Hang Gliding & Paragliding Vol45/Iss10 Oct2015

OCTOBER 2015 Volume 45 Issue 10 $6.95

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HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

ABOVE After a heli drop on Face Mountain – Flying over Smuggler’s Cove, back to Skagway Alaska | photo by pilot Clark Tayler.

WARNING

Hang gliding and paragliding are INHERENTLY DANGEROUS activities. USHPA recommends pilots complete a pilot training program under the direct supervision of a USHPA-certified instructor, using safe equipment suitable for your level of experience. Many of the articles and photographs in the magazine depict advanced maneuvers being performed by experienced, or expert, pilots. These maneuvers should not be attempted without the prerequisite instruction and experience.

HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING magazine is published for footlaunched air-sports enthusiasts to create further interest in the sports of hang gliding and paragliding and to provide an educational forum to advance hang gliding and paragliding methods and safety.

SUBMISSIONS HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING magazine welcomes editorial submissions from our members and readers. All submissions of articles, artwork, photographs and or ideas for articles, artwork and photographs are made pursuant to and are subject to the USHPA Contributor's Agreement, a copy of which can be obtained from the USHPA by emailing the editor at editor@ushpa.aero or online at www. ushpa.aero. HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING magazine reserves the right to edit all contributions. We are always looking for well written articles and quality artwork. Feature stories generally run anywhere from 1500 to 3000 words. News releases are welcomed, but please do not send brochures, dealer newsletters or other extremely lengthy items.

Please edit news releases with our readership in mind, and keep them reasonably short without excessive sales hype. Calendar of events items may be sent via email to editor@ushpa.aero, as may letters to the editor.

Please be concise and try to address a single topic in your letter. Your contributions are greatly appreciated. If you have an idea for an article you may discuss your topic with the editor either by email or telephone.

Contact: Editor, Hang Gliding & Paragliding magazine, editor@ushpa. aero, (516) 816-1333.

ADVERTISING ALL ADVERTISING AND ADVERTISING INQUIRIES MUST BE SENT TO USHPA HEADQUARTERS IN COLORADO SPRINGS. All advertising is subject to the USHPA Advertising Policy, a copy of which may be obtained from the USHPA by emailing advertising@ushpa.aero.

HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING (ISSN 1543-5989) (USPS 17970) is published monthly by the United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding

Association, Inc., 1685 W. Uintah St., Colorado Springs, CO 80904, (719) 632-8300, FAX (719) 632-6417. PERIODICAL postage is paid at Colorado Springs, CO and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER Send change of address to: Hang Gliding & Paragliding magazine, P.O. BOX 1330, Colorado Springs, CO 80901-1330. Canadian Post Publications Mail Agreement #40065056.

Canadian Return Address: DP Global Mail, 4960-2 Walker Road, Windsor, ON N9A 6J3

COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 2015 United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, Inc., All Rights Reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission of the United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, Inc.

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Picture: Thomas Senf | Location: Jungfrauregion, Switzerland

The new I OTA Series Easy Performance The new IOTA opens the door to the world of long cross-country flights. As a High-Level EN B glider it offers the ideal balance between performance and ease of piloting. Thanks to computational structural weight optimization and the use of high quality materials, it delivers big value for its small weight, starting at 4.45kg.

More information and films on www.advance.ch /iota

FROM

AND YOUR LOCAL DEALER

8 01 . 2 55 . 9 5 9 5 INFO @ SUPERFLYINC.COM W W W.SUPERFLY INC.COM

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HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

Mark Hasse on glide into Juneau Alaska after a thermal session over Mt Roberts | photo by pilot Clark Tayler.

LEFT

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xciting. Amazing. Peaceful. Thrilling. Technical. Demanding. Fun. Rewarding.

Safe? There are many ways to talk about free flight. That final word, safe, is what we need to be working on so that it appears higher up on the list as we describe what we do, and is not followed by a question mark. I would like to challenge each and every one of our members to work on that.

Flying is a privilege. Often we are pressed for time in our busy lives and there is a fine line between staying current and flying in less-than-ideal conditions. The truth of the matter is, flying is weather dependent, as well as personal-health dependent. Let's compare flying to mountain biking as an example of another intense and rewarding activity. One can go mountain biking if there is a chance of rain, or if it is extremely windy, or, if you are hung-over, a good pedal will exorcise the demons. Motorless aviation, on the other hand, should not be practiced if any of the aforementioned environmental scenarios are present.

We've had a rough year as an association and while I don’t want to rain on anyone’s fun parade, we need to stop and change how we as a culture are dealing with safety.

We need to talk about it on rides to launch, at BBQ’s, in club meetings, on forums, in texts to friends, on launch, in the landing zone, around the campfire, or whenever there is a chance to add to our collective culture. We need to demystify and de-stigmatize safety. We must make safety cool and part of every day under wing. Aviation is unlike recreational past times in that complacency must be attacked at every possible juncture.

Unlike biking or skiing one can not pull over and have a rest to regroup.

The October issue begins with a gear run-down covering a few of the latest and greatest from the Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City, Utah. If you are an instructor and/or tandem pilot you are eligible for a USHPA Promotive discount program on many items from outdoor brands. For more information on that program sign into the member section of the website and click on the Promotive link.

Following the gear roundup is a re-print of a great safety oriented piece by Tim Pfeiffer that includes numerous tools for risk assessment that are definitely worth the read. Harrison Fast and Gary Vaillancourt sent in a piece from a Colorado mini-wing clinic that brought together a number of like-minded free-flight pilots to share knowledge and good times!

C.J. Sturtevant reports on three pilots rocking the Washington landscape with epic flights, and Jeff Shapiro shows you how to feel like you're never working a day in your life by becoming a tandem instructor for the USHPA. Hayden Dudley wrote a thoughtful article on coming to terms with understanding how ego can wreak havoc on one's body when not kept in check, and Annette O’Neil, our newest staff contributor, catches up with the team at KarmaFlights, an incredible group of pilots who have been working tirelessly to help rebuild Nepal after the terrible earthquake that shattered communities in that country earlier this year.

I postulate, “have a safe flight” should be the motto that is gleefully exclaimed to every friend who is about to launch as if it were a military salute, a badge of honor and inclusion. Pre-flights should be high-fived and respected as much as looping a glider.

Serious now…something has to change. Be the change.

Martin Palmaz, Executive Director executivedirector@ushpa.aero Beth Van Eaton, Operations Manager office@ushpa.aero Ashley Miller, Membership Coordinator membership@ushpa.aero Julie Spiegler, Program Manager programs@ushpa.aero

USHPA OFFICERS & EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Rich Hass, President president@ushpa.aero Paul Murdoch, Vice President vicepresident@ushpa.aero Steve Rodrigues, Secretary secretary@ushpa.aero Mark Forbes, Treasurer treasurer@ushpa.aero

REGION 1: Rich Hass, Mark Forbes. REGION 2: Jugdeep Aggarwal, Josh Cohn, Jon James. REGION 3: Corey Caffrey, Pete Michelmore, Alan Crouse.

REGION 4: Bill Belcourt, Ken Grubbs. REGION 5: Josh Pierce. REGION 6: Tiki Mashy. REGION 7: Paul Olson. REGION 8: Michael Holmes. REGION 9: Felipe Amunategui, Larry Dennis. REGION 10: Bruce Weaver, Steve Kroop, Matt Taber. REGION 11: Tiki Mashy. REGION 12: Paul Voight. DIRECTORS AT LARGE: Ryan Voight, Paul Murdoch, Steve Rodrigues, Dennis Pagen, Jamie Shelden. EX-OFFICIO DIRECTOR: Art Greenfield (NAA).

The United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association Inc. (USHPA) is an air sports organization affiliated with the National Aeronautic Association (NAA), which is the official representative of the Fédération Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), of the world governing body for sport aviation. The NAA, which represents the United States at FAI meetings, has delegated to the USHPA supervision of FAI-related hang gliding and paragliding activities such as record attempts and competition sanctions.

For change of address or other USHPA business call (719) 632-8300, or email info@ushpa.aero.

The United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, a division of the National Aeronautic Association, is a representative of the Fédération Aeronautique Internationale in the United States.

HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

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DELORME INREACH SE $300 | Available now Data plans from $15-100/month Type, text and post to social media from the sky with the InReach SE. This device works on the Iridium satellite network, meaning that as long as you have a line of sight to the sky (which you do if you’re flying) you will always have reception. A satellite communicator is a must-have device for adventuring while off the grid and Delorme’s plans are pretty reasonable if you consider that cell communication will be spotty at best in many places around the world.

AIRDESIGN VOLT2

When linked with www.xcfind.com, the Delorme InReach

AirDesign’s VOLT2 is the ideal glider

SE becomes a powerful retrieve tool.

for XC-oriented pilots who are looking for a high-performing wing. The VOLT2 features race lines, highlighting a completely new line geometry

Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2015

that significantly reduces line drag.

Every summer, gearheads from across the world convene in Salt Lake City for

AirDesign claim that the stability has

the Outdoor Retailer Summer Market show. For four days, brands in the outdoor

been increased by the implementation

space display their latest models so buyers, media and everyone else in the

of a prominent shark-nose. Ballooning

industry can preview a glimpse of next year’s stuff.

is reduced by a double 3-D cut on the top and bottom sail. Vortex holes at the tips and outside-cell trailing edges work to diffuse vortex drag by releasing redundant pressure. AirDesign also state that the design objective with the VOLT2 was not to position the glider within the outer limits of the EN-C category from a handling and comfort perspective, but to offer outstanding outer-limit performance. www.ad-gliders.com

JUlbo WAVE

$119 | Available Q3 2015

The Wave glasses from Julbo were

This windproof softshell from Mammut

designed to shed water during activi-

is an abrasion-resistant piece meant

ties like kite surfing or sailing, making

for activities that take place while high

them the perfect solution for days

in the air. The outer layer has a DWR

when condensation is unavoidable.

to shed moisture, while underneath

The arms include strap loops allowing

the pits is a flexible mesh panel to

you to weave in goggle straps, and the

keep your arms unhindered. At $119,

outer jacket snaps on and off, allow-

this technical piece works great as a

ing you to quickly go from sunglasses

mid-layer or outer layer that keeps the

to goggles. These goggles are a great

wind chills outside.

lightweight alternative for visors in case you want to test out a visor-less helmet.

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HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

MAMMUT WALL SO HOODY

$120 | Available now

OUTDOOR TECHNOLOGY TURTLE SHELL 2 W/ CLAW MOUNT

$100 + $20 | Available now

Your next cross-country flight should definitely include some tunes. The Turtle Shell 2.0 with Turtle Claw Mount allows you to bring high-quality bidirectional sound into the air so you can make phone calls or listen to music without the risk of drowning out vario beeps and other important signals. This speaker produces 96 decibels of clear sound and, with an IP65 dust-proof and water-resistant seal, will keep the tunes going even if you drop it in water.

YOLK SOLAR PAPER

JOBY ACTION CLAMP

$120 (five watts) | Available now

$29.95 | Available now

MOUNTAIN KHAKIS TOMAHAWK $70 | Available now

Solar Paper just completed their first

There’s no better way to capture your

The Tomahawk Madras Shirt from

Kickstarter campaign, raising a mil-

flight than with a POV action camera.

Mountain Khakis is a lightweight plaid

lion dollars from their pledged goal

Yet helmet cams or chesty mounts can

that comes in three different colors. It

of $50,000. After playing around

only capture so many angles. Meet the

features a tall hem in case you need

with this charging device, we can see

Action Clamp from JOBY, a device that

to tuck it in. The chest pocket has a

why they are so popular. Each sheet

clamps your favorite POV cam to any

reverse welt that expands so it stores

is paper-thin (hence the name) but

solid bar on your hang gliding rig. The

more stuff without having to widen the

structurally sound. The sheets connect

clamp comes with five flexible ball and

opening, great for when you’re parallel

to each other through magnets at five-

sockets so you can control the angles

to the ground. This shirt works well un-

watt increments, so you can charge

on your camera.

derneath a windproof shell and would

your vario device, phones, GPS and

house the SOG SwitchPlier 2.0 nicely.

other equipment. When done, slip off the sheets and stack them up.

HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

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SOG SWITCHPLIER 2.0 $64 | Available now Fumbling with a multitool while moving is not only frustrating, it can be dangerous. The SOG SwitchPlier 2.0 is a one-hand-operated multitool that functions like a switchblade with the pliers being accessed by the push of a button. With 12 tools including a steel blade and saw, this EDC might be a one-handed handyman’s dream.

FLYMASTER MAPS Flymaster is proud to add detailed maps to its lineup of features in the SD series of instruments. Fullfeatured maps showing detailed roads, towns and topography can now be seen for the whole planet on the GPS SD, GPS SD plus, NAV SD and LIVE SD instruments. www.flymaster-usa.com

EVOLV CRUZER PSYCHE

KAVU ROAD WARRIOR SHORTS

$75 | Available: Now

$80 | Available Q2 2016

These approach shoes at a glance

The stretchy soft-shell road warrior

might look like TOMS, but are about as

shorts from KAVU are designed with

technical as low-tops get. The outsole

flying in mind. Two giant front pock-

is made of sticky TRAX rubber to keep

ets are right above your thighs, easily

your footing stable for rocky, high-

accessible from any angle. The waist

alpine launches. The outer is made of a

is fixed width and elastic. The outer

durable cotton canvas and will handle

material is a water-resistant nylon to

plenty of skids. The overall profile of

keep out the elements. Best of all, they

the shoe is shaped like a trail runner,

are gusseted so you won’t tear a hole

making these kicks a versatile pair for

in your pants when you are running or

all your other outdoorsy pursuits.

landing.

