comp was flown through a fog of food poisoned agony, but that half was where I was winning. Once I popped the pills, Jonny slipped by with a 23 point lead going into the last day. Unfortunately the last day was stopped halfway through the task due to storms.
Landing in the Esplanada every day was a pleasure as usual. This year the closing ceremony was held there after packing up the gliders, and the atmosphere was strong.
The curiosity of the locals here always surprises me coming from the states and they were out in force every day this year. I'm guessing there will be some new pilots here this time next year.
Special thanks to the organization this year and the local private hospital. When I was doubled over and without a great deal of money, the organizer of the comp and one of the partners in the hospital both arranged for free treatment and took me past a day-long ER line to get immediate help. Awesome.
Anyway, pics..

Zapata..again

2009-08-10T12:47:00.000-07:00

Moving right along - Spent almost two weeks in Zapata again this year. Got a record for the 100km triangle on an after-lunch flight on one of the days because I couldn't think of much else to do on yet another sub par weather day.

The two weeks, most of which with my car in the shop, helped me rediscover my motivation to try for the record somewhere else. I need a change of scenery. I have a spot scoped out for next June/July and flying is just one of endless outdoor activites that are possible there. It will be a blast, flying or not, but it's no minor site. Eleven hours soarable air on a good day, interstate highway under you from the first to the 500th mile, hIGH cloudbase, typically strong tailwinds, and you can retry if you landout early. Not as consistent as Zapata (is supposed to be). More consistent than Zapata has been. Need O2, only major drawback.

Off to Brasilia, the 2nd stage of the Brazilian nationals right now. I remember thinking I wouldn't go back there after the last time two years ago, but the bump and wind tolerance is rejuvenated after the French trip. Arriving tomorrow morning and the weather is looking good. Always a good time.

Kit required for a big one:

Landing after 2hr 100km flight:

Last year in Zapata before the big one:

Laragne

2009-08-08T06:47:00.001-07:00

Pleasantly surprised by the air and views of France this year.

bird

2009-06-12T14:31:00.000-07:00

Saw a swift dangling head down from the eve of a roof today flapping non-stop in an attempt to escape whatever it was tangled with. Five minutes of sign language and some minor trespassing later, we had the bird in hand, performing surgery with a box knife to remove the string. Exhaustion had him sitting in my hand for a good minute before he decided he was ready to cruise. On climbout he barely cleared a fence and limped around the corner.

skunk werks

2009-06-10T16:19:00.001-07:00

Epic journey between Orlando and Munich with more glider drama than I ever managed to endure on any other trip. The wings are finally on the car and Tim and I are cruising the countryside on our way to Laragne after dropping Jamie off to visit Carl.

2009-05-14T19:18:00.000-07:00

Jonothan got his prize from the first round of the raffle and here he is fondling it proudly...

Latest

2009-05-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

Took a break from updating for the comps.

Florida Ridge went well. Ending up at the top of a strong list of my friends was satisfying. Was good to see everyone after a long winter of teaching.

The Rally was going equally well until the 5th task when I glided from base to the ground after the start. It's rare enough that I will go ahead and write it off and the battle with the landowner in that field made the flight worthwhile on its own.

Team USA is a finely tuned machine that will do well in France, if the mountains don't conspire to crush us. If it's anybody's weak point, it's probably mine.

Taking my new-found free time to start the skunk werks on my glider in prep for the worlds. I've got a good lazy month of work to do on it before it's ready. That and stacking up an inventory of pods to take to Europe will keep me from attending Torrey, Kitty Hawk, and the ECC. Trade offs. Good times, old friends, new, looking ahead.

Rotor test

2009-04-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS8efWWS2j0&feature=related

Some dude doing wingovers hanging squarely from the middle of his slider bar due to mal-adjusted foot rope.. rotor test indeed. That's how you pull bars out of back plates.

Check your foot ropes!!

April XC clinic

2009-04-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

Raffle Update: Jonothan Dietch's pod is cocooned in its neoprene bag after getting a custom paint and clear coat job this week and the custom Wills litestream aluminum bar mount is underway and slated for delivery.

Larry Feringa is the latest winner of the super pimpin hg lighters quiver...here he is -

Just wrapped up the Arizona 4 day XC clinic that was curiously attended only by out of towners. Don, Eric, Bruce, and Jeff all came out for 3 days of flying and one day of wind.

Day one we got the aerotowing equipment sorted and had a quick fly in the tail end of a cold front. Short, sweet ground school was followed by some routed planning for day two.

Sunday, Day two had moderate winds pushing us straight to our goal 57 optimistic miles away at Marana airport. After an hour of route discussion, gps programming, and dodging dust devils, we were up and on our way.

Eric, who does not like right turns, circled left and drifted downwind almost continuously turning for his personal best flight of approximately 14 miles.
The rest of us continued on southeast and were temporarily separated by the Eloy jumpzone as we split on both sides of the airport.

Bruce made the first of many, many low saves of the clinic on the east side, while Don, Jeff, and I stayed high on the west side. Don arrived a couple hundred feet too low at the next dust devil while Jeff and I corked up in it.

Next order of business was to go back to Bruce and attempt to pull him through the last of the wet, green farm areas. This went the way of many great plans and after one long smooth glide he was down in the desert and I was spinning up from 300 feet over I-10 to reconnect with the last of the boys.

Jeff and I continued on over Picacho Peak, both topping 7500 feet as we straddled the highway under our own separate clouds, racing for final glide height. Jeff had me by a few hundred but declined a 12:1 glide preferring the safety of a 9:1. We alighted in a 15mph breeze at the Marana jump zone after a 3 hour journey.

Eric: 14 miles of circling: personal best number one of the week
Bruce: 30 miles personal best
Don: 24 miles, better luck tomorrow
Jeff: GOAL 57 miles after helping with the less experienced pilots.

Day 3, had the lightest winds of all which allowed easy gaggling over Phoenix Regional as we waited for the entire crew to get towed up. Conditions were typical high pressure Santa Cruz Flats: weak, broken 200's up to 6K. Everyone did well to stick together and stay high. Goal was again set at Marana due to inversions over the farms to the west and a NNW wind.

Some light herding was required for a bit of the wanderers but in the end everyone made it past Francisco Grande resort. Unfortunately a wide band of high cirrus swept by briefly and decked the lowest of the pilots, Eric and Bruce. Eric was still able to best the first day's flight for a new personal record of 16 miles while Bruce was able to extend his record for the most time spent scratching under 500 feet of anyone I have ever seen. Both landed in classic Flats baked dirt terrain south of Francisco for an easy retrieve.

After giving me shit for a scratchy microphone (that I fixed before our first XC flight together), Don was high and ahead doing well, except that his radio was not working. After realizing the situation, I decided to resort to hand signals and stayed as close as possible so I could give him the "I see lift ahead" or We go NOW" sign language. One time I gave him the "stop drooling over your vario and start looking around" series of hand signs, but I think it was lost in the thin air at altitude.

We scratched to stay high while the shade passed and once it got good we went to high gear with Jeff underneath making a clinic student sandwich as we carried Don over some desolate terrain north of the Silverbell mountains and on to Picacho Peak.

Don made one impressive low save after another, to the point that he sluffed off Jeff and it was just the two of us scratching along in the next shade band. One very small mistake down low decked him finally at 36 miles, for his personal best distance and the end to a nice yet weather abbreviated clinic.

I half heartedly attempted a return to Francisco after making a tour of Picacho Peak at 8 grand, but shade and 5 hour neck put me down near Eloy. After 9 hours on the T2 154, I am suitably impressed by its handling and floaty qualities, but can't wait to get back on my 144 sports car.

New pod mount

2009-03-12T05:41:00.000-07:00

My 6030/Geko pod has a new mounting option for Wills Wing carbon basetubes. Moyes, Aeros, and Wills aluminum coming shortly. Here is a very abbreviated slide show of the process:

XC clinic reminder

2009-03-12T05:25:00.000-07:00

Jeff Obrien, Kevin Carter, and I are putting on a clinic March 26-30 here at Quest. There are still a few slots open, any skill level with aerotow rating. WW demo days starts the day after the clinic. Email me for info flydustin@hotmail.com

Shirt Winners

2009-02-28T07:54:00.000-08:00

For each five entrants into the first raffle, I used some of the proceeds to purchase a shirt from the U.S. team support site. We had approximately 15 entrants, so three of you have a shirt now. (Guys who won stuff weren't run in the shirt raffle.)

Now I just need to know your shirt sizes. Here is who was drawn:

Michael Bomstad
Stephan Forslund
Sunny Venesky

Congratulations guys!