KEEN LIBERTY RIDGE

$200 | Available now

The Liberty Ridge is a fully waterproof breathable hiking boot for long trails and sketchy take-offs. The sole is a direct-attach construction, meaning the rubber is bonded to the upper, making an overall lighter boot that is more durable for rocky conditions.

The upper, lining and ankle support are made of soft leather to keep ankles from twisting.

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HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

MENTOR 4 – gets you further “ The MENTOR 4 climbs very efficiently, which is reassuring at the beginning of the day when thermals are weak. It is also a great advantage in the evening when you want to use the last bits of lift to get back to your start. The MENTOR 4 really shows its class when accelerated – the flat polar really excites. But the thing I value most is how calm it feels in the air. To conclude, I am completely happy with the MENTOR 4!” Bernhard Peßl | Record holder flying an EN/LTF B wing (FAI triangle of 300.4 km)

www.superflyinc.com | info@superflyinc.com | 801.255.9595 www.nova.eu

“We can’t possibly be expected to understand and analyze every risk, so how can we manage risks that we don’t even know exist? Fortunately, managing unknown risks is no more complicated than accounting for the known risks.”

RISK MANAGEMENT

by Tim Pfeiffer

H

ave you ever heard someone say, “Paragliding isn’t any more dangerous than driving”? If one considers the way some pilots drive to launch, this may be true, but, on average, it appears that pilots are three to six times more likely to die while flying than while driving. Putting this in perspective, riding a motorcycle is 16 times more likely to result in a fatality than driving. However, fatalities don’t begin to tell the story of the risks involved in paragliding. Most of us who have been flying for a few years have grown weary of the steady stream of broken bones and visits to friends in the hospital.

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HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

It’s easy to say that aviation is just inherently risky, but why, then, is commercial aviation the safest way to travel? Commercial aircraft are exposed to many of the same risks as paragliders. The difference is that in commercial aviation the risks are deliberately and thoughtfully managed.

Not just crashes, but also incidents are thoroughly investigated to learn what went wrong and how to avoid the problem next time. Accident reporting helps identify the sources of risk, but risk management is needed to keep the risks in line with the joy of flying.

While we manage risk continuously in our everyday lives, we are not particularly good at it. We tend to evaluate risk based on fear, which may or may not be a good indicator of risk.

For example, most people have a natural fear of heights, so if we use our fear of heights to guide our risk assessment, we should fly very close to the ground.

Also, it is human nature to underestimate risks, a phenomenon termed “optimistic bias” in the language of risk analysis. And who could be more optimistic than a group of people who think they can fly while strapped by thin little strings to some nylon?

To begin replacing our fear-based risk assessment with managed risk, it is helpful to understand the relationship between risk and probability. A useful definition of risk states that risk is the probability of an event multiplied by the consequences. Probability is a number between 0 and 1, with 1 being a sure thing and 0 being impossible. So if the consequence is very large, like a serious life-altering injury, the risk will be high, even if the probability is very small. Alternatively, if the consequences are minor, the risk is small, even if the probability is very high.

So how does this help us make sound piloting decisions? Let’s say

you are flying along and could fly to the next field or land in a nearby field. You think you can make it, but if you encounter some headwind, there is a chance you could come up short. Of course, if you come up short, you might have to walk a couple of hundred yards. Most of us need the exercise, so the consequences are minor and even given the considerable probability of not making your expected glide, the total risk is small: Go for it. On the other hand, change the field to a narrow canyon with raging rapids and power lines. Now, consider the risks. Even if the probability of not making your glide is extremely small, the extreme consequences make for relatively high risks.

Understanding the definition of risk is great for risks we know and understand, but the vast majority of failures, paragliding injuries or spaceshuttle disasters, result from unknown risks. Recently a relatively inexperienced pilot visited a popular coastal ridge-soaring site. The wind was light and no other pilots were flying. He

now with topo maps, roads and cities

Totally Unscientific List of Top Nine Risks 9. Long drives It is just as blown out after a 20-hour drive as after a 20-minute drive.

8. Hot wings It’s not the wing; it’s the pilot.

7. Relevant experience It’s what you don’t know that’s going to hurt you.

6. Health and physical fitness Those extra pounds are extra force during a hard landing.

5. Landing The second most common way to get hurt.

4. Launching The most common way to get hurt.

3. Complacency It always hits when you least expect it.

2. Attitude The best way to get hurt is to think you can’t.

1. Altitude It’s not the fall that’s going to hurt: it’s the impact with the ground.

www.flymaster-usa.com

attributed the lack of pilots to the conditions being less than soarable.

Figuring that as a new pilot, a sled ride would be good practice, he chose to fly. The result was broken bones and a harrowing helicopter rescue. What went wrong? The pilot thought he had assessed the risks and certainly didn’t feel a simple sled ride involved a large risk. This pilot learned about the unknown risk the hard way. Later the pilot was subjected to a chorus of pilots questioning why he would even think of flying that site in those conditions and stories of other luckless pilots who had tried the same thing he did. Which makes the point that most unknown risks are not unknown by everyone. Ask your friend with the cast if he or she understood the risks behind the decisions leading up to

their crash. Chances are, something he did not anticipate hurt him, but given the proper knowledge, he could have anticipated and avoided the crash.

Through experience and communication, we can reduce the unknown risks, but never eliminate them.

We can’t possibly be expected to understand and analyze every risk, so how can we manage risks that we don’t even know exist? Fortunately, managing unknown risks is no more complicated than accounting for the known risks. An engineer designing a building or an airplane part analyzes the known risks, then accounts for possible unknown risks by adding a factor of safety. Depending on the consequences of failure and how well the risks are understood, this factor of safety is typically 2 to 5 times the cal-

culated value. Because of the universal application of this concept in engineering, building collapses and catastrophic mechanical failures in aircraft are exceedingly rare. This same concept can be applied to piloting decisions.

Let’s return to our discussion of gliding to the next field. If the consequences involve only a short walk, there is not much need for an extra margin for safety. In fact, this would be a good time to test your glide-angle estimation skills. Make a note of how far your estimated glide varied from reality. With a stack of estimates under varying conditions in your experience bank, you are ready for the next step. Estimate your glide when you absolutely, positively, cannot come up short. What was your worst estimate ever? Let’s say you estimate that you

Risk Management Resources for Paraglider Pilots Compiled by Steve Roti

Robertson’s Charts of Reliability

Pilot John Halle uses flying anecdotes to illustrate risk in

(published in 'The Art of Skysailing') by Michael Robertson

“Luck, Longevity and the Limits of Skill”

Available from the USHPA store

http://www.ushpa.aero/article.asp?id=13

Michael Robertson, one of the early pilots in hang gliding, developed a system of charts for assessing risk. He

AOPA’s index to on-line “Safety Pilot” articles

divides the types of risk into three categories: the wing,

http://www.aopa.org/asf/subjectidx.html

the wind, and the windividual. Michael’s charts allow you to assign numerical scores to the reliability of flying a particular glider at a particular site on a particular day.

The Book of Risks: Fascinating Facts About the Chances We Take Everyday

The Art of Paragliding by Dennis Pagen (2001)

by Larry Laudan (1994)

Available from the USHPA office Dennis Pagen, author of numerous books and articles on

True Odds: How Risk Affects Your Everyday Life

hang gliding and paragliding and weather, has written a

by James Walsh (1996)

book about paragliding. It includes brief discussions of risk management from the perspectives of weather, judgment, and equipment.

The Polar Bear Strategy: Reflections on Risk in Modern Life

by John F. Ross (1999)

Mike Meier of Wills Wing discusses “Why Can’t We Get a Handle on this Safety Thing?”

The above three books about risk management are writ-

http://www.willswing.com/Articles/Article.asp?reqArti

ten for the general public. They cover a wide range of

cleName=HandleOnSafety

topics and are filled with statistics about risks we all take, whether we realize it or not. You’ll find them useful read-

Pilot Greg Hamerton from South Africa writes about

ing for understanding risk management and comparing

“Reducing Your Risk”

aviation to other activities we engage in.

http://www.eternitypress.co.za/freshair/risk.htm

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HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

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can glide four times further than the width of Death Canyon, but there was that time you came up with only half of your estimated glide. Just like the engineer designing the aircraft part this worst-case glide should be your base estimate. Using your worst-case estimate, you can glide twice as far as the canyon is wide. This could be considered a factor of safety of two. Is a factor of two enough? Consider the consequences and the unknown risks that could possibly be involved. Also, is there some compelling reason to cross the canyon? For most of us who plan a few thousand more flights, a factor of two involves far too much risk.

The only way to completely eliminate the risks of flying would be not to fly. Since for most of us this is not a desirable option, we must learn to manage the risks and find a balance between risks and the experience of flight. Learning to manage risks is just like any other skill involved in flying. It must be learned and mistakes will be

made. The trick is to learn from the mistakes without paying too high a price. Considering the consequences and leaving room for the inevitable mistake keeps the price down. Often the only difference between an incident and an accident is altitude. The inevitable mistakes and incidents will be learning experiences rather than setbacks. Learning about what can happen on full speedbar with lots of altitude is one way to gain experience; without lots of altitude, it is a good way to stop gaining experience. An even better way to gain experience is to learn from the mistakes of others.

The history of aviation is filled with pilots who gave their bones and lives to learning the hard lessons. Making the same mistake again dishonors the memory of the pioneers who made the dream of flight a reality.

The old cliché could never be truer: Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from poor judgment.

20 risk factors

by Steve Roti Obstacles in launch area or LZ Flying close to the ground Flying in crowded conditions Flying in clouds Showing off Aerobatics Water Power lines Strong wind High-performance gliders Cross-country flying Competition Pursuing records Pilot fatigue Fear Panic Overconfidence Complacency Inexperience Inactive piloting

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Rocky Mountain

MINIWING BOOGIE

by Harrison Fast & Gary Vaillancourt

O

n June 13, 2015, the Rocky Mountain Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association (RMHPA) hosted the first annual Colorado Miniwing Clinic. The goals of the event were to blur the lines that separate miniwing and paraglider pilots and to foster a culture of mentorship

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HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

in the Colorado free-flight community. The event, free of tasks, goals or competitions, gathered more than 40 miniwing and paraglider pilots of all experience levels in the beautiful Vail Valley. Thanks to generous sponsorships from RMHPA, Red Bull, and Little Cloud USA, the clinic was

hosted free of charge.

In Colorado, and across the United States, the sport of speedflying or miniwing flying is growing rapidly. The ease of carrying a miniwing uphill, combined with the appeal of an adrenalineinfused mountain descent, has brought adventurers of all walks into a new

LEFT A kiting bunch. BELOW Chris Morin watching launches and mentoring. BOTTOM Discussion time. Photos by Harrison Fast, Colorado.

world of free-flight. There are mountaineers interested in a quicker descent who are making unheard-of ascent linkups, skiers who are seeing their mountains in an entirely new way, and experienced paraglider pilots simply interested in expanding the number of flyable hours in a year.

Miniwings can reach much higher speeds than paragliders and are often flown in close proximity to terrain features. Smaller canopies with higher wing loading make miniwings more responsive to input than paragliders, which means it’s even more important for pilots to understand the differences between the two types of wings.

Skydivers who were foot-launching their seven-cell canopies from mountaintops originally developed speedflying as a sport. Blade-running competitions, where pilots used wind blades as slalom gates on their way down mountain faces, brought the sport into the public eye. European pilots advanced the sport substantially when they developed the first speedriding-specific gliders in 2006. Since then, the sport has received tremendous exposure, with Internet videos of

pilots skimming ski slopes going viral.

The experiences of many new miniwing pilots remind me of the stories I’m often told of the early days of paragliding. New pilots, sometimes poorly guided, run themselves off anything they can climb to the top of, gleaning information from each experience and mishap. At many established free-flight sites, tensions flare between miniwing and paraglider pilots. Colorado’s local hills were no different. Those of us that flew these “little bed sheets” knew we

had to work with the local clubs and not in competition.

In order to bring miniwings into the fold, we follow the paradigm established by RMHPA. When new pilots come to fly at the primary local site, Lookout Mountain in Golden, they are paired with a pilot sponsor. This sponsor provides a detailed site introduction and discusses flight conditions with the new pilot. The sponsor then observes the pilot completing a series of 10 flights and provides input and mentorship. This program not only serves to make the entire community safer, but also helps bring new pilots into the circle.

This culture of mentorship encourages pilots to turn to their more experienced peers as another source of information. In the growing world of miniwings, pilots come from different backgrounds and have varying levels of knowledge. The sponsorship programs helped us safely and smoothly integrate minwings into the local free-flight community. With the success of this program in mind, we set out to create a new kind of free-flight event.

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The RMHPA planned the first annual Colorado Miniwing Clinic with the intention of bringing newer miniwing pilots out of the shadows and into the community, providing local paraglider pilots with a chance to explore the dark side, and generally fostering mentorship at our hills. Days started with a mentor pilot briefing others in the shuttle on launch conditions, site particulars, and weather, during a formal safety talk. Pilots with substantial site and miniwing experience were identified so newer pilots could ask questions and get assistance. There was always at least one designated mentor on launch and in the landing zone.

With the clinic only days away, the infamous Colorado weather threatened to shut down the event. In true local

fashion, however, the “iffy” forecast led navigate a deep mountain gulley, fly to two of the best flying days of the year. over aspens and lodgepole pines, cross The old saying in Colorado goes: “If you high-voltage power lines, and finally don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes.” traverse the sink-generating Eagle River.

As the sun climbed over the serrated While Bellyache can be a technical site, granite peaks of the Gore Range at the the large grassy LZ and drive up launch eastern end of the Vail Valley, pilots are luxuries in Colorado. began throwing their magical backWith visiting speedwing pilots flying packs (and themselves) through the the site for the first time, as well as exdoors of shuttle vehicles to cries of, “It’s perienced local paraglider pilots getting ON!” their feet wet with miniwings, all of the In the early morning at Bellyache hazards had to be carefully explained Ridge the valley flow dominates, profrom a new point of view. Designated viding smooth but lift-free conditions mentors pointed out hazards from ideal for miniwings as early as 5:00 a.m. launch and helped those unfamiliar At 6:00 on the first day of the clinic, with the site evaluate the incoming pilots took to the air. Bellyache Ridge cycles. Local paraglider pilots, some provides 1600’ of vertical descent with far removed from forward launching, a launch at 8673’ MSL. Along the 3.5:1 received the guidance needed to launch glide to the landing zone, a pilot must confidently. Mentors reminded pilots

ABOVE Campground at Wolcott | photo by Chris Morin, Oregon.

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that it’s OK to shut down a launch and abort if things do not feel right. We were encouraging best safety practices so pilots would feel confident on launch and would not feel stressed about aborting a launch because of perceived peer pressure, a mindset that is perhaps not emphasized enough or encouraged.

As the clinic’s primary organizer Gary Vaillancourt said: “We stressed that it was a time to learn. We focused on strong launches and strong landings. It wasn’t about how cool you are or how awesome your flying skills are or about showboating.”

With a fleet of demo gliders from Little Cloud, Swing, and Fluid Wings, everyone tried out the latest gear. From the local club president who managed four of the required 25 miniwing flights for an M-1 rating, to the small flock of students who took to the air for the first time that day, the stoke was high!

Catherine Rios, a P-3/M-2 pilot, said she enjoyed seeing experienced paraglider pilots get the opportunity to try out a miniwing for the first time.

“Everyone was stoked by how easy they were to fly and happy to learn about new windows that miniwings allow you to fly in,” she said. “I love being able to fly in conditions that my big wing won’t allow, which allows me to stay very current all year long.”

A big blue Sprinter van, recently renovated to carry 10 (or 12, or 14) pilots and gear, and a monster of an E-350 truck carried participants up the winding road to launch for lap after lap of mountain air. The day progressed.

The weather held. An absolute shred fest ensued. Pilots began exploring more of the local terrain, from the crumbling sandstone cliff walls to the west to the bed of Colorado columbine wildflowers to the east.

On this fateful day, the weather held until noon, and some pilots managed to tick off 8000’ of vertical the first morning. Pilots sought refuge from the midday heat under the Red Bull tent. At

1:00 p.m., Jeremy Bishop, one of a small number of new miniwing instructors, gathered pilots for a Miniwing Ratings test and discussion session. Those who had not yet met the flying requirements for an M-1 or M-2 rating were encouraged to participate in the discussion.

The group used the questions on the USHPA M-1 and M-2 exams as talking points. The floor was open to all participants, ensuring that each question and its underlying concept were well understood by the end.

Pop Quiz: You have just taken off from an alpine site on a miniwing. Moments after launch, you notice that your right trimmer has lost grip and slipped to the full open position. You attempt to pull the trimmer back in, but it does not hold.

What do you do next?

This scenario, one you’re unlikely to encounter on a traditional paraglider, was just one of many discussed.

Watching and listening to both experienced pilots and students openly discuss scenarios and safety considerations was very cool.

Because free flight can have such wide appeal, a huge part of the clinic brought together different types of pilots, letting them experience bigger or smaller wings. The community gathered with the goal of getting to know each other, flying, and discussing ways the community can grow stronger. The lines that often separated local miniwing and paraglider pilots had faded.

The event was a huge success. Planning has already begun for next year.

The event followed in the footsteps of the local club by bringing mentorship to the community at large. The Colorado free-flight community hopes to host more of these types of events, where free-flight pilots can focus on learning from each other and progress our sports in US together.

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CHARLESTOWN, NH 603.542.4416 | FLYMORNINGSIDE.COM HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

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three Pilots. Three flights.

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THREE KINDS OF

EPIC

by C.J. Surtevant

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EPIC

Epic (ep’ ik), adj.: very imposing or impressive; surpassing the ordinary (especially in size or scale) n.: an episode in the lives of men (or women!) in which heroic deeds are performed or attempted

T

he summer of 2015 is on track to go down as an epic season in the annals of Washington State free flight.

Both hang and para pilots have laid down amazing routes in the mountains and the flatlands, climbing to altitudes above 13,000’, rarified air seldom if ever before experienced in this part of the country. Site records have been broken, personal bests have been bettered and then pushed further, spectacularly scenic destinations deep in the Cascades that many of us have labored for days to reach by trail have been revealed from the new perspective of cloudbase.

I volunteered to launch-direct for the last half of the

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Chelan Cross-country Classic (CXCC) last July, and I arrived in eastern Washington the day after five hang pilots and seven paraglider pilots had flown over 100 miles during the CXCC. That’s miles, not kilometers! By anyone’s standards, June 30, 2015, was an epic day for free-flyers, and for many of those who broke the 100-mile barrier that day, their flight was a personal best that will be hard to beat.

But when it comes to flying, “epic” is a personal measurement. During my three days hucking pilots off Chelan Butte I had the great fortune to be witness to three amazing flights that were, in the words of the pilots who flew them, an adventure they’ll never forget. Here are their stories.

M

ajo Gulares is a H-3 pilot from Guatemala who’s only been hang gliding for a few years and currently flies a Vision Pulse. She and hang gliding legend Zac Majors were in Chelan for his participation in the CXCC, but when I arrived halfway through the meet, Majo had yet to launch

“I kept wondering if I was ready to take this step or not, but then I heard in my mind something Zac always says: ‘COMMIT!’ So I did...” from the Butte. Although both she and Zac were confident she had the skills and experience to do well in Chelan conditions, “I’m nervous about landing at the soccer field,” Majo explained, adding, “I’m used to landing in huge landing zones free of obstacles, and I have a tendency to come in too high. So having those tall trees all around the LZ was a little intimidating.”

But now it was the day before she and Zac would be leaving to continue their road trip; Majo knew she’d be disappointed with herself if she didn’t get in at least one flight at Chelan. The day’s conditions looked excellent for climbing up and out, and since getting high is rarely an issue for her, she convinced herself that “landing in the soccer field just wasn’t going to be a possibility for me,” even though, she says, “making the decision to go out, away from the LZ, has always been a struggle for me”—enough of a struggle that she’d never actually managed to escape that familiar-LZ magnetism. But on this day she was confident and convinced that it would all come together and “I was going XC, my first one ever.”

As they set up on launch, she and Zac strategized. “We

were supposed to be on radios, and once we got to 8000’ we were going to cross the Columbia River,” the first step in going XC over the flats to the east, Majo recalls. But in spite of having done a radio check on launch, once she got in the air Majo realized her radio wasn’t working properly—she couldn’t hear Zac nor, it seemed, could he hear her.

Somewhat flustered by this unexpected lack of communication, “I made the mistake of getting downwind on the wrong side of the mountain,” she says, adding, “which wasn’t a big deal for me on my Pulse, but Zac on his big Falcon was finding it hard to penetrate, so he had to make a decision. He had to choose between flying smart and getting out of there or sticking with me. I’m a lucky girl—he stayed with me!”

But Zac soon realized that he wouldn’t be able to climb to their pre-arranged 8000’ from that position, and decided to leave the Butte and cross to the flats low. When Majo saw Zac leaving at less than 6000’, she was again flustered by her silent radio, and unsure whether or not she should follow, even though she was higher than Zac. So, with the specter of a soccer-field landing looming large, off she went.

But not without trepidation. “As I was crossing the river I kept looking back to the soccer field and wondering if it was a good idea to follow Zac so low,” she told me. This was, after all, her first time venturing away from the designated LZ—at any site. “I kept wondering if I was ready to take this step or not, but then I heard in my mind something Zac always says: ‘COMMIT!’ So I did, and it was the best decision ever!” Before her anxiety meter topped out, she spotted Zac circling out ahead; she came into the thermal above him and they climbed out together. “I OPPOSITE Majo smiling in anticipation of

her first-ever XC flight, from Chelan Butte | photo

by Damaris Hollingsworth. LEFT Majo snaps a selfie while soaring high above Dog Mt., in western Washington. PREVIOUS PAGE Aaron Rinn launching his T2C from Chelan Butte | photo by Rich Harman.

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was screaming, super excited—I couldn’t believe I was there, on the other side, going XC!” she recalls with obvious delight.

Two hours later, an exhausted but elated Majo chose to leave lift and land just past Mansfield, 23 miles from where she’d launched at Chelan Butte. Moments later Zac touched down right next to her.

When she and Zac drove into the soccer field LZ’s parking lot late that afternoon, Majo was still flying high. “I’ve been dreaming about going XC, and today it came true!” she exclaimed. “I finally let go my fear of landing in an unknown LZ”—or at least that fear paled in comparison to her concerns about the tall-treesurrounded soccer field. “That moment when I started across the river was epic. I knew that there was no turning back—I was going out, leaving the nest”—leaving it farther behind than she’d dared dream.

I asked Majo if there was anything about her experience that might encourage other XC newbies to take that scary first step.

She pondered a bit, then offered, “Like many new pilots, I was scared about going XC—the thought of landing in an unknown field was terrifying. But really, all I needed to do was COMMIT. If you really want to and your instructor says you are ready and conditions are right, just go for it!”

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T

he day before Majo’s flight, a group of NW parapilots were at Rampart launch in Snoqualmie Pass, about 2000’ above I-90 as it snakes its way through the Cascades to eastern Washington. Weather forecasts indicated that the winds in the pass would be reasonably light and the lift would be stinkin’ high—a good day to venture deep into the mountains or try for a site distance record, the XC aficionados predicted.

Brian Franklin has been captivated by Rampart since his first flight there last summer. From a couple thousand feet over launch, you’re looking deep into the glaciated high peaks of the Cascades to the north and east—”tiger country” is how most pilots describe it, and the few who have ventured very far into that vast wilderness speak of it with awe and respect. The even fewer pilots who have launched from Rampart and flown through the tiger country to land in LZs usually reserved for those who take off from sites in the North Cascades, are revered as sky gods.

“Dave Milroy’s 2014 flight from Rampart to Leavenworth was inspirational to me,” Brian says, and he resolved to make an attempt to fly a similar route in 2015. Knowing that epic flights like Milroy’s don’t just happen, Brian spent many hours during the NW’s long winter pondering all the variables that needed to work in his favor to accomplish this goal. He studied possible routes on Google Earth, scoping out potential thermal triggers, and thinking about possible places to bail out that wouldn’t leave him with

LEFT Brian and his Chili touching down in the soccer field LZ in Chelan | photo by C.J. TOP Brian's track from Rampart to Chelan. CENTER "Arriving at Mt. Stuart more than 1000' below the summit. Expecting a turbulent climb now, nervous about the strong wind and being too close to the terrain." | photo by Brian Franklin. BOTTOM The grin says it all | photo by C.J.

days of hiking out of the mountains. As the flying season began to turn on last spring, Brian set his goal: “To venture out over tiger country and through the Enchantments via a route that hadn’t already been flown—a crazy mental thing for me,” he says.

July 2, 2015, looked to be the day to give it a shot. The first step was pushing out east from the Rampart bowl. “That’s a real psychological thing,” Brian points out, because if you don’t get up back there it’s not a given that you’ll make it back to a safe LZ into the wind. He figured if he was at 9000’ at Alta, at the east end of the bowl, he’d be in good position to reach the next thermal trigger he’d plotted on Google Earth.

To his delight, he was at 9500’ on the spine behind Alta, well above his target altitude for leaving, so off he went. His route preparation paid off, and he found thermals “always right where I expected them to be,” and he was able to stay high and drift with the thermals through the sketchy-LZ areas. “I was always high enough that I didn’t even have to follow the terrain and could head straight for Stuart,” (one of the prominent peaks in the North Cascades) he recalls, but even so he admits that he was nervous until he got past Stuart, always scoping out possible LZs and thinking about the hike out “if I never found another piece of lift.”

From Stuart, his original plan had been to turn north to land at Leavenworth, and had he been on his EN-C wing that’s probably what he would have done—he hit massive sink approaching Stuart and arrived below the summit, where the air was crazy rough and he was low. He says his Skywalk Chili’s docile behavior allowed him to relax (relatively speaking) and hang in there until he got back up to “confidence altitude” at 10,000’.

From Stuart he could easily have glided into Leavenworth, his original goal. But it was still early in the day, too early to just go end his flight at Leavenworth—why not see if he could complete the first-ever Rampart-to-Chelan route?

I was in Chelan that day, launch-directing at the Chelan Classic and watching the SPOT tracks of the comp pilots as well as my free-flying buddies back on the west side. It was clear that this was turning into a huge day for many of the XC pilots at Rampart, and when Brian’s track turned north-east towards Chelan rather than heading straight for Leavenworth, all of us in the soccer field LZ started scanning the sky, hoping we’d see him appear over the Butte.