Thanks to everyone for the continued support! Don't forget a new raffle has started and all the previously listed items are still up for grabs....here's the list:

-One-on-one radio guided clinic day.................$60 per chance
-Five day radio-guided group clinic.................$40 per chance
(The 5 day group clinic dates will be March 26-30 at Quest Air)
-Carbon/glass pod for 6030 and Geko..................$50 per chance
-Garmin Geko 201.....................................$35 per chance
-Garmin Geko 301.....................................$45 per chance
-BlueEye Chill.......................................$25 per chance
-Baide hang glider lighters 5pk......................$5 per chance
-Team shirts.........................................one chance included with every donation - or available for $25+5 shipping from the team site (link on the right side of this page)

Day 4

2009-02-17T09:58:00.000-08:00

Since three days were cancelled during the meet, this fourth task was the last. Goal was called just past the village of Montenegro and south of the highway out in the farm fields a few kilometers to avoid the tree farms near the town. Total distance was 62km pretty much downwind.

Clouds were forming well and were growing large by the time the start opened. The gaggle went left of courseline while I veered right to a small mountain chain. After a minute or so the entire gaggle had slowly decided to follow. Thinking the day was as good as it looked, I passed up the first thermal I hit before the ridge, sure that the spine would be putting out better. Fifteen minutes later, the entire gaggle was at base and I was still scratching at ridge height wondering what had happened.

With such a short task, I resigned to the fact that I had fallen to an unrecoverable position and the best thing I could do was just make it in. After Novo Hamburgo, a huge thick cloudstreet promised an opportunity to speed up, but after running its entire length without a beep I glided out into the blue dejected. I could see flashes of sun on the wings of the lead gaggle several climbs ahead and that kept me plugging along.

By chance I looked over to the side while gliding and spotted a vulture cruising from left to right. I looked in the direction of his glide and spotted a huge gaggle of birds above and 1/2 a km over. I quickly turned off course and locked into the best thermal I had seen all day at about 3 m/s. After getting to base height out in the blue in that lucky climb I was in good position to hop a couple clouds in front, and after getting a couple more decent climbs I was surprised to see that the leaders hadn't done so well on that run, and were in front but grovelling low. It was with a huge smile that I glided into the top of the gaggle that had eluded me for so long.

Conditions had weakened over the rice fields and I felt it was time to move on, even if down low. Marcelo Ferro was running wing man and we were able to make a break away while Dorival, Monex, and the others hung back cautiously. Connecting to the mountain chain just past Montenegro, we connected to a decent climb under some wispies while the rest of the gaggle sputtered below. Final glide altitude came and went, and after getting some insurance height, I led out and upwind of course to the left. I got a slightly better line than Ferro and decided to slow down a bit thinking I had the day won easily. Three to four miles out from goal I just happened to look up to my right and out of nowhere, there is another T2! I hadn't seen another glider in front since the breakaway but it looked like he had me beat. I gave it a shot on the final dive, but he simply had me by a little too much and took the day by a few seconds. Turns out it was Ze Gala, winning the day after flying out in front and alone the entire way. Three out of the four comp days went to a T2, while the winner on his Litespeed was just too consistent for all of us. Ferro boated in a distant third, plenty to take the meet.

Day 7 results here: http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/ofiaes3/sa09prova7superracebrasil.pdf
Totals here: http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/ofiaes3/sap09superracebrasilfinal.pdf

Here is an interesting launch sequence that turned out alright..

Photos Manuela Sanches

3rd day Sapiranga

2009-02-15T04:34:00.000-08:00

A task of 72 km was chosen, this time running east along the mountain range we launch from over to another launch, then heading southeast out into the flats for a couple of pylons, then back to the range, with goal again in the flats.

Wind was coming up the launch as usual, but all the clouds were quartering over the back at a good clip. Fortunately the ridge has a jog in it that faces the wind so we all poured off launch and headed around the corner. The air was incredibly smooth for being parallel to the range. After the start, which I left plenty of room for improvement on, I was in the chase with the leaders a couple hundred meters above and out front. Two or three thermals down range we were faced with a decision-take the turnpoint at ridge height or spend the time to get high enough to grab it and cross the range.

Cruising parallel to the mountain range, Igrejinha launch juts out on a perpendicular finger, placing all of us in direct rotor if we were to come in at launch height or lower. Dozens of pilots dove in regardless of wind and altitude. I decided my chances at survival were much higher with another climb so I turned around to join the tail end of the pack a kilometer behind in a weak climb. We gained enough to come in over the launch about 1000 feet.

The beauty here was that we arrived far enough behind the lead gaggle that they had already grabbed the turnpoint, glided off accross the next valley 90 degrees off course thinking they would beam out on the ridges, failed, and were all gliding back to the base of Igrejinha launch....while the end of the pack was sitting at base there.

Just about this time the seabreeze hit. The next pylon was only 15km or so ahead, but everyone was just gliding to the ground in the 20mph headwind. My group seemed intent and cautious and were all gliding very well, so I stuck with them and we slowly crept toward the turnpoint. One dropped off, then another, until it was me and a lone Aeros pilot. He seemed to have had enough and glided off to land almost on top of the turn, while I stumbled into an unlikely coherent thermal in the seabreeze down low. It surprised me again by turning into 2.5 m/s and getting me back to base. The drift was insane but the glide after was magic, and I arrived at the turnpoint at a couple grand.

I had visions of pulling a Manfred and doing some crazy courseline origami to make the task but after gliding back to the ridges, I was simply stuck in laminar ridge lift at 500 feet without a bump. I landed in a field with about 15 gliders.

Won a day, not the way I had hoped, but in the end it was over 900 points so it put me back in the race.

photos Manuela Sanches

Day 2 Sapiranga

2009-02-14T05:21:00.000-08:00

19 January we got up the hill to slightly cross and brisk winds and had to use the southeast launch. They say that's the better launch but they both look like a couple acres of manicured golf green to me.

A task of 115km was called to the west. After a quick ride to cloudbase in front of launch, we headed out in a dense pack. Progress to Novo Hamburgo was quick if low. Thermals there were unremarkable but most pilots made it through.

Around this time, 2 pilots landed at an airport on courseline right under me. They were held captive for a couple hours, and it turns out we were all flying through- or over airspace that is our equivalent of a restricted area. Protests followed but were dropped later.

Just after the town of Novo Hamburgo, an extremely sweet looking cloud had formed and I decided to push a little harder to see if I could shake my bottom of the gaggle position. It worked out and I ended up in front for about half an hour, but unfortunately I couldn't back off a gear and let the gaggle work for me and I ended up low at the turnpoint 30km short of goal after a series of ridiculous decisions.

I was 1000 feet above a bunch of wet rice fields when the lead gaggle rounded the turnpoint just behind and above me and got a climb under a nice cloud that had drifted in from the southeast. If I had known there climb was as shitty as mine, I wouldn't have blazed off at 1500 feet over the wetlands. So my stupid move netted me a landing at a farm just off the highway short of goal. It seemed like an eternity before the gaggle stopped circling and headed off. Almost all made goal after that.

I hadn't recognized the change in the state of thermals after the turnpoint when I should have. I learned later that it is common knowledge for the area I landed in. The pressure was off now as I had thrown the comp so the next days I was able to take some chances that paid off. Day 2 results- http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/ofiaes3/sap09prova4brasil.pdf

All photos by Manuela Sanches

Sapiranga

2009-02-12T04:24:00.000-08:00

Sapiranga is in the most southern state of Brazil, just north from Porto Alegre and less than 50 miles from the coast. I just got back from a 7 day competition there, the first of a dozen or so on the Brazilian circuit this year. Even after getting only one flyable day last year in the same spot, I was keen to return after running a sweet triangle while watching the seabreeze convergence almost underneath me at times.

Day 1 saw a sky full of cumulus at about 5500 feet and slightly cross right launch conditions, but with 60,000 sq feet of grass and a concrete ramp, everyone got off in minutes. The task was 70km with 3 turnpoints and goal at a roundabout on the coastal plain just beyond the last hills of the region.

Once on course, at the second turnpoint I jumped ahead by gliding on courseline to the next turn, while the gaggle went about 45 degrees to the left. They obviously knew something I didn't but it looked like there was a cloud on the turnpoint itself so I went for it. The wind started to change and locating the turnpoint and the direction to goal was confusing with the huge crab angles. After the turn, the gaggle again went left while I glided on course.

The cloud they went to was awesome but I couldn't stand going downwind of course in a 30km/hr straight crosswind. Lucky or not, I ended up taking the final climb about 10 minutes in front of the gaggle and left at a 14:1 angle. My glide was netting me about 12:1 so I climbed a bit under the next cloud just to be sure. The glide after that was getting me about 10:1 but when I glided under a great cloud with a solid 6 up, I decided to keep on going. The wind had clocked during the flight from tail to quartering right tail, to cross, to quarter right headwind, and now was straight in my face at 30km/hr. I'm not sure why I didn't recongnize that this was a seabreeze or didn't want to accept it, but I continued on my final getting hammered into a crevasse in the rotor of some 600 foot hills. It was only when I was 50 feet shy of clearing the crest that I finally turned around and ran back down course at 800 feet looking for a save. I was a couple km short of goal at that point and only needed another 100 feet in that last climb to win by 10 minutes. Got a little greedy and ended up having to glide 10km away from goal to take a climb.