And then, at about 6:30 p.m., there he was, a little speck, still at 8000’ and clearly working to get down after six hours flying over gnarly terrain, often at altitudes where oxygen would have been welcome. “I was plenty high enough to keep going, but I was dehydrated and had a pounding headache—

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when I heard Jeff Slotta on the radio say he had Gatorade and beer on ice at the soccer field, I realized that I was just tired of flying, so I called it a day and landed.” This was the longest Brian had ever been in the air, and although he didn’t realize it until later, the farthest distance he’d ever flown, beating his personal best by 1km.

In retrospect, Brian says it almost feels like he had two separate flights during those six hours; by the time he touched down in Chelan, the tiger-country part of the journey seemed like something in his distant past. Arriving in an LZ where friends greeted him with ice-cold beverages and congratulatory hugs, and his driver on the scene before he could even get out of his harness—it’s hard to imagine a more satisfying ending to such a long day in the air. Based on the spectacular scenery, his sense of satisfaction in personal preparation and en-route decision-making, and the hero’s welcome in Chelan, Brian counts this day and this flight as a truly epic adventure!

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S

ometimes necessity is sufficient incentive for epic. Aaron Rinn was the CXCC scorekeeper, and also a leading contender in the topless hang glider division of the comp.

Typically on the last day of an XC event, pilots are kept close to “home” so their flights can be scored in time for the evening’s awards ceremony. But since the CXCC is a “call your own task” event, and since July 3, the last day, was forecast to be quite windy in eastern Washington, almost everybody who flew opted to go long. The CXCC veterans all agreed: Nobody was going to score big trying to come back into that much wind!

That put Aaron in a bind; he couldn’t set his sights on a flight to Idaho (which looked quite doable given the conditions), because he had to be back at HQ to score everyone’s flights and determine the winner. But Aaron is a serious competitor, and he definitely wanted to hold on to his medal position. What to do? “Returning early enough to do the scoring definitely played a part in my deciding to come back,” he says, but the challenge of flying into a significant headwind was also a factor. And when a paraglider pilot told him that it would be a great day to fly hang gliders since it was a bit

“The CXCC’s unique scoring system allows pilots to change the task on the fly, if once they’re in the air they discover conditions don’t correspond to what they’d based their original task call on.” windy, “that made me want to find out what my T2C could do,” Aaron recalls, adding, “I did originally want to head downwind to see where it would take me, but once I decided to turn around I enjoyed the challenge.”

If you’ve never flown in the CXCC, you probably haven’t a clue how a “call-your-own-task” event works. Each pilot is his or her own personal task committee: Based on the day’s weather forecast as well as an individual “attitude” assessment, a pilot can choose to fly straight out for 10 points per mile, or do an out-and-return for 13 points per mile flown (as long as half the return distance is completed—otherwise it’s 10 points per mile), or do a valid triangle for 15 points per mile flown (as long as half the final leg is completed, or 10 points per mile flown for coming up short). For extra incentive to complete that final leg, pilots are awarded a 100-point bonus for landing in either the junkyard or soccer field LZ back at the Butte. A pilot’s final score for the meet is the sum of the best four out of six possible task days.

So, on this windy final day, Aaron’s scorekeeping responsibility was demanding a task diametrically opposed to what his Chelan experience was recommending. He’d already had several excellent flights; he was one of the beyond-100-miles pilots on Day 3, and he’d completed a 71-mile triangle and received the multiplier and the LZ bonus on Day 5, putting him in contention for a second or third place finish in his class.

The CXCC’s unique scoring system allows pilots to change the task on the fly, if once they’re in the air they discover conditions don’t correspond to what they’d based their original task call on. Aaron took advantage of that flexibility, originally following a thermal drifting to the north, but then realizing the true drift was to the east. Having followed that original drift to the north put him on a course with stronger thermals than the usual route straight to Mansfield; he passed above several hang gliders on the ground, and found that the lift seemed to get stronger as he continued east, and after Mansfield he found a lift line that, he says, “gained me elevation on a straight glide and led me to an very strong thermal. It was at this point that I decided to detour to Leahy, which would leave open the possibility of a nice triangle. I

flew to Dry Falls on the second leg of the triangle and again I found amazing thermals. I didn’t commit to the final, upwind, leg until I got to this point. If the thermals had been weaker they would have had too much drift for me to make progress upwind.” Even so, when he turned into the wind to return to Chelan, “my progress slowed considerably. At first I tried to intersect dust devils that I could see, but the wind would take them beyond my reach before I could get there. I also tried flying at an angle to the wind. Eventually I just flew straight upwind to the plowed fields where thermals were likely. I definitely had doubts that I’d be able to complete the triangle during the entire last leg. In fact, I considered turning around and heading downwind after getting pretty low and making only a few kilometers of progress. But I pressed on, deciding to go as far as possible, hoping to score the distance multiplier for completing half of the final leg.”

With the multiplier distance made good, his focus shifted to getting and staying high enough to return to the soccer field with its 100-point bonus. But when he flew to a field

LEFT Aaron's triangle. RIGHT

Aaron setting up his T2C on the Butte | photo by Rich Harman. NEXT page Success! Aaron's arrival at the soccer field LZ | photo by C.J.

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where he expected there would be a thermal, he found only weak lift. At this point he was low, and a long way from a road, and prudence suggested he should get himself into position for an easier retrieve. “I was really low but not yet unzipped when I lucked into a thermal. I REALLY didn’t want to land, so I focused every turn on getting up, and didn’t even look at my vario until I had gained several thousand feet.”

Pleasantly surprised to find himself back above 6000 feet and back in the game, he was able to relax, “convinced that I would gain enough to make it back to the designated LZ.” Most of the CXCC pilots were flying with personal tracking devices, so those of us on the ground were able to follow the competitors’ progress via XCFind. Jeff Beck was clearly going long; he would eventually end up in Idaho. One pilot turned around at Mansfield; we watched him creep back towards the Butte, pushing into the wind far enough along the return leg to earn his multiplier. Meanwhile, retrieve drivers were returning to the LZ with pilots who’d managed only relatively short straight-out flights; they reported blown-apart thermals and chunky air, and only Jeff made any significant distance that day. On smartphones and tablets those of us hanging around in the soccer field followed Jeff’s and Aaron’s SPOT tracks, cheering Jeff on as he approached the Idaho border, and watching with amazement as Aaron completed two legs of his triangle and turned back towards the Butte for the final leg. We could see him apparently stuck just a few miles east of the Butte, climbing up in a thermal but being blown back with each climb so that when he left the thermal and inched forward into the wind, he seemingly wrote and rewrote the same short segment of track. But finally, “There he is!” someone shouted as his wing appeared above the rim, on glide into the LZ. The whole crowd broke into cheers.

Later, reflecting on his flight, Aaron says, “I felt like I was all over the place deciding on a task to fly, changing my mind

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several times while I was flying. But once I landed and found out how everyone else did, I decided my decision-making was fine. There were lots of thoughts going through my head, both advice from various pilots over the years and finding I was experiencing in my flights some of the things other pilots had told about their flights in Chelan. In retrospect, I felt like there wasn’t much more I could have done with the day, except maybe get off the hill a little earlier.”

This was the biggest triangle Aaron has ever flown and, he says, “one of the most rewarding flights of the week, especially given the upwind leg.” Aaron is a low-key, understated kind of guy, but when I showed him the photo I’d snapped of him as he landed in the soccer field, his big grin proved that pushing into the wind for that last leg had pushed this flight into the realm of “personally epic.”

Meanwhile: On the same day as Brian’s flight through “tiger country” from Rampart to Chelan, Owen Shoemaker and TJ Sopher took a different route from Rampart, choosing to skirt the southern edge of the big mountains, flying almost straight east in quest of a 200km flight. They landed near Quincy, Washington, with a straight-line distance of 122.6km, topping Brian’s straight-line distance of 114.4km and setting the site record for Rampart (although Leonardo records Brian’s dogleg distance as 130km, just barely passing Owen’s and TJ’s 129km).

Six days after Aaron’s triangle flight, rigid-wing pilot Mike Bomstad flew a 193-mile FAI triangle, in the same area as Aaron’s , launching from tow on a light-wind day. “Mike’s experience and conditions came together so he could complete a flight that makes mine seem puny,” Aaron sighs, but adds, “Flights like this keep me excited that there is so much more to learn and experience.”

And so the Northwest’s epic 2015 flying season continues…

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DEATH OF THE

EGO

by Hayden Dudley

A

s pilots, athletes, adventurers and humans, we all suffer from the same affliction—a desire ingrained in us to be the first, the fastest, the strongest, the best. To get to the top, to conquer, to achieve success, to be victorious, to win. Whether it’s our hunter-gatherer forebears’ drive to flaunt our appeal and acquire a mate or today’s highly visual evidence of glory that’s publicized by posting the coolest video, we all witness and sometimes fall victim to the power of the ego.

This is my story.

I’ve been a paragliding pilot since 2009. My partner in crime and I acquired some loaner gear and soon were hucking ourselves, sans instruction, down fields in the Colorado hill country. After we told our pilot buddies about our great success, they gasped in horror, laughed, and told us to get proper instruction. Later that week, we enrolled in a P-2 student pilot program.

Coming from a mountaineering and big-wall climbing background, my thirst for this new sport was unquenchable. Becoming an artist of the air with the sky as my medium, I graced canvas after canvas with my masterful strokes, flying whenever

LEFT

and wherever I could. Within two years, I was teaching friends and flying tandems. Hooked.

Learning paragliding after climbing, a sport that answers to no regulatory command, my unbridled passion went hand in hand with danger. I miraculously made it through the “intermediate syndrome” (a phase in which novice pilots believe themselves to be more skilled than they actually are) unscathed. But that same intermediate-phase-arrogance can stay with a pilot throughout his/her career.

While cutting my teeth for years as a climber and then as a pilot, the personas I often admired were the “Badasses,” the “Crazy Guys” who were willing to go first, possibly to suffer consequences no else dared to experience. Heroes without names, only images, helped me create high expectations for myself. Never one to accept the normal or mundane, I’ve always pushed myself into unknown scenarios.

Adventure. ad·ven·ture noun: An unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity. verb: Engage in hazardous and exciting activity, especially the exploration of unknown territory.

I

’m not a B.A.S.E. jumper. I pursued skydiving in 2010, but after receiving my “A” license, I found XC paragliding and tandem flying far more rewarding. So I quit skydiving, deeming it “too risky” for my level of commitment. I wanted to jump off cliffs, not out of planes.

I am a speed pilot.

Speed flying is one of sport aviation’s newest forms of free flight. A hybrid of ram-air parachute technology combined with airfoil gliders has produced this new, high-speed sport. Speed flying is performed in big mountain terrain, wearing skis that allow one to descend in unridable lines. I learned this technique in the big mountains of Colorado. The term speed riding indicates the pilot is using skis, while speed flying means he is not. The latter can be very safe.

Excitement, the purest form of energy, is intangible and immeasurable and addictive.

Since I seek excitement, I developed a plan for my next great challenge. Start hiking the nine-mile distance to the peak at 2:00 a.m. and summit before dawn. Launch in the early morning twilight while the valley floor sleeps, and land safely in the grass. Seamless. Easy.

Dudley’s Leap—a daring leap between two summits in Joshua Tree National Park | photo by J Dom Smith.

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Mistake #1. Believing I was unstoppable. A common mistake made by adventurers in all pursuits, driven by ego and the ability to avert fear.

Mistake #2. Choosing the wrong tool for the job. Once on the summit, I found conditions were still, with no wind. This proved to be challenging on the low takeoff with my 8-squaremeter speed wing. A full-sized glider would have launched easily on the slope. Once committed to a goal, an adventurer will often “make do.” I aborted my first launch attempt.

Mistake #3. Ignoring my gut. It told me to go back down, wait for conditions to improve, as a sensible, safe pilot would. The safe pilot wasn’t home. Only the wildcard, rogue captain was on board that ship. I had hiked up there, and I wasn’t going to hike down. Instincts are usually correct; neglecting to pay heed can be

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costly.

I fully committed to the second attempt. With my wing overhead and sprinting full speed, I headed down the extreme terrain, while leaping over boulders and negotiating the granite slope. Without an uphill wind to help engage flight or a pitch that was steep enough for me to take off, I was not able to safely launch. Half running, half flying down the granite slab, I crashed. Hard. I wound up tumbling downhill and roaring with agony. I continued to slide until I was able to scratch myself to a halt by digging my bare hands into the gravel and clinging to the granite, a few short meters from the edge of the cliff and certain death.

I suffered a broken sternum, an injury I later learn kills over half of its victims, two fractured vertebra in my neck, a concussion and dozens of cuts and bruises. But I was alive.

Friends awaiting me called for help when I didn’t appear and initiated a helicopter rescue. Hours later, I was back-boarded off the summit in a delirium and loaded into the chopper.

I still got to fly down, but in less than ideal circumstances. After leaving the hospital three days later, the drugs began to wear off and I digested what had happened.

F#*K. How could I have been so stupid?

What could have been worth the risk?

I had never thought I could be so arrogant or selfish.

Ever since my accident, however, I’ve often said that I did die that day.

I experienced a spiritual death and rebirth ceremony atop a beautiful monolithic mountain. I wanted to be the man. It took a certain man to get himself into that position. And he

died. I left him there, along with my attachment to glory. Scaring friends and family with my near-death experience was the ultimate eye opener.

Sometimes life isn’t worth living if you’re only in it for yourself.

I know now that I can achieve the fullest satisfaction of success by simply putting a smile on a loved one’s face, by landing safely after a short flight, and by teaching the privilege of flying and watching a student safely progress.

Or I can feel pleasure in climbing an easy route I’ve done dozens of times before or in humble achievements. I’m proving to myself that satisfaction is the death of desire.

Upon reflecting on my accident, I realize that I could have been happy that day sitting by the river with the sun shining on my face, while watching the dogwood leaves slowly float downstream and safely letting the day fly by. I could have been happy, but not satisfied. The hunger, the drive, the desire, the insatiable appetite—the Ego—needed to be satisfied. That intrinsic quality built into each of us, called, beckoned. I’ve learned that the ego is important because we derive self-esteem, self-worth and self-respect from it—qualities that, without which, we would surely suffer.

So should we kill the Ego? Perhaps that’s necessary for some. But others may wish to recognize, control, and respect the monster. I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions. But this year was different. Mine? I’ll no longer make ego-based decisions.

Some lessons can only be learned through experience.

Every launch is optional.

LEFT Flying at 12,000’ in the Elk Mountains

of Colorado with the Maroon Bells and Pyramid Peak in the background | photo by J Dom Smith. RIGHT “Sobering up” three days after the accident.

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CHRIS BOLFING over TORREY PINES SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

GOOD KARMA

How paraglider pilots help rebuild Nepal

by Annette O'Neil

I

t has been 75 days since the earthquake, and I still haven’t been able to reach Isabella Messenger.

When I called her yesterday, heartrending images of a ravaged Nepal were no longer showing up on Facebook.

In most conversations, mention of the country’s April 25th destruction by the Gorkha quake, registering a monstrous 7.8, killing more than 6000 people and demolishing more than half a million homes, brings a momentary quizzical look that sets into a half-frown. “Oh, yes. That was awful,” people generally say. “What a terrible tragedy.”

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The story is fresher on the other side of the phone line.

When I called her yesterday, Isabella had to hang up immediately. “I’m so sorry,” she apologizes. “I forgot about the call. There’s an emergency. We have to do an extraction. I’m so sorry. I’ll call you later. Sorry, sorry.”

And then she races off, because her life and the lives of the team she’s working with are still several feet under a sea of rubble. They’re slowly helping their beloved friends and neighbors out from under the mess, but there is still a literal mountain of work to be done.

LEFT KarmaFlights' first school project in Saurapani at Siddhartha secondary school. BELOW A temporary learning center in Suarapani.

I leave my phone on and cross my fingers. I wish I were there to get dirt under my fingernails. It feels frustrating to simply wait.

T

he alpine world around Nepal was a very different place when Isabella arrived, eight years ago.

Like the majority of visitors, Isabella originally came for the trekking, falling “instantly in love” with the place. The timing was perfect: She had learned to paraglide in Germany during the preceding season and needed her fix. “I was completely obsessed with paragliding, of course,” she remembers, “and had been told I wouldn’t have many opportunities to fly in Germany during the winter months.”

Nepal, however, was wide open. She quit her job and moved there.

Isabella Messenger, as you quickly discover in a conversation with her, is no layabout. The Pokhara fly-eat-sleep-fly cycle was fine for a little while, but not enough to be really satisfying. She added volunteering to the circuit pretty quickly (on her first day in Nepal, actually).

During the first year, Isabella worked with Scott Mason on his parahawking project, alerting the public to bird populations being decimated by Diclofenac, a veterinary pharmaceutical for large farm animals that kills carrion

birds. “Parahawking got Diclofenac banned the year before I arrived,” she smiles. “But we still needed a boots-on-theground education of people about why the ban matters and the importance of bird conservation in general. It’ll take decades, but the avian populations are slowly getting healthy again. We’re proud of that.”

Over the course of several seasons, Isabella’s humanitarian eye, and the eyes of her closest local friends, started to linger on the communities where they flew and landed.

“Our concern for the populace grew slowly, really organically,” she recalls. “We started sitting around at launch and dinner talking about the problems the kids who help pack our wings face, wondering how we could help them. The situation has always been fraught with complications and social issues. Then we started talking about the villages at large.” Around this time, Matt Cone, who had started the KarmaFlights program in the States, brought a beta version to Pokhara. The program design was compelling: Individual tandem pilots would donate the profits from some of their flights directly to the program. A grassroots effort began to take shape.

Tragically, the nascent project found focus in the light of a terrible loss, when one of Isabella’s closest local friends, Prem Bahadur Kunwar, lost his sister to suicide.

LEFT Gabbs, adopted home of the Tarantulas | photo by Jim Okomoto.

TOP At camp | photo by Rick Devlin. PREVIOUS PAGE Sierra wilderness | photo by Paul Clayton.

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“It occurred right after she got married,” Isabella says.

“She was vibrant—a good learner, with the possibility of a good career ahead of her. But, unfortunately, in Nepal, a married woman in the village is often the indentured servant of her mother-in-law. After the marriage, this young woman’s opportunities for personal growth were revoked overnight. She chose to take her own life.

“Prem, being an indefatigable positivist, looked for ways to honor her memory, to keep her legacy alive. He took that tragedy and turned it into hope for girls, by organizing a scholarship fund for young women to pursue higher education. This scholarship could offer them the possibility of being able to earn a living wage, freeing them from being reliant on their husband or other family members. Prem wanted to give them the sense of self-determination essential for every human being.

“We had to help. And that’s how KarmaFlights really got started in Nepal.”

Since that moment, KarmaFlights has set about enriching the tiny mountain villages that form the backdrop for paragliding. “We’ve been fortunate to spend enough time in these places to get to know individual children and families well,” Isabella explains. “So our organization is unique in that we don’t go through any government or bureaucratic channels. Every single dollar goes straight to the communities.”

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Predictably, the scholarships are the heart of the KarmaFlights program. “The time commitment we make to the child varies from one year to 10, depending on the age of the children at the time they are selected, where they are in their schooling, and which path of education they decide to pursue. We hand-pick incredibly hardworking, focused kids,” Isabella explains, “and we say: ‘Congratulations.

You’re set for the next several years of your life, and if you do really well in high school, you get to choose what you want to be when you grow up.’ The focus is on long-term identification of specific children’s needs, as opposed to the giant-paintbrush effect of big organizations. It is profoundly rewarding.

“It wasn’t long before KarmaFlights opened its doors as an official Pokhara booking agency. Profits funneled directly back into the community for various projects—not just education, but also for waste management and food programs. It has been a resounding success. People started noticing that it has become economically beneficial to have KarmaFlights stickers prominently displayed in their offices. Soon, three major local tandem paragliding companies—Frontiers, Open Sky and Parahawking—partnered with KarmaFlights. Each of the pilots in those companies donates one flight per month from his or her salary, with the tandem company matching their donation. It helps them, and it helps us.

LEFT Volunteers constructing the temporary learning center.

“We have been very active in a grassroots, local way, and we really enjoy that,” she smiles. “We’re integrated into the community in Pokhara, and we’ve built a very good reputation in a community that has been scarred by bad aid.”

Everything was going so well.

“Just before the earthquake,” Isabella delivers wryly, “we had reached the point of self-sustainability. It was picking up a lot of steam and growing by leaps and bounds.”

And then the earth moved, and everything—everything— changed.

“Within a day of the first earthquake,” Isabella says, “We called a council. The paragliding, rafting, mountain-biking communities, and sports people all met together in Pokhara to figure out what to do. Larger organizations, as well as concerned friends and family, were insisting that we stay put, that all we would do by acting would be to create more victims and duplicate efforts. We said OK. That sounds logical. We’ll let the professionals handle it. But then we started asking, ‘Who are these professionals?’ Nepal doesn’t have the resources required to take care of its remote communities at the best of times. The world had just fallen apart and monsoon season was soon to be upon us.

“One of the attendees at the unofficial council was Calamity Tim Exely. Calamity Tim, given that moniker because he has the distinction of having lived through several major emergencies around the world, adamantly disagreed with the practical-sounding outsider advice. He stood up and said, ‘Guys, just so you know—no one is coming. Nobody ever comes soon enough.’ And we simply couldn’t believe it. The whole world’s attention was focused here, wasn’t it? There was no chance that immediate help wasn’t on the way. But he had more experience than the rest of us in global disaster response, and he said it often enough that we started to think he might be right.

“So we thought: OK. We’re paraglider pilots. We risk our lives all the time for GoPro footage and acro tricks and national rankings. Why not risk it all for something important? We often land out in these villages and are taken into homes by these families, who treat us with utmost hospitality and kindness. It looked as though it had come down to us to help, and we were not going to let them down.”

“So our motley crew of 18 adventurists, plus a couple of tourist doctors who were roped into the caravan from the streets of Pokhara, saddled up. We jumped onto motorbikes and into vehicles, loaded up some trucks with food, shelter, and medical equipment, and headed out on the road in the direction of the epicenter. Prem had been able to make phone contact with friends who related how bad the situ-

ation was—every home flattened, all food stores destroyed, scores of people injured or missing. We needed to see how far we could go. Rain was hammering the entire locale,” Isabella remembers. “We were confronted with constant aftershocks. We had three motorcycle accidents on the first day.”

The team set up camp at the end of the road, at the point where rubble had toppled the village of Dhoreni and blocked the road, entirely erasing the possibility of further movement.

“Tim was right,” Isabella recalls. “We were the only ones out there.”

Just three hours by car from the administrative center of Nepali disaster relief, the group was entirely alone.

By morning, distraught villagers had already started to stream up. “We began calling our friends in Pokhara,” Isabella continues. “They had already rallied.” Even before the field calls came in, KarmaFlights partners SATHI Nepal and Paddle Nepal had started to set up a supplyand-logistics hub. A friend had cleared the ground floor of his commercial building on the main street in Pokhara, creating an impromptu supply depot, with 30 volunteer staffers—tourists, locals, pilots—administering the inflow and outflow.

The end-of-the-road camp quickly became a hub. The field team called in a procurement list to Pokhara, sometimes several times a day, and tourists who wanted to help were tasked with shopping for supplies, loading and unloading trucks, managing inventory, keeping a careful account of donations and performing a multitude of other daily tasks the effort required. Thus, a near-daily convoy of supplies streamed into the camp, along with a lot of random, unrequested help: some skilled and strong—others, not so much.

“Out in the field, we needed people who were experienced, reliable, and trusted,” Isabella explains. “Unknown entities can create more of a workload. People who don’t understand the chain of command or situational safety are a major liability. We’re talking super-active landslides: falling rubble.

In that first week, though, we didn’t really have the choice.”

The low point became a near-riot, when a walk-up tourist volunteer had to be physically dragged out of the camp. The would-be humanitarian was creating mayhem, handing out supplies at random in the medical camp, causing a feeding frenzy.

As the team ironed out their staffing issues, they had another pressing problem: water. Lots and lots of water. At the same time that the mountain rock had jelled, a large wet-weather pattern set in, dumping cosmic buckets on the

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rubble. Even in the best of times, remote Nepali communities are isolated during monsoon season by water and mudslides; this, of course, was by no measure the best of times.

Every aftershock brought massive plumes of dirt, boulders, rocks and mud cascading from on high. “You hear the tremendous movement of earth even before you see it,” Isabella grimaces. “It’s hard to describe what that does to your nerves.” But, despite the constant washouts, KarmaFlights supplies continued flowing.

During the first three weeks, the KarmaFlights medical team treated hundreds of cases, working from treatment tents with basic supplies. At one point, someone delineated a space for a helipad; the Indian Army pilots gave the KarmaFlights crew their personal numbers to call when they had cases requiring Medevac.

“The Army pilots said later that they loved working with KarmaFlights,” Isabella remembers, “because we knew how to use GPS coordinates, we used reflective foil to draw their eye, we had good radio discipline, and we set up a wind indicator on the landing. These, of course, are skills we developed in the paragliding world.”

As word spread into the mountains, critical cases arrived

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at the end-of-the-road camp on makeshift stretchers, after having been carried for hours. “Our roaming rescue teams gave everything of themselves,” Isabella says. “They would arrive at these cut-off villages after hours of hiking or dirtbiking to deliver medical supplies, shelter and hope. Fifteenhour days were not uncommon. They never failed to amaze me.”

International donations started pouring in, especially from the global paragliding community. Ozone donated $10,000. The North-South UK British Paragliding Cup donated all of their proceeds and the podium prize money.

The tandem pilot crew from Reunion Island donated the full proceeds of one busy day of work.

“The support was staggering,” Isabella says. “It really kept us feeling emotionally supported, beyond just the financial help. It showed us that when we talk about our free-flight community as being a strong one internationally, it’s not just talk, especially when it comes to a crisis!”

About three weeks into the relief work, Isabella and the team started to interface with larger NGOs. “Since we were at the literal end of the road,” Isabella explains, “every single NGO stopped at our camp looking for intel. We flagged

down every passing vehicle (if it didn’t stop on its own, which most of them did) to share community needs assessments, supply distributions, and road and trail conditions.

We had developed a large base of data about the region during our entrenchment there.”

Word spread about KarmaFlights’ effectiveness in the region. One day, a call came in from a team of American climbers, led by extremely experienced high-altitude climber and medic Don Bowie, asking if they could join the team and lend their considerable skills to the effort.