Came in 10th, 15 minutes behind the winner. Andre, Nene, Maskara, and most of the rest of the leaders had landed in the goal field but unfortunately all were short of the line by a few hundred meters due to the ripping seabreeze pushing through. So the winning group came from the late second gaggle, which became a theme over the next few days.

Overall: epic day. First day results here http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/ofiaes3/sap09prova1brasil.pdf

All photos by Manuela Sanches.

Raffle items

2009-02-10T19:41:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it was clear from the last couple of updates, but the pods, GPSs, XC clinics, and fairing kits are still available. With just a few more entrants for the Garmin Geko and T2 carbon fairing kits I will give a couple of those away. We're starting from scratch with the pods so odds are good!

Here's the current list:

One-on-one radio guided clinic days.................$60 per chance
Week long radio guided group clinic.................$40 per chance
Carbon/glass pod for 6030 and Geko..................$50 per chance
Garmin Geko 201.....................................$35 per chance
Garmin Geko 301.....................................$45 per chance
BlueEye Chill.......................................$25 per chance
Baide hang glider lighters 5pk......................$5 per chance
Team shirts.........................................one chance included with every donation - or available for $25+5 shipping from the team site (link on the right side of this page)

2009-02-09T17:35:00.002-08:00

Congratulations Jonathan Dietch - winner of a new Flytec Carbon Racing Pod. And congratulations to Mark Frutiger - winner of a one-on-one XC Racing Clinic.

And thanks to everyone else as well. If you weren't one of the winners, your name is going back into the hat (or D-bag) for another chance at a team shirt or some other little items. For those bidding on the T2 fairing kits or the Gekos, I'm still waiting for a couple more entrants to cover costs then that raffle will move forward.

Round 2 starts right NOW! New items up for grabs include the Hang Glider collectors lighters ($5 a chance for a 5-pack), and the new 'Chill' flying shades from Blueeye available through Flytec ($25 a chance).

I've been flying with the Chills for a few months now and they are another level above all pseudo flying glasses I have used in the past. Best wrap around fit and least distorted lens quality of any shades in my collection. I prefer rose lenses but they are also available in smoke and bronze lenses.

So thanks to all the entrants, I am now placing my order for 3 team shirts full price from the team support site and they will be thrown in to the raffle for those who didn't win this time around. Good luck!

We have a WINNER!!

2009-02-07T16:16:00.000-08:00

Two actually, to be named tomorrow. One lucky guy will be receiving a bad ass carbon pod for his 6030 and another lucky pilot gets a full day one-on-one XC clinic. Video will be up tomorrow of the bomb drop here at Quest that we had to choose the winners.

And check out this friggin sweet set of lighters that my girlfriend found on a recent trip to Paraguay-

ARE you kidding?? Made in China, sold in Paraguay, and I am certain Heiney has no idea all his photos are on these things. These things are surely collectors items for any true hang pilot! Get your chance at a five pack for $5 in the raffle.

btw, most photos by John Heiney. the pendulum ramair being boat towed...I'm not certain about that one.

U.S. Team T-Shirts now available

2009-02-01T03:33:00.000-08:00

The U.S. Team could use your help. Flytec USA has donated these shirts to the team to help cover our costs in France. The shirts are $25 + $5 priority shipping. Go here to order: http://flytec.com/worldteam/support.html and find other cool stuff available from Flytec and the other team members.

For every 5 entrants in my raffle (see previous blog entries), I will purchase a shirt at full price from the team site and re-enter your names for the shirt.

Thanks for all the support!

2009-02-01T02:53:00.000-08:00

The first round of drawings is coming up and someone is about to be the proud owner of the slickest instrument pod available. The drawing is next week and since the pod was the most popular item, it will be first up. Whoever wins will be contacted so that I can whip out a custom carbon mount for your particular control bar.

Clinics have been nearly as popular and I will also be giving away a one-on-one radio guided full day in this first round.

The week long clinic is in the works and will most likely take place in late March or early April. For those who have a shot at the full week, your ticket is in the system for a late February drawing.

Whoever is keen to get a set of T2 fairings or a Geko GPS, speak up!!! I need more interest in these before I send em out. It's likely that the odds will be *extremely* good for these two things due to interest.

Up for grabs: (see previous blog entries)

One-on-one radio guided clinic days.................$60 per chance
Week long radio guided group clinic.................$40 per chance
Carbon/glass pod for 6030 and Geko..................$50 per chance
Garmin Geko 201.....................................$35 per chance
Garmin Geko 301.....................................$45 per chance

Help a U.S. Team member go to the Worlds!!

2009-01-09T20:53:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Thank you for the great initial response from everyone! I am going to the first of the Brazilian Nationals series and I leave tomorrow morning - when I get back on February 6th, we will tally up what has been bid on and have the first edition of the raffles. Good luck! So far the carbon pod is the most popular item, followed closely by T2 fairing kits, then the XC clinics and Geko GPSs.

Spread the word! Put a link on your local forum or send me the address of your forum. I am thinking about putting all the donators back into the raffle even if they don't score on the first try, and have higher odds on cool smaller items - speedsleeves, etc. For those interested in supporting the entire team, visit the link at the right of this page to check out our site hosted through Flytec.

Thanks again!

So it goes like this:

I have a bunch of cool goods/services to raffle off in order to raise the necessary cash to make it to France this year. Anyone can see that a few weeks in France with airfare, drivers, lodging, and the rest of it is going to be insanely expensive. Rather than just look for handouts, I would like to sell chances at valuable items.

Simply use the paypal button on the right to purchase your chance at one of these items and make a note of which one you would like to shoot for. Or just make a donation, any amount is appreciated. Thanks!

Here is your chance to snake in for next to nothing...

- Chance at a one-on-one full day radio-guided clinic at Quest Air: $40 per ticket Odds will be at least one in ten, dates available from now until May.

- Chance at a slot in the 5-7 day group clinic/beginner's comp at Quest Air: $60 per ticket Four slots are available in the week-long group clinic(s). Odds will be at least one in ten, with enough interest more group clinics will be organized.

- Chance at a 6030/Geko carbon instrument racing pod, 3 out of 5 of the U.S. team members fly with one! A $329 dollar value, includes mounting bracket and zippered carrybag: $50 per ticket Odds will be at least one in ten. I make them for Flytec USA, check them out here- http://www.flytec.com/Products/racing_pods.htm

-Chance at a Geko to fill the pod you just won, the lightest, slickest comp backup GPS available... your chance at a Geko 201: $35 and for a Geko 301: $45 Odds at least 1 in 10.

-For Wills Wing T2 owners only: I am offering fairing kits through this raffle only right now. The full kit includes an apex fairing, VG cleat cover, and a pair of sidewire tang fins. They tape on and require some time and care when setting up and breaking down (basically only for drag weenies at comps), but they look effing cool and have earned their keep. A chance at a full set is yours for $40. Odds at least 1 in 10, can be black gelcoat or clear carbon finish.

One on one clinic days can be arranged from now through late spring through email and are held at Quest Air near Orlando, FL.

The group clinics date(s) will be announced very soon and will be adjusted to suit the majority. If you can't fit into the first one and there is enough interest, I will schedule a second.

My carbon pods are as good as it gets. The quality is top notch, they are the lightest available, they use a tool-less gps removal for easy download, and I include a mount that is custom made for your particular downtube or basetube.

If there isn't sufficient interest in a particular item to at least cover my costs, I will shift your donation to another item of your choice or give a refund, you decide. Thanks for your support!

Carbon Bling results in Cash Bling

2008-11-06T05:50:00.000-08:00

The late news is that the mods worked a little too well. After enjoying a week in Guayaquil, the circus relocated to Canoa for a quick couple of practice days. Jeff, Daniel, and I only briefly joined up for some glide posturing but all seemed normal. Within seconds of the first day's start, I realized that my glider had something special and for three days of competition I was able to sit back and watch the race from above, making moves when and where I chose, and moving to the front position whenever I liked. The race is all about the glider and harness combo, no illusion there, so the lucky person with the most aero package takes it all. In my case, a month of work payed off big and some worthwhile tuning tricks were discovered.

Thanks to all of our great friends from Ecuador for another week of the best free flight on the planet and especially Raul for pulling off a monumental organizational masterpiece. Hope to see all our buddies and more next year for some more racing and relaxation. And don't doubt that I will again have the best glider.

Pics to follow.

Long Landscaping Revival

2008-06-25T19:33:00.000-07:00

I have a good feeling about Zapata this year.

I was there the first year when we were static lining behind Davis's truck. When Dave Sharp flew the first 300 miler on a crappy blue day, I was in awe. I knew it was on.

I kept trying for years and forgave the place for it's many disappointments because I had seen the impossible. After just a little practice, several of us were cracking a hundred miles before noon....the place is amazing, but the mornings are when the magic happens. The over running is the hidden gem that looks so unassuming at first glance it's no wonder it went unnoticed all those years.