They immediately set about doing reconnaissance on more remote high-altitude villages—areas where even the army had not been willing to go—and reported back to KarmaFlights base camp on satellite phones. These firstcontact reports joined the rest of the situational reports, which KarmaFlights started communicating to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) representatives on a regular basis. Eventually, they asked Isabella to come into their hub, meet them personally, and do a full debrief in person. “Unfortunately,” she laughs, “that conversation went so well that they asked us to stay on and help!”

As it turns out, the WFP didn’t have a standard operating procedure for beyond-the-last-mile relief. Within weeks,

a new program was developed, dubbed “Remote Access Operations” and built into the greater WFP program. The NGO asked the team to help develop a methodology, and the KarmaFlights team made sure it reflected their (very effective) ethos: systematizing, formalizing and facilitating what the local people here would naturally do, which is to use yaks, mules, donkeys and thousands of porters to get supplies into the affected remote areas.

“The wonderful added benefit,” Isabella says, “is that it pumps money directly to the impoverished people who need it most right now, through grassroots job creation in some of the most devastated communities.”

The help, of course, is more than welcome. To listen to Isabella, though, it’s not the helicopters or the yaks or the rice or the bricks that are really going to rebuild Nepal. The truth is much deeper than that.

“Even in the days right after the earthquake, when people were obviously and understandably concerned for their lives, standing next to their destroyed homes, you would see it,” Isabella explains. “It came out of nowhere. We saw a family digging through the shambles of their leveled home when someone walked by on the street and tripped over a piece of rubble. And everyone burst out laughing, including

ABOVE Distribution ceremony for 425 kids in Saurapani.

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the man who’d fallen. And we’d have to laugh along with them. While spending time with Nepalese, you would never have known that their whole world had just slipped off a mountain. They were still dancing and laughing. That’s how I know why the Nepalese are going to be OK: their totally unbreakable spirit. We just have to help get them through this part.”

Now, in late July, things are a little cleaner and a little calmer, but there is still a lot of work left to do. While the KarmaFlights mission has flexed with the requirements of the relief effort, the ethos remains precisely the same: community, community, community.

Landslides have effectively choked off the valley leading into the northern part of the epicenter region, which villagers rely on as their usual supply, transport, and trade route. Some of these landslides are so large and dramatic that they won’t be safely passable for years. People are slowly finding alternative routes out of the mess, and the residents, in conjunction with the Nepal army and the UN and the WFP, are starting trail-rehabilitation projects.

Monsoon season is, clearly, not the right time for trail rehab to be effective, and the approximately 20,000 people who live in the epicenter zone are suffering for it.

KarmaFlights is currently seeking to employ skilled help in this effort: structural engineers and expert trail build-

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ers, specifically, or anyone with extensive experience in trail reconstruction. (If this description fits you, Isabella eagerly requests that you get in touch with her.)

The other vital, pressing need? Somewhat surprisingly, schools.

“School is so essential,” Isabella explains. “It’s the heart of Nepal. They want rice and school. Before even rebuilding their own homes, the communities want the school up and running.

“It took me a while to figure out why,” she continues. “But once I did, it made sense. In rural areas, families often have five or more children. If those kids are not in school, they drain time and resources. The parents understand that the moment they get the kids back into a structured environment, they have time to rebuild. It also helps the families return to an essential rhythm of normalcy, which everyone seems to be searching for as soon as possible. School is central to that.”

In a society with no social support net to catch you when you fall or as you age, your children are your insurance policy. If your kids fall behind in school, it reduces their future employment opportunities. That is a financial risk no rural family can afford to take. In addition to school rebuilding, KarmaFlights has set up scholarships specifically intended for students who have lost a family member

in the disaster.

For most of us, this leaves the obvious question: How can we pilots help?

Donations are, of course, more than welcome, but, if Isabella’s invitation is any indicator, the best show of support is for us pilots to turn up and take to the skies.

“Come to Nepal! Come to Pokhara!,” Isabella pleads.

“Don’t stay away! Pokhara is the main hub for pilots, and you might be surprised to know that it has been almost totally unaffected by the earthquake. It’s still paradise.”

Also, perhaps, surprising: Pilots won’t have to look far for a place to fly. Sano Babu Sunuwar, the Nepali pilot who flew a tandem from Everest, earning National Geographic’s Peoples’ Choice Adventurer of the Year award for the effort, maintains a site about 30 miles south of Pokhara, which wasn’t at all affected by the earthquake.

But it’s not just about casual flying. In February of this year, the PWCA held the Pre World Cup in Nepal, with the intention of holding the main event in the same place.

The earthquake sparked vocal concern about proceeding with the main event at the same site, but Isabella vehemently disagrees with the naysayers.

“I would argue that what happened here is one of the best reasons to stay the course,” Isabella insists. “It is absolutely as safe now to fly as it was before the earthquake, and it

would be huge, economically and emotionally to know that the international community is standing behind us and willing to host a world-level event. I don’t think there could be a better way for the paragliding community to demonstrate support and compassion for Nepal.”

T

he phone connection cuts off, and Isabella texts me that she’ll have to call me back.

A sudden meeting with the local mule mafia has arisen in order to keep the supply chain running, and Isabella has to arbitrate. When my phone finally rings back, she’s laughing. It went well. Everything is going to move ahead as usual.

“They showed up in leather boots and movie-don hair and leather-look jackets with popped collars,” she giggles. “It’s 90 degrees out here!”

You get the feeling, listening to the unfaltering smile transmitted by that voice, that everything is going to be OK. Where there’s a smile and an iron resolve, you clamor to stand behind it.

And then—if you’re like me, at least—you start looking at plane tickets to the East.

If you would like to donate, please go to www.karmaflights.org, or www.thecloudbasefoundation.org.

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Simulation OR

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INCIDENT?

TANDEM REWARDS

by Jeff Shapiro

“Thank you so much! That was, without a doubt, the wildest thing I’ve ever done! Really man…a life changer. Thank you.”

S

ometimes it’s easy to forget the power of a single flight, the power of a single experience in the air under a hang glider or paraglider and the effect it can have on someone. For the uninitiated, a simple “sled ride” tandem flight can alter perceptions of what’s possible and give a taste of something they may have dreamt of doing their entire lives.

Tandem hang gliding and paragliding allow a window into the realm of birds.

A tandem can take a person who’s less inclined to become devoted to the act of becoming a pilot and allow him or

her to have an extraordinary experience they’ll never forget. It can also grab a person who’s curious as to whether they could learn or even enjoy the sensation of flight and make them a believer.

For me, tandems are a way to give back to the sport that’s given me so much. Many of my students discovered that they could, in fact, “do this,” after their first tandem. Each time I land with a participant whose wide-eyed and smiling face exclaims “Thank you!” I’m always brought back to the first flights when I learned to believe in magic.

Along with sharing the experience of flight, a significant benefit of tandem flight is, of course, instruction. I must admit that as much as I like introducing people to the sport, I find instructional tandems to be a valuable way to teach new students what they MUST learn in order to continue their progression toward being safe and competent pilots.

Flying tandem discovery flights is fun and introducing people to free flight is productive and sometimes helpful toward shaping perspective, but tandem flights shine in providing the pilot an excellent opportunity to have one-onone instruction in the air with his or her student.

LEFT Paul Royce’s tandem student laughing her way in to the landing zone | photo Paul Royce. ABOVE Jeff Shapiro flying with a passenger over Missoula, Montana | photo Jeff Shapiro.

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“Each time I land with a passenger whose wide-eyed and smiling face exclaims ‘Thank you!’ I’m always brought back to the first flights when I learned to believe in magic.”

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I’d like to outline for you not only the general methods of instruction used by many tandem pilots, but also how to get involved in providing tandem flights.

If helping to promote safe practice in hang gliding and paragliding is something that interests you, becoming a tandem pilot and learning how to share the “experience of flight” may be for you.

First and foremost, if you want to become a qualified tandem pilot, you need to attend a clinic. There are a few tandem administrators around the country who offer instruction regarding all of the procedures required to insure consistently safe practice. Those tandem administrators can be found by visiting the USHPA.aero website.

There are two basic categories of tandem pilot: T-1 rated pilots and T-3 rated pilots.

The T-2 rating was eliminated this year after it was determined to be redundant and an underused step between the two.

A T-1 rating allows a trained pilot to fly with other USHPA-rated pilots (refer to SOP 12-12). Basically, a T-1 rating allows two appropriately rated pilots to fly together, in tandem, for recreation. These flights fall under the category of “flights other than for training.” T-1s may also utilize this rating to gain the experience and flight numbers necessary to earn a T-3 rating, by practicing with participants who, as pilots themselves, tend to be more relaxed, experienced, and aware of what to expect than a new student and/or the participant “off the street.”

T-3 rated pilots, in contrast, are qualified to train people who are not current or rated pilots. The only requirement is that the student or participant must sign up as a 30-day member of the USHPA before the first flight takes place. These 30-day membership forms can be ordered through the USHPA website by qualified and appropriately rated pilots. I usually explain to my

LEFT Sharing flight is as good as it gets for Paul Royce and passenger | photo Paul Royce.

ABOVE Tandem over Tarkio, Montana | photo Jeff Shapiro.

participants, students or not, that the whether or not he or she wants to learn. membership is required for support of If they are hooked after the flight, site acquisition and site retention and to I simply have them sign up for their secure the insurance policy afforded by annual membership when the 30 days of being a member. The explanation that the temporary membership expire, and “we wouldn’t be able to fly these regulatI discount the price of that membership ed sites, often privately owned, without from the cost of their lesson package. the land owners’ feeling that we’re a Each instructor can decide how he or self-reliant and responsible organization” she wants to handle this process. The usually results in their agreeing to sign beauty of free flight is that there’s never the membership form with a supportive “the” way, only “a” way. Whatever allows smile. entry into our sport and brings people Often, my students have already to the world of free flight is a good thing. joined the USHPA during the early Tandem flights in a paraglider make phases of their training program, which it possible for the student, wearing his or makes it unnecessary to fill out a her own harness in front of the instructemporary rating form before their first tor, to be handed the brakes and, in real instructional tandem flight. I do find time, taught about weight shift, brake the 30-day membership useful when I’m application, coordinated turns, advanced either doing a tandem with a particimaneuvers, landing approaches, and an pant who simply wants to experience unlimited number of other essential the sport of hang gliding a single time flight skills. Additionally, I believe the or when someone is on the fence as to opportunity for the instructor and stu-

dent to discuss weather, examine launch conditions, and go through all of the pre-flight rituals that will build a strong foundation is as valuable as the piloting skills learned during the flight.

Tandems under a paraglider can be accomplished with a payout winch or scooter tow system but, most commonly, they are done by foot launching from a mountain. Whichever method is used, the demonstration of a successful pre-flight process and methods for launching teaches cornerstone skills that can, to a greater extent, be controlled and reiterated by an instructor who is actually present. The instructor is able to physically assure the flight remains safe in the early stages of the new pilot’s development. In my opinion, this leads seamlessly into solo flight, where instruction is offered through a radio.

As in paragliding, tandems in a hang glider take to flight via foot launch or a variety of tow methods. The tandem setup and orientation can differ with each method. For instance, during a

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foot-launch tandem flight, the pilot is centered in the control frame with his or her participant standing beside and slightly behind him/her. I actually have two handles sewn into my harness on either side, on each side of my rib cage.

My participanting co-pilot is told to reach behind my back and grab the “far side” handle with his right hand, while with the left, he is told to grab the handle closest to him. I explain that there are three rules to follow: First, never grab the glider. Always keep your hands on these handles. It’s a weight-shift aircraft, and if you grab the glider, it will hinder my ability to control the wing, putting us in a dangerous place. Next, when we decide to launch, run until we’re running into the air.

If you run faster than I do, you’ll run me over. If you run slower than I do, I’ll have to drag you off the hill. It’s a dance; I lead, you follow. And, finally, listen to what I say. Our heads are close together and it’s surprisingly quiet and peaceful up there, so if you have a question or I need you to do something, don’t worry about it, I’ll just ask. And you ask…. it’s all good.”

When performing a foot-launch tandem from a mountain, I hang a person slightly higher than where I, the pilot in command, hang in the control frame. Two things are achieved by this positioning: First, the participant will often come off the ground before I do during the launch run. This allows me to take the last few “digging” steps while making roll corrections. The new free-flight enthusiast has an easier time reaching the handle on the opposite side of my harness and, since we are both hanging from the same hook-in point, if he/she is slightly higher than I am in the control frame, we don’t get “hammocked” together quite as badly. Also, I approach and land on my (our) feet if I’m flying with a student. But if I’m flying with a first-timer or less experienced participant, I choose to land on the wheels. It removes all chance of twisted ankles, knees, or worse. When landing on wheels, if the participant is hanging

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LEFT TOP Jeff Shapiro readies for a foot-launch tandem in Missoula, Montana | photo Jeff Shapiro.

slightly higher than I am, only the front of my harness slides on the grass, allowing them typically to be hanging safely high enough not to make contact with the ground during the rollout.

The one disadvantage to this orientation is that it’s extremely difficult to “hand over the controls.” If I’m lower in the control frame, it feels almost impossible to adequately get out of the way to allow him/her to fly the glider. During a flight in which my goals include teaching through the act of turning over the “pilot-in-command” role, I hook the student into the glider at my height, so we are truly side-by-side. This way, I can hand over the basetube, giving him

or her some semblance of what it’s like to be “pilot in command.” As I stated earlier…just “a” way, not “the” way.