I don't even want the record, I want 500 miles and I know they are there for the taking. I'm obsessing over it. I know I will throw away some good days trying to ace the early start but I know that's what it will take to turn any sub-perfect day into the day. That and it needs to be blowing the earth sideways all day.

This time I have the glider for the job, a super clean harness, a radio that works, a driver and vehicle, and years of Arizona summers to think of when Zapata does it's best impression of 'hot'.

Sneak Peak

2008-06-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

A project started mid-December of last year finally bore fruit. Six months of toil allows me to now construct these little beauties in one lay-up. They pop out of the mold exactly as you see here, already joined, already painted, and mirror finished. No seam to crack, no post-cure joining, just slap em in, pop em out. This is the most difficult project I have ever attempted and I am glad that I actually made it to the end. I test flew the pod today to see how the super-slick airspeed indicator works and I was relieved to find no problems with it. I landed as the sky overdeveloped and it hasn't stopped raining for the last ten hours. A completely unexpected bonus: somehow, enclosing the 6030 has created a speaker box effect and instead of using full volume on glides and 75% in thermals, I was using 50% on glides and 25% in thermals. Girls want it, guys want to be it; more on the pod later.

Ecuador pics

2007-11-13T08:47:00.000-08:00

Just got back from the annual Canoa ridge race/Guayas rally tour. This one was even better than the last two. This year our group skipped all the peripheral distractions and headed direct to the beach from the airport. It was nice to miss the dirty air and oppressive heat of Guayaquil, but I think you can't fully appreciate the coastal flying without the obligatory toiling in town first. We managed somehow. The first day began with Jamie, Mike, Jack and me unpacking our wings in the grassy courtyard of Joab's hotel/boarding house.

It was slow going but after a breakfast of fish soup..mmmmmmm...we all got off the Cruzita launch, an eroded cliff launch about 30 cross to the prevailing wind set back from the main ridge in a strong rotor. Everyone made it off unlike last year and it was off to the races.

This was the pre-race psych out session where we sized everybody up for the upcoming race. The Canoa race is a course of calculation. You fly it correctly or incorrectly. Once you have got the tactics down, only your glider can make the difference. For some reason, once off the hill I could rarely find Raul or Mikey for a comparison.....

This was the first flight on my new glider and it flew straight and was almost where I wanted it just from the hasty tune at the factory. Cruzita was nice both of the days we flew there, a little cross but still great soaring and good decompression from the all night drive to get there. Landings were tricky at high tide and some ended up in deep surf but had a huge rescue crew waiting so there wasn't too much drama.

Here I am coming in right around high tide.

The next day we spent the entire day travelling to Canoa. This is less than 100km if you flew it but we waited around 5 or 6 hours for the ferry that crosses the inlet dividing us from the Canoa cliffs. The day was spent in shops and bars and eventually we were across and on the road again.

We settled in at the Sol y Luna hotel like the regulars we are, and from that night until the day we left a week later, there was not a second night or day that it did not blow onshore. We basically flew until we were tired every day including the race days. Most practice days and some race days ended with an extra twenty miles tacked on for a north cliffs tour. We were able to visit the lighthouse again this year which is the northern extent of the ridge, way, waaay into unretrievable beaches. The ceiling was 400 meters almost every day which made the trip less stressful than last year's. Our videographer once again had camera problems and the north cliffs remain a legend to all those who haven't made the crossing. One day early on we all slightly overdosed on tequila, not quite intending to. The double shot catches you off guard. There was at least one day that I was completely useless, and fortunately that doesn't seem to matter at the beach. There were several days of tandems on the beach with Raul Guerra's tandem falcon on gear and Raul Larenas' 582 trike that climbs like a rocket at sea level. Just enough each morning to loosen up the arms for the race. There were some great views over the cloud deck that I wish I had captured but that will also remain legend.

These guys really know how to hold a comp. The awards ceremony was all out of proportion to the size of the race. The comp is actually the Ecuadorian nationals but is no more than a friendly gathering on the beach when you see it.

We were all full of pilsener by the time we hit town on the last night and the double shots were going down unnoticed until around 3 a.m. when Eduardo Senior backed the Toyota into a "hole" in the road in town which swallowed his truck. He unded up on the roof with an engine comartment full of sand and basically a totalled body. This allowed our crew a few extra hours the next morning to short pack the wings while he ran a bunch of oily gas out of the engine and cleaned things up. There was no longer a windshield so the 8+ hours home was with goggles and a lot of luck. Night fell and he needed us to run escort since he also lost his lights in the incident. That night in the Howard Johnson was the best shower I believe I have ever had. Even payed to have the clothes washed since I was on about round 4 with the shorts and shirts by then.

Our group this year was by far the best ever. It was hard to leave new and old friends and I'm already plotting my next trip. Hope to see everyone soon.

classic but not flying related

2007-10-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

http://tubearoo.com/articles/92137/Family_Guy_Stewie_Kills_Colin_Farrell.html?autoplay=true

Igrejinha video

2007-10-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

Found this vid on you tube. I put this huge, heavy camera out at the sidewire to do a spot for this action tv station out of Brasil back in January. Thought I would never see the footage. There is more but I don't know where to find it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNKB87D5H6s&mode=related&search=hang%20gliding%20hanggliding%20flying%20drachen%20fun

Project

2007-09-25T10:47:00.000-07:00

It's about 2 meters span.

Full length D-tube, flat center section, a bit of dihedral on the tips.

Here is the top view, left out the last center sheet until I install the radio.

After I left Brasilia and sold my wing two weeks ago, I picked up where I left off on a project started in June. My friend Matt had mentioned an airfoil plotting program he was using to make templates for foam core cutting and I took a look at it one day. It not only plots airfoils, but it allows you to basically build the entire wing in 3D with all the cutouts for spars, webs, sheeting, te, le, etc. I just started screwing around with it until I had this sweet looking planform and I just had to build it.

Well the *free* trial of compufoil is sort of bs, as you will find the moment you click print. One sheet of ribs will print on the 100% scale, while the next is purposely skewed to prevent you from getting anything useful, especially on a tapered wing like this where every rib is different. It took quite a bit of time, but after a lot of print screen, save, print screen, resize, ......I finally manipulated the second page to print on the correct scale.

And that was the beginning: two sheets of paper with 15 airfoils for each wing half. I used airfoils that were in the compufoil database, RG15 at the root, transtioning to SD8000 at the tip. RG 15 is fairly common for thermal models, and is not at all pitch stable for a flying wing. SD 8000 is a symmetrical stabilizer airfoil, pitch neutral. I think I stretched them a little to make a thinner profile also. So the wing's stability will come entirely from twist, zero reflex. The wing was built flat but the twist will be added with the covering. My last flying wing was based on twist as well, so I should be a little closer with my twist guess this time.

Some of the simplest materials that are so easy to acquire in the states can be difficult or impossible to find here. First, at the hobby shop, which is actually a really decent store, I was only able to find balsa, no hardwood, and the balsa was only of the worst quality. It took an hour of digging through every sheet they had to pick a dozen pieces that would work. Second, I still don't know where to find epoxy. Although I know it's around, I just haven't worked out where it is sold. Number 11 Xacto blades...nope. My favorite building board, those suspended ceiling tiles used commonly in office buildings....not a chance. And finally, wax paper.....I would pay 50 bucks for a roll of wax paper right now. So the wing was built on a sheet of white styrofoam with a layer of some poly-whatever that was non stick and see through and held in place by seam pins...no T pins available. And, surprisingly it all worked great. Actually the total cost of materials to date is around R$55. $30 usd. Pretty incredible. So the entire wing has been built with only balsa and CA, not a stick of hardwood or a drop of epoxy. You get pretty creative trying to make things strong enough when you're limited. The D tube is key, but the vertical grain, full span shear webs do all the work that hardwood spars would have.

I plan on using 2 HS 56 servos in it, hitec feather receiver, and a tiny battery pack. I will ebay them back in AZ and bring them with me next time around. There are some beautiful places around here to huck this thing so it will be nice when it is finished.

Brasilia comp behind, next up Canoa

2007-09-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

Just finished the comp in Brasilia that went pretty much perfectly except for a couple windy days. I was flying better than I ever have in a comp, although not every day. Some things clicked since the worlds and I don't even know what it is exactly except maybe I am making slightly cleaner decisions about when to top out, when to leave, how fast, left or right or straight, and I am trusting some of my own decisions more when the gaggle decides differently, and it is paying off huge. The conditions were flatlands, strong, light winds, clouds. These are my best conditions so I am still aware that I will struggle on odd days or in the mountains. The turbulence was mildly intimidating on a couple days but nothing crazy. On the worst day an Aeros pilot did an outside loop followed by a tailslide and multiple tumbles resulting in him going home the next day with a crooked glider bag full of broken shit. I was low in the same area but didn't experience that air, however I do remember having to glide with about 1/2 vg for a few miles to feel comfortable near there. Chris Smith got a front row seat and it seems that the parachute took a bit of time to open before finally popping cleanly and lowering him into the hills. Most other days were excellent with high cloudbase and good racing.

I just read a story from a blog where a pilot claims to have been climbing poorly, was advised to raise his sprogs as this would help him, and afterwards began climbing like a rocket! This and other misconceptions about how to tune a glider can have bad outcomes if taken to extremes. In this example, obviously he hasn't compromised his safety since he is raising his sprogs, but raising the sprogs and improving the climb are completely unrelated assuming he doesn't climb with full VG, just as lowering the sprogs beyond a certain level is completely unrelated to bar pressure. I see a lot of gliders with way low sprogs and questionable setups. Perhaps it is time for a compilation of the collective knowledge of comp pilots, designers, and manufacturers in a format understandable and useable by all pilots of comp wings. The wings are so similar now that almost all techniques can be transferred between different gliders. It would be great to see it on a cd with video from inside and outside the sail, all vg positions, tip wand positions, mid section concentric changes, cg changes, ballast, varying amounts of reflex/flaps, etc, all in a controlled condition with the same pilots on the same gliders, maybe gliding against each other after one makes a change and the other does nothing, and so on. I think an intelligently edited version of this would be a huge hit with people buying racing gliders.

Sold the wing here so I will be coming home with just a harness with clothes stuffed in it. That will be a nice change. I'm picking up the new wing, tuning it up, and heading down to the Ecuadorian coast for a week of ridge racing at one of the best coastal sites in the world. I think I could live there, the flying is so good. Sounds like the normal crew will be there plus a few other top pilots to spice up the racing event. I heard the launch was improved recently making the airflow up the dirt ramp much cleaner. Should be a great time.

back to AZ

2007-08-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures I lifted from blogs, emails, etc. I broke a tip on the landing but borrowed another one and won 300 dollars on the next landing. Jonny would have walked with 500 dollars but had already decided to split with Kraig... Texas is over, Brazil is ahead, and right now I am getting some great flights in Arizona between storms and 110 degree days.

pic Mark Knight

This is from the other night over at a local hill in the middle of the city. Flew till I couldn't see the ground anymore and landed by the lights of a city park. While everyone else is losing sites and airspace is closing in, the FAA recently altered the airspace in Phoenix and the change goes into effect Ocotber 25th. We are gaining 1000 feet at one site, 2000 feet at another. Pretty sweet, too bad I'll be cruising the cliffs in Ecuador when it all goes down. Working on a ticket to Brasil right now, cutting it close but hope it works out and I should be flying in Brasilia by this Sunday

Itamonte, MG, Brasil

2007-07-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

Last week I went 800km north from Curitiba to fly in the 4th edition of the Brazilian circuit. Itamonte has the only true mountains I have ever seen in Brasil, at around 2500 meters altitude.

Flying was nice considering we are in the middle of winter here. Even on the blue, inverted days we were able to do between 60 and 80 km, 2.5 hour tasks over cool terrain. Landings were almost all hillside rotor affairs but winds remained light all three days so it was pretty mellow. Takeoff was more like what I'm used to with a prevailing over the back wind only blowing in because of thermal and rotor. Even with little to no wind, the launch ridge was very turbulent by my standards. As soon as we left it became very smooth with light consistent thermals and big gaggles.

Goal was always in town which was cool since it's in the bottom of a valley circled by small hills. If you clear the ridges, you make goal. Some pilots would come in super low and have to turn to follow the backside of a ridge, pop out a small side ravine, then squeak it in over trees and houses. Others pushed a little too far. I had one slow day after I misread my borrowed gps and went the wrong way for about 10km, then got back on track and had a decent finish. The second day I simply fell down after wrongly assuming the day would be as good as the day before even though we didn't have clouds. Lesson learned and day 3 was a great experience and really good practice for my weak point: weak days. I got a late start but had the patience to lead a small gaggle around the course rather than run off and try to win the race on every glide and every decision. Final glide was cool.

A malfunctioning electronic gate at the house where I left my harness last week left the garage open suddenly in the middle of the night on the weekend. Three kids came in and left with bicycles and my harness bag. They were confronted by the owner of the house a couple blocks away where they dropped the harness in the road and ran away with the bikes. Unfortunately they had already found my Flytec 5030 and the third kid was long gone with it. So this comp was flown with a regular gps and simple vario, both borrowed from generous locals. My confusion the first day was compounded when I checked the track log mid flight to find it was 100% full. I assumed that I had just lost the day but continued to fly anyway just in case. Fortunately it was on 'wrap when full', which saved the day. Still hoping to find that 5030, going to try a door to door hunt this weekend. We know their faces.

Some recent shots

2007-07-10T14:33:00.001-07:00

Test flying new leading edge configurations over San Bernardino captured by Dave Freund.

Photo by Dave Freund

Universal "you lead out" signal, usually followed by the other pilot doing one more circle as you glide away. My current wing is gliding *well*. Photo Dave Freund.

Jeff Shapiro in Montana on the wing I flew at the pre worlds last year.

On glide with Konrad on a flight from Andradas to Campinas. We had an amzing final glide after a super cool winter flight of 80 km.

27, 28 May 2007

2007-05-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

Looking out toward Francisco Grande from 12K over table top mountain.

Table top off the tip.

The Vekol valley. I've never gone down this way into the reservation but it is probably the most consistent cloud and dust devil producer within hundreds of miles.

Table top.

Typical.

The local hill was closed by the park service yesteray so I ended up giving a ride in the Grob instead. Lift was 8-900 average to 13,600 and we did an 80 mile triangle at tourist pace (40mph), while in the southeastern corner of the state on the same day, Tony Smolder won the day in the local comp with a 428 miler at 94mph.

Today at our local hill I was lucky to hop off in between over the back cycles and catch a nice climb to get the hell out of there. I don't want to wear out the Francisco Grande welcome mat, so today I cruised out southeast to Pegasus airstrip, an airport community in the making. Pretty much a dustbowl with a couple very small grass yards that I took advantage of for breakdown. Air was typical sweet sonoran desert honey. Brisk west winds made landing a bit tricky but got it down next to a grass yard in between dust devils. So I feel great having racked up over 180 miles over the holiday weekend without ever leaving town.

Next stop, Wills Wing for some testing and glider short packing. Then, catch a flight down to Brasil for the next two editions of their comp circuit, first in Porciúncula, then in July it will be in Itamonte, two places I have never seen and I am really looking forward to it. I was seriously thinking about the east coast comp, but I am in a rush to get some quality practice in for the worlds and I really had to go with the stiff competition down south. I think I can learn a lot from these guys, just wish their weather was a little more reliable this time of year. Hopefully we will fly the majority of the days and I can make some progress.

http://superrace2007.blogspot.com/ for more info on the brasilian calendar.

26 May South Mountain

2007-05-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

Went out today to see if I could have a little fun off the local hill. The combination of visiting pilots and locals today assured me of having a ride if I decided to go long.

Here we have Allen and Ross setting up, my two wind dummies for the day. Don't launch first: work smart, not hard.

Anyway Ross hops off and climbs right out and I launch 5 minutes later and just get worked by snaky, turbulent crap all the while sinking lower and lower. I finally get a tiny little thermal about 600 feet over the dirt and take it up to join Ross. Both of us were cruising around at 4K dodging airspace and waiting for Allen to take off. The plan was to drag Allen along for a short XC but after he plummeted I was on my own. The goal soon became Francisco Grande and the margarita vortex was very strong however I was able to overcome the pull after stumbling into a 1200 average climb on my final glide which took me to 14K and cloudbase. This was incredible since I couldn't previously get over 7K. Suddenly clouds were popping all over the Santa Cruz task area and my eyes got bigger than my driver arrangements. I headed southeast to the Eds turnpoint, got up to base again, and contemplated the situation.....13:1 to get to Marana-an 80 miler, not bad. Or, I could take advantage of the 10:1 glide into Francisco Grande alcohol and pool resort for a 74 miler. Well all I can say is the margarita was tastier than all my previous beverages today but it sure seemed quiet at the pool without all you guys there.

Sweet flight, sweet air, once again higher than you're supposed to get down here but I'll definitely take it.

pics

2007-05-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

Just searching through the memory card, found some nice shots. Can't wait to go back down to Canoa. Hope there is a good turnout so we can work on the LAUNCH this year! Or maybe we'll just run off the low ramp over the hotel. Whatever.

Here's a pic from Canoa that I just found on Jamie's memory card.

Jonny's mantra!!!!!!!!

A windy day at Quest blew several boxes over and this is the second one that impaled itself on a this finpost, cargo-company-forklift style. I think it gusted up to 45 that day.