In my opinion, one of the best ways to learn how to fly a hang glider during a tandem flight is in the “over/under” orientation. This type of flight position is achieved with a specially built tandem harness used only during an aero tow or similar launch type. When flying with an over/under harness, the student can be in the lower harness, basically in the same position he/she would be if flying solo. The instructor is above and there for guidance, instruction, and advice, but can remain hands off or, if necessary, help to control the glider.

When using this method during graduation flights, the instructor can hang silently, allowing the students to fly the entire flight on their own and, yet, still be there “ just in case.” Many of the aerotow flight parks around the US use this method quite successfully. Having flown this way, I find it to be a highly effective method for turning out a safe new pilot, because it allows the new pilot to gain experience while feeling secure because of the presence of an instructor.

This allows them to fly in a manner that is nearly identical to a first solo.

If you are interested in learning to use tandem flights as an instructional tool, the best first step to take toward earning your tandem rating is to find an administrator, ask questions, and sign up for a tandem clinic. The rest will fall into place. If you’re anything like me, you won’t be sorry.

In 2011, my friend and professional photographer, Krystle Wright, was inspired to shoot beautiful images of the

famed Karakorum Range in Northern Pakistan. The images she captured while being a tandem participant during a series of epic paraglider flights reveal the beauty of the region, but the feeling she described during her experience can’t be brought back as an image, only in words.

During a conversation we had about free flight and that expedition in general, what she said struck me as being the essence of what we do, what we have the power to share.

“My heart rate started to jump when we launched… It’s flight without boundaries; you’re not restricted as you are inside an aircraft. You get to smell the air, feel it on your face, truly feel the experience of flying…like a bird, not like a person, like a bird, you know?”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

See Krystle Wright in the May 2015 issue of this magazine

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MOROCCAN

PARAGLIDING

SAFARI

by John W. Robinson

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LEFT

La Belle Vue launch, Tizi n’Test Pass.

T

he labyrinths of Marrakech draw us in. We soon find ourselves lost among the souks of spice vendors and musicians and tin- and silversmiths and yarn- and fabric merchants. The rich aromas in these alleyways alone are enough to intoxicate one with an essence of exotica. Thirty dirham to an enthusiastic seller buy us delicious date-and-pistachio creations akin to milkshakes. Our wanderings lead us to the famous sprawling square of Jemaa el Fna, where the happy chaos of the evening is building. So much distraction; workers setting up stalls for evening meals, water sellers strolling in elaborate outfits, venders of potions for any conceivable ailment, dancers and jugglers. It threatens to be a late night, but I’m tired; I hope to be in bed in our tidy riad, guesthouse, well before my personal excitement saturation point is exceeded.

A few days later: The hustle of Marrakech, its energetic characters, and its call to prayer are but memories. I’m aboard my trusty Advance Epsilon, soaring in the smooth quiet of the evening, 3000 feet above the small Berber settlement of M’zouda. This is my third flight of the day, launching from the site named after the town, and this one will take me into twilight, I’m sure.

I’m sharing the sweet air and sublime light with my three mates. We’re spread out over the plain that stretches north from the front range of the Atlas Mountains. One of our band, Dicken, a pilot from the UK, has headed east crosscountry; he’s going to see how far towards our guesthouse in Agguegour he can get before dark. The rest of us are content to boat over the town, marveling at the birds-eye view of the labyrinth of walls spanning the town of M’zouda.

Growing darkness sees us landing in the wadi landing zone, observed by a few timid shepherds and some curious children. French is my best bet for a common language, knowing slightly more of it than I do of Arabic or Berber, so I offer salutations accordingly. We’re ever cognizant of the delicate nature of our intrusion into the simple Berber way of life; we try to be generous with our smiles and kindness and to show the utmost respect for their culture and traditions.

We try to make friends, and, thanks to the easygoing nature of the Moroccans, we are soon sharing laughs with them. In the dark on the road an hour later we finally locate Dicken, who stretched his flight to 27 km and promptly made 50 new friends upon landing next to a roadside market.

I’m on a paragliding safari in Morocco, headed by Englishman Toby Colombe of Passion Paragliding. The rest of our contingent consists of Jiri from the Czech Republic, Tex our kilted modern Scottish warrior, Dicken and friend Karen from England, and James and I, both hailing from the

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USA. Toby’s Moroccan assistant and comedian, Mourad, also joins us, entertaining us throughout our waking hours through antics expressed, amid fits of laughter, in French, English, Arabic, and Berber.

I awake to the scuffling of chickens and pigs stirring with the dawn, at the Ayatal Gite, a guesthouse run by kind and savvy businesswoman Latifah. After last night’s amazing feast, featuring a sturdy stoneware tajine piled with a perfection of meat and vegetables, I had stumbled to my bunk, passed out, and dreamed in Technicolor.

“Today is looking rather good,” our leader Toby pronounced over breakfast of hot flatbread heaped with fresh butter and jam. It turns out to be another stellar day of soaring M’zouda, flying over textured canyons and rocky spines, exploring deeper in towards the snowy High Atlas peaks to the south. Morocco’s highest peak, Jbel Toubkal, at 4167m, prominently fractures the horizon.

Our maniacally happy driver Mourad is at the wheel of Toby’s “Passionwagon,” and our little crew is headed 300 km to the southwest coast of Morocco in search of some coastal flying and yet more exotic terrain and culture. After a break and a pot of their ubiquitous mint tea in the medina (old town) of hot, dusty, and colorful Agadir, we’re soon rolling over the dunes of Sousa Massa National Park to a sea-cliff flying site known as Tiznit. Because the wind direction is a

little cross, our flights there are short scratchers, followed by landing on the beach a couple hundred meters below and hiking back up for more. I somehow manage to load my wing with copious amounts of sand and spend part of the afternoon methodically emptying it out.

The next few days we spend along the coast, based at the cool town of Mirlift. This remote settlement has been attracting French hippies for decades to live among the locals and surf, fish, and just chill. And, in recent years, to paraglide. In Mirlift we stay in a small hotel that caters to pilots who apparently trickle in from all over the world; there’s even a paragliding mural on the otherwise whitewashed exterior of the building. And the fresh seafood—crab legs, for instance—piled high upon our plates in the cozy restaurant is ever so delicious. Tired after a very full day, I feel as if I’m melting into the table...it’s bedtime. Toby makes sure we get our fill, and not just of the delectable food.

Mid-morning the following day finds us winding up a rough track to a coastal site called Legzira. Launch is a mile or so inland and about 1000 feet above the seaside LZ. Low clouds on launch keep us earthbound for a while, giving us time to explore ruins of ancient dwellings scattered across the ridge. Presently the clouds lift enough to allow for some short exploratory flights, but not enough sunshine gets through to really activate the place. When we gather in the

M’zouda launch. OPPOSITE, TOP TO BOTTOM Mourad and friend. James receiving advice from a friendly local. Moroccan milkshakes. Tajine, a classic Moroccan feast. Road sign, High Atlas Mountains. Photos by John W. Robinson.

ABOVE

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LZ for some sandwiches and a pow-wow, Toby suggests that we head north to check out another coastal site called Eagle’s Nest, which has been carefully developed for visiting paraglider pilots by an Englishman named Nigel and is purportedly top notch.

The launch is smooth and spacious, and food and guesthouse accommodations are right there. The flying consists of a mile-long rocky ridge overlooking the azure Atlantic a few miles away. The LZ is beside the paved road that leads to launch, with quick turnarounds guaranteed. Our happy little crew enjoys a delightful late afternoon and evening of soaring the buoyant air of the beautiful ridge. By the time the wind direction goes cross and deposits us in the LZ, we’ve had enough...a full day for sure. One other thing we learn about Eagle’s Nest is that often a local character hangs out around the LZ and tries to kiss the pilots when they land. Kissy Man, they call him. Watch out.

In the days that follow, we continue to absorb and relish the Moroccan experience—the free flying, of course, but also the amazing juxtaposition and melding of elements that make the country so unique. The people and the culture, being a wild mixture of Africa-ness, and Arab sensibilities, along with a French and Spanish influence—all of it is in-your-face delightful. And the climate and topography are full of variety, from the soft sands and rocky headlands of the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts to the fringes of the mighty Sahara, to the rarified world of the High Atlas Mountains; it’s all there, mesmerizing and holding one close.

We’re packed in the Passionwagon headed past Agadir and up the Souss River Valley, passing through fragrant groves of orange and arden trees, our destination being the High Atlas Mountains. On the way, we stop at the offthe-beaten-path city of Taroudant and explore the medina, where I somewhat satisfy my hunger with what I believe to be an onion and sardine sandwich.

Later, as we climb higher into the mountains, the road and weather conditions get more interesting. The wind comes in strong from the south, the road drops off into the abyss, much closer to my portside van window than I would prefer. But our driver Mourad, besides being an accomplished pilot, is a very safe and attentive driver. We reach the ramparts of a fortress-like old guesthouse “La Belle Vue,” just short of the 2100m Tizi n’Test pass at sundown.

As we move into the old place for the night, Toby remarks, “They just got electricity up here a few months ago.” As in, for the first time. “It’s a shame in a way,” he continues. “It was really rather quaint before, with the oil lamps and wood stove.” Well, believe me, it’s still rather quaint, and the expansive view out over the plains to the south, with the Anti Atlas range just visible across the abyss in the waning light, is amazing!

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RIGHT

Surfing the ridge at Eagle’s Nest | photo by John W. Robinson

We had checked out the normal LZ on our way up the mountain. It’s about 1000 meters below us and out of sight in the dark. “There’s the launch,” Toby gestures, pointing at a nearby patch of mountainside a little smoother than the gnarly scree that surrounds it. “Looks good!” we chime in together, looking forward to the possibility of flying tomorrow.

I get off first, and now I’m climbing in weak lift above the guesthouse. The sun strains to penetrate the hazy cloud cover, and does manage to pop out full force now and then.

It’s starkly beautiful. I see Tex is launching, and I know that Dicken will soon follow. In our preflight briefing this morning, Toby suggested that we make for conservative and modest flights, since he expects conditions to deteriorate soon, becoming overcast and blown out. And in the remote High Atlas Mountains I’m really not in any mood to fool around in sketchy air. Besides, I’m chicken, and I’m on vacation!

After 40 minutes of fine flying with the boys, I sense the air getting a little less friendly; the morning’s flying is shutting down. That’s paragliding. But I’m not in a hurry as I make my way out over the LZ, relishing the amazing feel of flying this spectacular place. I’m intrigued by the view of the small settlements below, each its own verdant oasis in clefts between the dry brownish ridges of the lower reaches of the high peaks. Sorting out the landing approach, avoiding the biggest of the resident bushes, I safely land and am soon joined by my comrades, not to mention a few kids that, Tex observes, “appear out of freakin’ nowhere!”

Later, we drive north, slowly winding through the High Atlas passes and gradually dropping down the other side. We pass through mystical places like Moulay Ibrahim and on to Aguegour, on the outskirts of which I’m stunned by the scene of expansive fields of barley, lush and waving green in the late-afternoon light. Against a backdrop of snow-capped peaks, colorfully dressed women harvest shocks of the grain, blades glinting in the amber gold light.

The trip winds down. We fly M’zouda again, dialing in its house thermals and easy XC routes. We drink endless cups of mint tea. We explore Tin Mal, an 11th-century mosque.

We share more meals and laughs and moments, both raucous and pensive.

On one of the last nights of the trip, we have a cookout high on a chalky rock ridge under a bulging moon. We’re joined by Berber shepherds who play their strange guitars and sing softly and lyrically deep into the night. I’m mesmerized, almost frozen still in this place that seems tonight to be absolutely timeless.

Morocco, I’ll be back.

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THINKING

OUTSIDE

THE

BLOCKS

Part XIX : Sudden Reversals

by Dennis Pagen

H

ere we go again with flying circumstances outside the ordinary.

Last month I promised an analysis of rolling-upside-down experiences.

And I’ll keep my promise. But first, I would like to address and undress a couple more common situations. These are going-over-the-falls and locking out in a thermal. All of these situations call for instant control reversals at times, which is our this-month’s theme.

NIAGARA FOR PILOTS Going-over-the-falls is a term invented

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in hang gliding to succinctly describe the feeling and action of passing headlong through the boundary of a strong thermal into the sink alongside the thermal and suddenly getting pitched downward (into a dive). The pitch rotation can be mild, with only a dozen feet or so lost in the dive, or it can be anything up to a vertical dive (and beyond) with decades of lost feet.

I have never tumbled—knock on lumber—whether by defense, luck or clean living. I’m sure I have been close a time or two, flying the big air in the

West, but mostly I have flown defensively in various ways. First, I tend to maintain good gliding speed between thermals for maneuvering reasons and to add to pitch stability (body forward).

Second, when thermals are strong I maintain steep banks within them in order to avoid catching the sharp thermal edge and to reduce the chance that I wander over the edge and get rolled. Finally, I am aware of (and have practiced) the necessity to move my body forward when I encounter a bolus of boisterous air that tries to dive or

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tumble me.

This last point is what is apropos to this month’s subject. The normal reaction of most pilots when their glider goes into a dive is to push out (move the base bar forward to rotate the nose upwards). That’s my reaction, too. But at some point, if the glider doesn’t respond to the pitch input, and the nose-down rotation continues, it is important to change the push-out input to a pull-in input. When do we do this control reversal, and how much do we do? Generally, the speed of the nose-down rotation determines the proper reaction. If the pitch-down is fairly slow, a quick push-out should fix things. If the glider doesn’t react immediately, you should reverse the control and bring the bar in to ride out the dive. Your glider will pick up speed and its pitch stability will pull the nose up and then you adjust to normalflight bar position. Note, if it is general turbulence or strong thermals that have caused the dive, you may consider “normal” flight airspeed to be good

maneuvering speed, not minimum-sink airspeed or even best-glide airspeed.