My landing spot this afternoon. The old greyhound track in Black Canyon City, AZ. Had it to myself except for this old crotchity lady that came out and gave me shit. Rough day today in the mountains, I am so happy that I got those miles in the flats last week. When I landed in the 100 degree heat today, my hands were still ice blocks from the miles of snow I flew through at 16 grand under the one and only cloud line of the entire flight. Shooting for Phoenix, but got pinched out of the mountains by my altitude and zero landing options, and once you find yourself over Black Canyon City, you are there to stay. At least in all my experiences there.

One more shot, a classic Canoa sunset. Gliders everywhere. I think I was drunk before I got out of my harness. Beer delivery was spot on.

the NuGget

2007-05-17T21:04:00.000-07:00

This is the GOLD nugget I found at the end of the 283 mile rainbow. SNAG!!!

So I'm at the bank and this is the first deposit after months out of the country and two expensive comps. I ask the girl at the counter for my balance after I deposit the check. She looks me in the eyes: before or after this deposit, sir? So she's cute and has a sense of humor, sweet! I went for the after version, it sounds cooler. $500.34

Thanks Wills!

Florida records and AZ margaritas

2007-05-16T17:38:00.000-07:00

I gave myself time to think about going long in Florida and now my head is filled with visions of the Arizona meet. Jonny and I were recounting the flight in between at least fifty margaritas last week and the new impressive fact is the odometer vs. number of breakdowns on our gliders. We both came to AZ to have our very next flight after the Florida record. Well Jonny broke down his glider only once - at the end of this meet. I decked it on Saturday so I had to tear down one more time than him. So after 460 km on the big flight and almost exactly 700 km during last week's comp (1160), I have broken down three times and the Aussie twice. Good for wear and tear on the wings!

Well, although I may have seemed like I didn't care, I really was concerned about how my comp was going to work out...to the point of dreaming about it. I went away after the last day feeling like it just couldn't have gone any better. I wish I could go to a meet that gave such a spectrum of conditions with zero concern for safety and such perfect tasks. Besides Saturday, I would say every task was a very stimulating blend of racing, scratching, relaxing, and views. Not to stroke my inner task setter here - it was without a doubt all luck but wasn't it great?

Back to the Florida flight, I gave Davis my patchwork tracklogs from the dying 5030 and it seems that it was just a data mess. Maybe I will hear more later about that. It was out of character for me to commit to such an undertaking with not one second of forethought or any preparation. As Jonny mentioned, he simply strolled up the Quest clubhouse stairs to see if he could pressure me into going along with him on his record attempt. I must have sounded way less than enthusiastic because he simply walked out, stepped on a dolley, and flew away without me. After replaying my answer to him back in my head, it occurred to me that I sounded like some old, worn out has been. And he was hung over from the night before while I was fresh as ever. So in the end it was not his pressure but mine that got me. I ran out, turned on the vario which was reading less than half battery, and turned on my borrowed radio - wait - it was already turned on. Since the day before. Sweet, that will just take a little more time to borrow another radio while Jonny races off without me. I basically layed on the dolley and was off circling in lift about 7 or 8 minutes after sitting around having cereal in my underwear.

There was nothing remarkable during the flight except how the miles seemed to tick off. In the end it felt like we had done a 100 miler on a normal day. But I must stop now and take the little credit that is mine for that day - there was a low spot, well there were two hairy low spots, but during the second and final one, in a really nasty climb, Jonny begins speaking of landing. Not just landing down the road. Or in a while. But landing. Right now, this field, let's go. Honestly, after sampling the low level air I was tempted to agree, but I thought maybe it would be a little more turbulent than I had counted on when I jumped in my harness that morning so I said 'hey, let's just hit base and think about it'. After saying that a few times, he seemed to warm up to it and we were off to the races again.

Now it was amazing how close we had stayed to that point, but the next 200 miles were spooky. No matter what we did, we ended up tip to tip minutes later. I would take a shitty line, lose a solid grand on Jonny, and we would then take two separate climbs at the next cloud which would put us at base - same time, same place. Ah, but that won't keep happening. That's what I thought every time until we were on final.

And it's the final that made it all worthwhile. Most flights end in a whimper of weak air and slow climbs as you race the sun to the ground. Our epic only turned epic during the last 60 kms. The sea breeze, in fact the sea itself was in sight all day just off our right wings. It was only at around 240 miles that it pinched us up against the huge fire we had been surfing all day. Just as we hit base at the beginning of the most incredible cloud street, the sea breeze pushed under us, spawning little scud clouds way under us and to our side. Now the lift became very good and we basically had to run full speed at base to stay in front of the forming scud. As I looked back on our last climb, I could see that the sea breeze had a bit of an angle so it was zippering behind us and to top it off it was zipping up at about our top glide speed. This was all beyond me at the time, I was just in the moment, dipping one wing into tiny rotor looking clouds on my right one second, then into the crisp smoke boundary on our left the next. We glided. And glided. I'm pretty sure we just kept on gliding.

At some point, it wasn't clear exactly when due to the smoke, the clouds ended and we found ourselves high in the blue, but bathed in thick white smoke. Visibility was not happening and thermals were over. I thought. Actually my vario had quit around 150 miles and had only been able to turn on for about 30 seconds at the beginning of each climb to help me get friendly with the core before it decided it would take another nap. Now, 260 out, I am 100 feet over Jonny out of desparation since the vario couldn't be troubled even to turn on for me. The air was so smooth that I nearly missed it when Jonny started a turn under me. I guess we're climbing. He claims it was 150 fpm but I will never know. He grew weary of it and continued our now crosswind glide to the close highway. That was the one, by the way. The 300 mile thermal. We had a 25 mph tailwind by now and that was the 265 mark. But it would have meant a farm landing rather than a highway landing and I wasn't going to say a word, considering my vario was dead and couldn't give a location, and anyway my phone was too so who cares if I had my location!

Well Jonny comes over the headset saying we need to do a couple opposing wingovers over Chris's car when we finish. We were still so close I could hardly lift my finger to press the ptt or I would slide into him. How cool is that after 280 miles? So our baked brains both agreed and we whipped into two huge arcs away from each other right over the car and I'm pretty sure we both realized at around the same time that when our 270 degree heading changes came together we would smack helmets so Jonny, let's go ahead and do another opposing set I thought. He had the same thought and I'm sure we were both shaking our heads the last few seconds in the air. The field was that uphill into the wind, dreamy sort of place that only the lucky pilots get to land in after a long day. We touched down about 5 seconds and a wingspan apart and savored the Georgia air. Actually it smelled of South Carolina a bit.

Chris Smith was there when we landed, not to mention his in flight entertainment. When he was bored we got to sample a little rap over the air, a little pop here and there. As we crossed more or less into the bible belt, we sampled a minute or so of evangelist opinion as he held the mic to the radio, followed by some more relaxing R&B further down the line. There is really no way to convey the impact of the kind of flight we had. I don't mean the distance, I am referring to the sort of endless team flying that branded the day. It was absolutely incredible and I am well aware that it will probably never happen again quite like that.

283

2007-04-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

Guess I caught a decent day at Quest on Thursday! I still have to think about it a bit before I can write details, but I will say the one thing that was the highlight: I have never been so close to another pilot for so long on any flight or during any competition ever. That was about the coolest part of it. Starting a final glide tip to tip after 250 miles of flying is a wierd feeling. Easiest 7 1/2 hours ever. Besides the turbulence in the first part. And the near landings. Mmmm those would have been interesting. Lots of trees up there. And clouds. It was cool as shit flying with Jonny, I will not soon forget this one.

Brasil

2007-03-04T22:26:00.000-08:00

Still floatin' on that christmas dough, thousands poorer, but rich with the experiences of the past two months.

Hit Brasil christmas eve, five gliders, a harness, and a bag of clothes in the belly of a 767. My girl and I headed to the southern highlands of RG state for the 1st stage of the 2007 comp season down there. The sky was painfully epic while I was waiting for Nene to bring my glider and then, first day of the comp of course, the weather turned. I ended up with a fourth place finish on the single taskable day of the three day meet. I was very happy with the glider, a little less happy with my decisions for the day, but just as happy to blame it all on being a little rusty with my new vario and not having many hours lately.

That day was just beautiful for a task and, while a little under-called, it outlined what a hang glider race should be. Beautiful totally mellow skies, limited pimping, varied conditions throughout the race, and LOTS of people in goal. (Almost forgot, no arguing and rules BS on launch, just a bunch of guys eager to fly) A sports station was covering everything and got footage of the race and I did some in air footage on one of the days off. Tons of ped's out watching, it was a nice scene and I really enjoyed that place. I wanted to stay for another week and try for some open distance to the west but it just didn't work out.

Couple of days later found us in Floripa, a few hours drive north from the comp site. I have never hiked my glider so many miles in my life! And I hike a lot! I humped that thing up every bump above every beach on that island and, for the most part, I was rewarded with incredible flights, sunset views over the beach, mad acro, etc.....next time I'm bringing the PG!

The pilots were awesome, everybody wanting to help, nobody complaining that I was blocking launches even in the middle of booming tandem business. They were super cool....which is what made the local residents living near the sites seem so much the opposite.

One particular stormy afternoon, aching for a flight, I decided to hike up a local pg site and try to poach a flight before a squall hit. I was just having trouble finding the trail. Asking around I finally located the trailhead behind a rundown old hotel at the base. Government preserve signs all along the trail were encouraging me to have a great time in the wilderness and pick up after myself. I got up there with 110 lbs of equipment and a mild heart attack 30 minutes later. Still catching my breath I heard someone running up the trail. This guy, way too aggressive for his body weight, introduced himself as an employee of the hotel which owned this entire mountain range. He must have been paid quite well because he felt obligated to chase me up the hill to demand $10 reais, about 4 bucks. The vibe was not a friendly one but I was still on a cardio high and I felt like arguing against what was obviously extortion....anyway I ended up winning, sort of. But then after wasting my breath on that criminal the storm hit! Another long hike and a bunch of glares from the hotel 'staff' and I was out of there. Turns out these guys are basically squatting on government land and the mayor is trying to tear their hotel down but it's sort of mob rule in certain places so....they try to make up the difference on easy foreign targets, of course never attempting this sort of thing on a local pilot. I'm glad I could at least waste an hour of his day and get tuned up a bit on portuguese. This same thing happened a couple more times at different launches and that's when I talked to some local pilots about it and got the scoop. This all sort of tweaked my view of that place but the attitude of the pilots saved me from a bad experience. It obviously wasn't about the money, what's 4 bucks when you pay a grand for a ticket? I just had about enough uneducated materialist dribble from the locals for a lifetime.

Whatever, the flying was EPIC!! I got off the lake site, a 400 foot launch looking out toward the ocean but with a 5km lake between launch and the beach. After scratching a while, I did a LOW glide out accross the lake, toes pointed, lips tight, shoulders in, and the T2 stretched it out like a champ...I love landing on the beach. That place was brown with skin there were so many people. I shoehorned the old girl in there and had a little body surf session before I packed up and walked out to the road. Nice day!

The rest of the time down there was spent catching up with my girlfriend and having some great new year's parties. While camping out on another small island for the celebrations, I discovered that my awesome 10 year old tent (it's bulletproof babe, don't worry about nothin' this thing laughs at storms)...had seen a bit too much sun in its day. During one harsh midnight downpour I decided to empty the fly of accumulated water and, a flick of the wrist later, my arm was sticking out the other side of the fly and water was pouring in the tent. Manuela was pissed, I admitted my wrongs, and a week later I was the owner of a new bulletproof, storm shrugging tent. But not until we had spent the rest of that trip under a huge plastic tarp flapping in the nightly downpours and threatening to soak us at any moment. I lost some points on that one.

Now I spend my days in Phoenix making up for lost time in the desert, just trying to catch the good flying days, make a little money painting, and relax. Organizing the comp we're having in May down in Casa Grande is at least a part time effort also with insurance, waiver, tug, volunteer, runway clearing, and other BS. It is looking good though and I am waaaay stoked to finally get my boys down here for some real racing. I just had a nice little ridge soar tonight down close to the comp site and it reminded me how excellent that area is for XC....I was watching the sunset over nearly endless flatlands studded with sudden rock cliffs sending off their last late thermals of the day. I'm already dreaming up how we can go LONG, spending hours with the map and google earth.

All pics courtesy of my awesome girlfriend, otherwise I would have no evidence of these tall tales.

FRUSTRATION........

2006-11-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

.....with your instrument 'package' can lead to abnormal behavior. Just ask Jonny, that little ass pirate.

Is that glider hot or what? I obsessed over that thing in Texas....then Jeff Shapiro took her home, bastard. But I got a new one.........

<---- lack-of-5030-induced violation

Who else loves the 5030?

2006-11-13T16:34:00.000-08:00

I was so lazy and so stubborn to not upgrade years ago. I have suffered the failures and disappointments of my gps for years of comps and now after this last race I feel even worse for all the lost points and lost standings that I can only blame on my own inaction.

This thing is so brainless and so perfected. A friggin turnpoint slayer! I think it saved me about 6 seconds plus per turnpoint and start cylinder. That's 24 seconds per day at Canoa. Seventy two seconds in the race total. I wouldn't just lose first place for an equivalent performance...I would be in third! I remember taking the turns last year gps 12 style (one one thousand, two one thousand, three....). More than a couple times I would arrive ahead of Kevy and whip my 180 several seconds after him and get to see his keel for the rest of the race. What was I thinking???

The last day's race start was a true illustration of this instrument's time saving..you have to time the glide from the main ridge to the start cylinder-it's about 3m40sec more or less. The last day I was determined to ace it and save a few seconds more. During the last ten seconds I realized I was going to be too early so I began to slow down....but time began to slow with me it seemed. As the countdown clock fell to 00:00:00, I was full vg, banked up, and stalled to avoid tagging the cylinder early. Luck was with me and I was late by a hair and heard the tone right before my glider half-spun and I dropped right onto courseline. HAHAHAHAH

pics

2006-11-13T15:25:00.000-08:00

Jamie Shelden was the photographer in all the shots. The last one is cool, it really captures the feeling...which was-there was a tailwind and I was intensely focused waiting for my pause in air movement to perform a three step no winder from a sort-of cliff. Sort-of because there was only about 50 or 60 feet of drop before you encountered level ground again. There was not even enough room to turn the glider around on launch-it had to be set up facing the edge. This was our Andes launch from last year. With about one mph in my face it was a non event in the thick jungle air. Really it is a great launch with a clean edge, steep smooth running surface, and little turbulence. One day we will encounter a sky without so many clouds and we'll be able to launch the upper site.

The Andes day was our next to last day and it was late enough to be a sledder but the last couple minutes were coolasshit. It was a flat smooth glide and as I got lower I began to hear all the noises of life down below. I soon realized that all the sounds were being directed at me and included horns honking and kids screaming. The whole village seemed to have spotted me but the funny thing was that they were all trying to run and catch me even though i was still at 2 or 300 meters. It was really incredible toward the end of the glide how the entire populace had gathered this strange momentum. The town had no width, only length, and was situated along a thin highway. From the lines of structures located parallel to the highway, swarms of people were running in an arcing path...first toward the highway then gently curving as they all realized that they wouldn't catch a moving object by aiming toward its current location. And it was so odd that they all traced this curving path..all of them for a couple km's. It was quite a sight from just above and I could hear all of them as if I was running in the crowd myself.

Well I began to get scared of the mob mentality likely to greet me down there so I stretched glide a bit and turned at the last minute down a narrow little dirt road through the middle of a makeshift soccer field. After testing the ground with my foot I decided on an impromptu slider...I haven't done one of those for years since being at the Point of the Mountain. It was a cool way to arrive in some foreign village-airliner style. I guess I must have crossed some ditch or fence or something on my glide because I never got mobbed by that crowd. It looked like about 70 or 80 people in the end...all of them super super nice and one guy that helped my break down and carry my wing through some yards to the highway. We set the glider down next to the road in the dark literally at the moment that Raul and company went flying by in the truck. I was without radio or phone so I was glad for the coincidental timing!

The drive was another defiance of death but again we were victorious. A sweet day in the end.

THE north cliffs

2006-11-12T22:26:00.000-08:00

THE is right. We see them every day flying Canoa, just a bit out of reach it seems. Canoa's most frequently flown stretch of cliffs totals about 15km and ranges from vertical sand cliffs to sloped leafless-tree-covered ridges, always with a couple hundred meters of beach in front. The north end of the ridge disappears into the sand at the edge of town and reappears about 10km later-only this time it emerges as a 200 meter vertical wall thrust straight out of the breaking waves. No beach. Following it's crest you will see it run out to a point another 5k's further on and then turn out of sight into who knows what. I never went there last year...I always figured that it just ended there...like when the earth used to be flat.

The first two days of the race on the main ridge were just a little too close for comfort with Mikey always 5-10 seconds behind and Raul as his shadow. Now, we had this sort of informal agreement to not use ballast...but take Mike's 200+ pounds and consider that I discovered Raul was using lead and I just figured I had to make things fair.

The only chance to run the north cliffs would be day 3, and we only do one flight a day and usually it's a late finish to the race. The first two days were so close that I had to finish at ten feet off the beach to keep Mike at bay. There was just no way to get back up from that height so I did some thinking the second night and this is how I am going to justify my role in the ballast war.

Anyway, last lap-last day, and I finally have about 30 seconds on Mike. It looks like I will finally be able to finish on the ridge next to the finsh line and get back up for a north ridge run. Our finishing order is set in stone so Mike decides on the same plan. We did a few passes, headed back south to get on the big ridge, and tanked up for the long glide over town to the north. Scott was ahead with a keel mounted video camera and the sun was getting low and giving some awesome light on the cliffs. We connected and, with the camera in mind, I ran the ridge under Scott fast and low with no beach in sight. Pretty cool stuff, it had me tense for sure. Then I pulled up, expecting to see the edge of the flat earth just ending right there...and I have to wipe the salt out of my eyes. There is the most excellent cliff running as far as I can see-totally vertical, an even 200 meters high all the way, bathed in evening sun, and a pristine beach running the entire length. The wind was on so what the hell...

We threw a little expression session at ridge height for the camera (which was out of batteries as it turns out) before gaining some exploring height. I decide tentatively to head north and see where the wind would take me. Cliffs turned to smaller cliffs, then to shallow hills with their soarable sections way back from the beaches. The going was slow with little lift but the ground speed seemed alright. Mikey had mentioned something about going around this corner a couple years back and turning around only to find he was beating a huge headwind to get back...I'm a rock star...I don't care!! What I didn't realize was that the coastline was angling imperceptlibly (to me) to the north east. Turning around at about 20 km north of the nearest retrievable landing area, my glider parked in the now super cross wind. Strangely enough the vario stopped beeping too. Add the fact that I had been cruising fast and low the whole time, and the beach below took on a much harsher appearance as I thought of the day(s) it would take to send a boat to get me, if sea conditions would even allow it.

An eternity passed while I crossed two gaps, all the time sinking and battling a head wind. Things were looking pretty grim. I stretched out, pointed my toes, and somehow got on the windward side of the next section of cliffs on a more favorably facing section and got into the comfort zone again. Mike laughed the whole time from his vantage about 200 meters above and a kilometer behind, fully aware of the hole I had been digging. It's amazing what a different night I would have had with 30 meters less altitude or if I had turned around 15 seconds later. As luck would have it, my night was spent drinking with friends and making new ones in Canoa on a hoppin Saturday night.

It was mildly entertaining to drift through town, laughing with friends and throwing back shots while thinking of my alternate self, the one with 30 meters less altitude on that north ridge run, who was now screaming at Wilson the volleyball on some forsaken beach.

MORE PICTURES

2006-11-09T06:39:00.000-08:00

A few more here, and more to come of our great week in Canoa. On the last morning we focused our time on the trike and tandem setup. Some people got their first taste of air, it was pretty sweet not to mention fun as hell for me. After the race in the afternoon, Mike took the shot of the north cliffs. Later we got these shots of Mike and Jamie post race, pre beer, the brightest moment of the day. We all gathered at the local restaurant in Canoa for the parting shot.

I think we will make a run at the local Guayaquil 200meter hill for a last flight before packing it all down and heading back to the states. Plans are already laid for a return in a few months! Flying meets culture meets beautiful scenery meets incredible people. It's been hard to find a better spot.

Shit! Jamie I edited out your beautiful glider pic....you'll have to send it again if you want your fame to continue in the wingman blog.

Pics in no particular order

2006-11-09T06:12:00.000-08:00

Me, Jamie, Raul, Mike, and you can't actually see Alex Morillo....but he's down in those trees somewhere. He was pissed hahahaa.

CANOA OPEN FINALS

2006-11-06T18:23:00.000-08:00

I really wasn't lazy to update this thing, it's just that it was a waste of otherwise quality beach time to wait on the crazy slow connection of the computers there. Anyway, the flying was even better than last year...the wind was on, the sun was out, we were ballasted up, and Canoa gave another great week. We broke the course record by something like 3 minutes or so on the last day with a solid 14 mph wind, pretty brisk for this place I guess. It's a 48 K course and I think I did it in 38:22. Thanks Kevy for staying home with the little bundle of joy, I finally won! The results run like this..

Dustin Martin 1st
Mike Glennon 2nd
Raul Guerra 3rd
Rafael Arcos 4th
Jamie Shelden 5th and first woman (only woman and she got a huge trophy for it hahahaha)

The last day we did a bunch of tandooms on the beach. It was cool as shit, I love seeing the look on their faces. The wind was on enough that I could let the passengers soar the launch ridge back and forth on their own. Then land on the wheels and stay in the harness while the guys clip another one in.....

Pics will follow, I have to track Jamie down and get her memory card. We have some cool shots.

We short packed Mike and Jack's gliders tonight after driving back to town from Raul's sweet little beach house. We have to get them to the airport by 4:30 tomorrow morning, but first....party tonight

Next----the Andes, we're gonna be there day after tomorrow I guess, a new spot that I didn't see last year.

cross-ecuador rally style

2006-11-02T07:19:00.000-08:00

We have arrived!! Canoa is showing it's good side again as we arrived in the evening to snag a quick sunset run. Raul, Mike, Jamie, myself, and two Peruvians who were flying when we showed up all had a dream run up and down the almost endless cliffs. I finally got my chance at the big north cliffs a few miles north of the town. Three of us headed out at about 1500 feet and easily reached the cliffs. We did a several mile run over beachless vertical cliffs with waves crashing against vertical cliffs just below. The wind was ON. On the way back south I guess Mike and Raul decided to do a practice course run so I followed them into the moonlight to the first turnpoint...even though we were cookin it was getting pretty dark when we arrived and on the way back we all resigned ourselves to a pitch black landing. We had the hotel floodlight on the landing spot and we couldn't see eachother in the air so we just waited until we saw a glider appear on the ground in the spotlight and then we knew it was our turn...ecuador air traffic control. Today is race day. No holding back, except ballast...right Raul? Tomorrow I might tell the story of our ferry boat bribery that cost us 80 bucks and got us ....nothing. hahahhhaha Raul. pics??? Ok I tried, but it took forever, maybe tomorrow this computer will be faster.

Thoughts on Ecuador

2006-10-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a year since my epic flight at the Harq's and I finally made another go at it last weekend. That place is so sweet. And it reminded me that this blog is still around so I guess I will start updating since I do have a lifestyle that allows some opportunities for writing about a lot of cool shit....thanks in no small part go out to my sponsors Wills Wing and Flytec USA who have turned me from your typical aiport kid to a globe-surfin hang gliding comp bum. This year I'm planning on focusing more and hope to post some results to make me worthy of such support.

Next stop: ECUADOR. It's that time of year again and this year promises to be sweeeet since I convinced a couple friends to come fly with me down there. Jamie Shelden and Scott-LookAtMyNewT2-Beery. Two opposites for sure. Helping Scott pack his wing will be an episode all on its own.

We fly out of L.A. Sunday morning and meet Jamie in Miami followed by a quick hop down to Guayaquil. Raul, our Ecuadorian brutha, has once again arranged digs for us all not to mention airport pickup in style.

Last year consisted of about three days of aerotow in Guayaquil at Raul's kinda-private paved strip next to a consistently soarable ridge. This year we will be using his recently cleared launch and lz on that ridge and hopefully we will set the Guayaquil xc record that eluded us last year. This will be followed by a week of the best coastal ridge soaring available in the world. Last year we hit Canoa, Cruzita, and Montanhita. They are all such cool places that you'll just have to wait for pictures to understand. And the best air......did somebody just say LOOP? God I am cravin a throwdown.

So keep an eye open. I will start updating this thing with pics and cool stories of Jamie getting wasted starting Monday.

Imaginary Borders

2005-12-07T18:26:00.000-08:00

The harder I tried to understand the difference between the far side of this sign and the side you see now, the more they merged. Behind me, mountains and cactus and bighorns and large cats and the sun setting. Ahead, mountains and cactus and bighorns and large cats and the moon rising. And launch as it turned out. Hey, I don't decide. The mountain was shaped before the sign.

Hundred mile views in every direction were served up while I focused my energy on assembling my flying machine. The transition from big slow land animal to human-become-bird was as smooth as a thought. A few light steps down the slope seemed like unnecessary formality as the wings became mine.

Well I'm not a bird even with these wings and the air reminded me on this flight. So I kicked and screamed on my way down, refusing my destiny until my altitude wouldn't allow me to ignore or wish away the thousands of saguaros below and ahead and to my side and...

You see, it's already three hours driving to get to launch and it just wasn't on my schedule to check out the other side for landing areas. But we make our decisions whether we think so or not. I had made mine and this moment had been speeding flat out toward me all day. It was as impressive as I had imagined.

The distant sliver ahead was the highway connecting two small forgotten western towns for the people who wished to make the journey. I would be landing approximately in the middle of nowhere at just about..sunset. This was a perfect recipe for solitude while I waited for the rescue car. The saguaros turned to palo verdes, which seemed to morph into greasewoods unnoticed. The stress and excitement both faded as I found my clearing in the desert. I dipped in, tasted the cool air of ground effect, and stepped back down to the ground.

The glider jumped into the bag. I guess I've done that enough times. I watched the pink sky turn blue then black as the crescent moon grew brighter. I could hear my heart in my throat. The shadows on the mountain spread until the entire ridge was just a black shadow against a black sky. I thought about a lot of things and of course about how long until my rescue arrived.

It's these moments that have molded me from my bed head to my flip flops. It doesn't have to be flying but, through flying, I have met the most important people in my life and discovered the best places the world can offer me. This is awesome.