There are three questions concerning general control input during pitch excursions. These are: when, how much and how fast to pull in. If the glider experiences a rapid nose-down impulse from the air, you should pull in immediately to maximize your glider’s (static) pitch stability. If you are caught with your glider nearly nose-down vertical and you are pushed out, you are in a most unstable configuration and may be in danger of continuing to rotate into a tumble. That being said, as we discussed last month, many pilots who have tumbled report that the event occurs so fast that they had no time to make any sort of control. But many times going over-the-falls is a slower process so you do have time to make the right controls.

It is a bit difficult to quantify when a pitch control should be pull-in rather than push-out. In active air there are always little pitch and roll effects that we correct for, trying to always keep

the wings level and the airspeed constant when gliding. But in my experience, any time I feel the bar forced back hard by the air, or I feel my weight go to about half a G (it is one G in normal smooth flight), I pull in.

How much control you put in is less critical, but for slower pitch changes, putting the base bar at your chest or just below your sternum is appropriate. However, in strong conditions and a fast pitch-down, you should pull in until the bar is at your belly button or as low as you can get it. Along with this control, you should be holding on to the bar as tightly as possible. Hold this position until the glider begins to pull out and then ease the bar out slowly to resume level flight. A fast return of the bar to normal flight position in a steep dive may stall you in a very high nose-up position, which is dangerous in itself. You can practice the reaction of your glider to dives, pull-ins and pullouts by putting it in a sharp dive and trying to ease it up carefully into level flight. Start with a gentle dive and work

your way up to steeper dives.

How fast we pull in refers to how rapidly we move the bar from our normal flying position to where we want it for security. It has been debated that pulling in real fast may exacerbate the dive by rotating the nose down significantly. However, by experimenting a little with your glider, you can see that a quick pull-in from minimum-sink position to around your waist doesn’t change the angle of attack rapidly because of the inertia of the glider and the air mass it is hauling around. So, even a rapid pull-in will not cause too much immediate rotation and when the glider moves out of the offending air and reestablishes normal airflow in a dive you will be in the safest position.

We should point out that flying slowly in rough conditions leaves you no options but to pull in if you get hit with a down rotation. Flying slowly also leaves you vulnerable to inadvertent stall, which may be more dangerous in rough air than dives (and, of course, leads to unexpected dives). Also, any time you find yourself pushing out to stop a dive caused by the air, be ready to do a quick reversal if the pitch down rotation continues or is very rapid to begin with. Your reactions and actions are all-important to pitch stability safety.

THE RELUCTANT 360 There are two types of reluctant 360s we’ll cover. The first is when you hit some lift on one wing or the other and try to turn into it. But, as sometimes happens, your glider resists the roll input and may even try to roll the other way. If you are well clear of the terrain, it is almost always better to try to pull in for more maneuvering speed and continue the roll input towards the desired direction (towards the lift). If you decide to go with the flow and turn the opposite way (away from the lift) to make a 270 and hope to get back to the

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thermal, you will suffer a much greater loss of altitude and often can’t even find the thermal again if it is a movable type.

Consider yourself “relucked.”

There is one problem with the desired plan: When a wing is “locked out” and you are already giving it a strong roll control, it is hard to pull in much to increase your airspeed. If you try to pull in, you often reduce the roll input because you don’t have the same leverage for roll that you do when the bar is in the comfortable shoulder position. If nothing else changes, the best course is to hold the roll control while trying to pull in as much as possible and wait for the glider to eventually respond.

Sometimes a hard up-gust on a wing tip turns you and puts you in a steep dive at the same time (lifting air on a tip produces an upward force behind the glider’s aerodynamic center, so it causes a pitching down as well as a roll). In this case the best procedure is to let the glider build up speed for control and then reverse the induced roll to head back into the lifting area while giving your gumption a good talking to.

The main thing to note is that when the air is this active, it is important to carry extra speed for control so you do not get knocked too far out of alignment.

However, every once in a while a rogue thermal or swirl can tip you, no matter how much speed you are carrying. So the best plan is to be prepared with the immediate and proper response.

The second reluctant 360 is more critical. This case happens when you are trying to thermal close to the terrain. Most often this situation occurs when the lift is light and you are scratching. Light lift usually means weak thermals, but it can mean thermals that are small and broken.

Even if they are weak, usually close to the terrain they have some burbling or variation in the core as they are in the process of consolidating. Also, down low a thermal may be small, so it’s more common to teeter on the edge.

For these reasons there are times when you begin a thermal turn and the glider doesn’t respond, or part way around it gets reluctant to continue.

The worst-case scenario is when you are making a pass near the slope and encounter lift. You turn away from the hill and climb, but at the 180-degree point (when you are going back the other way) you have to make a decision to continue the turn into a 270, then 360 to stay in the thermal lift. Sometimes the glider hesitates or resists the continued roll at some point past the 180-degree position (see figure 1). If that event happens, you need to make a decision to try to pull on some speed and input harder roll control to force the glider around, or to suddenly reverse the turn to go away from the hill.

It is hard to give a definitive game plan here, but in general that proverbial

oz. of prevention is important. Gain a bit of extra control speed before you reach the 180 position to help prevent a lockout. Also, a steeper bank helps keep the speed up and reduces the chance that an upward surge of air on one wing can alter your roll. Both extra airspeed and steeper turns may increase your sink rate, but if you lock out and crash into the hill you may never need sink rate again. Also, it should be noted that even a safe, inefficient 360 gets you up better than a figure-eight pattern, in most situations. In any case, you can pay off the airspeed as soon as you clear the hill on the backside of the turn (as shown in the figure). With this plan you mostly avoid the sticky wing.

But the crux of the matter here is when you should struggle to continue around the turn and when you should reverse. In my experience (and current interest in being as safe a pilot as possible) I find that any roll resistance before the 180-point can be dealt with by force. Pull in and roll hard. If the resistance happens after the 180-point, my plan is to reverse the roll and get

away from the hill. Of course, all this depends on how much the glider is resisting the roll and for how long as well as how much clearance you have from the hill. Generally you have to make a snap decision. There is not a lot of time to assess the situation and dilly-dally.

That’s why thinking about this matter beforehand prepares you to do it right when it comes up. That’s why we write about it. But no matter what, no pilot should be scratching in close with active air until they have had plenty of thermal experience well away from the terrain, plenty of familiarity with the glider in all situations, and lots of practice trying to unstick a wing as well as doing a quick roll reversal. You can do the latter by trying it up high when you are thermaling and a surge resists your continued turn. Then you will know intimately well your glider's response, the lag time and the altitude loss. It is many factors such as these that make up expert flying skills and judgment.

A ROLL OF THE DICEY I have never tumbled—I keep repeating

that mantra—but I have been unwillingly upside down—twice. The action in both cases was not a pitch excursion, but a rollover. A (non-intentional) rollover occurs when a wing gets lifted so hard that you roll past a 90-degree bank angle. This unsettling effect is usually due to entering a swirling mass of air with an axis more or less aligned with your keel, caused by a strong thermal pushing upward and roiling the air immediately adjacent, as shown in figure 2.

It can happen that you get too close to the edge of a sharp thermal and get one wing in the down air, while one remains in the lift, but this event usually just tilts you up to 90 degrees and sends you diving. In either case, there is a specific reversal procedure necessary for safety.

As we see in the figure, as the wing lifts, it is the natural tendency of the pilot to high-side the basetube to counteract the roll. That’s fine and proper, but as the roll continues to a 90-degree bank and more, being on the high side of the wing is conducive to it rolling over to flop on its back, as shown. The safest emergency recovery procedure is shown

in figure 3. Here we see the pilot immediately go to the [low side] of the base tube as soon as the roll nears 90 degrees.

At the same time, you should pull in for speed if you didn’t have enough when the severe roll occurred. You will then enter a slipping dive, even if the roll continues. The glider’s yaw stability will point the nose in the same direction as the airflow, the pitch stability will kick in and the glider will pull out of the dive.

Then you have to pull in more as shown to prevent it from coming up to a severe attitude. When it’s all over you’ll have time to swallow your heart and readjust your family values.

Any other control, or hesitation, will put you in danger of ending up with your glider on its back and you flailing around like an upended June bug. This one is hard to prepare for other than thinking about the right procedure, visualizing it and making it happen when necessary. Of course, most pilots will never get knocked upside down, but as mentioned, I have been twice—once

1. Publication Title

near Dinosaur, Colorado, and once in the East at a local site. It can happen. In fact, from my experience, as many pilots roll upside down as tumble (I’ve seen it happen twice to other pilots I was sharing a thermal with).

Now here’s a little secret: The reason I was able to instantly do the right control was because I am quite familiar with rolling past vertical in my glider.

Yes, I did extreme wingovers in my earlier, younger, bolder days. I will never advocate that any pilot learn or do aerobatics—they compromise safety and glider integrity—but they did teach me proper reactions (anyone contemplating aerobatics should read the accident reports, look at the YouTube videos of what goes wrong, and then take instruction from the few pilots who know what they are doing). If you are familiar with airplane aerobatics, you may think of the whole maneuver as a split S, without using a rudder.

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I

n summary of this extreme event, it is of utmost importance to never be on the high side once your glider gets to 90 degrees of bank. Remember the lag we talked about earlier? It applies to roll also. With experience you can tell if the glider is slowing in roll, and may know that it is not going to go to 90 degrees. However, in my two experiences the rollover happened quickly and I was not assessing the situation, I was merely reacting in the manner I internalized from the past. That’s why we should internalize all control reactions in as many situations as we can imagine. Think about it (with your eyes closed).

From all the above we see there are several scenarios where we are called upon to make control reversals. There may be more than the three that I have covered here, but these are the big ones.

Keep your flying on an even keel and be prepared to flip the switch.

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I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or civil sanctions (including civil penalties).

PARAGLIDING

RTG RGN NAME

STATE RATING OFFICIAL

RTG RGN NAME

STATE RATING OFFICIAL

P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1

1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Terri Eubanks Katherine Bush Andrew Wilson Dylan Henryson Rick Seeger Kevin Dale Danny Cox Don Anderson

OR CA CA CA CA CA CA CA

Kevin Lee Jeffrey Greenbaum Wallace Anderson Mitchell Neary Harry Sandoval Wallace Anderson Justin Brim Jesse Meyer

UT UT UT UT CO CO CO ID

P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-1 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2

3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 6 6 6 6 7 8 8 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 11 11 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4

Alex Clappsy Sarah Purcell Alexander Gray Joseph Teng Cori Hach Brian Kurtz Timothy Hall Jonathan Leusden Thom Allen Axel Lunbeck Cruise Quenelle Brian Laird Erling Furseth Magada Piasecka Ho Shiu Kei Tang Siu Tong Hakki Sumerkan Michael Freedman Charlie Hutchinson Joseph Schad Oscar Barbosa Steve Vaneerden Michael Lange Kyne Marshall Michelle Sciumbato Jonathan Spengler Dan Thomson Colton Parker Mollie Starks Douglas Mathes Paul Davis Erin Riley Terri Eubanks Greg Stewart Shawn Collier Monty Worthington Michea Westbrook Marcus Crane Katharine Thomas Jonathan Thomas Terry (adam) Renwald Mike Lee Dustin Rice Dennis Kreider Isaac Cunningham Scott Grigsby Alan Eustace Hamza Aftab Dylan Henryson Dirk Hemza Paige Chen Hoc Hua Alexander Ponomarev Timothy Gundlach Sarah Purcell Jake Tiffany Bret Fugate Jens Mueller Joseph Teng Stephen Schmidt Nathan Goodall Eva Malikoua Brian Kurtz Steven Nevels Nick Constantine

CA CA CA CA CO UT CO UT UT UT CO

Danielle Kinch Rob Sporrer Christopher Grantham Christopher Grantham Timothy Meehan Patrick Johnson Ted Smith Stacy Whitmore Jonathan Jefferies Michele Mccullough Jonathan Jefferies Jordan Neidinger Patrick Johnson Steven Yancey Ma Chiu Kit Ma Chiu Kit Jaro Krupa John Dunn Maren Ludwig Stephen Mayer Terry Bono Rick Sharp Jonathan Jefferies David Hanning David Hanning David Hanning Rob Sporrer Marc Chirico Matt Henzi Jake Schlapfer Denise Reed Jon Malmberg Kevin Lee Denise Reed Marc Chirico Kent Hudson Scott Amy Chris Santacroce Jake Schlapfer Jake Schlapfer Richard Kennedy Fred Morris Jesse Meyer Brian Kerr Brian Kerr Jesse Meyer Jeffrey Greenbaum Jesse Meyer Mitchell Neary Jesse Meyer Jesse Meyer William Laurence Danielle Kinch Danielle Kinch Rob Sporrer Danielle Kinch Jerome Daoust Jerome Daoust Christopher Grantham Kent Hudson Ted Smith Bill Heaner Patrick Johnson Granger Banks Denise Reed

P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-2 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-3 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4 P-4

IN MA VT VA PA PA GA TN TN AL TX TX OR AK AK WA OR WA WA AK AK WA AK AK CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA NM CO AZ UT CO CO

4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 6 7 8 9 9 9 9 9 9 10 11 11 12 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 6 6 6 6 9 9 9 10 12 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 5 5 9 10 10 11

Jonathan Leusden Thom Allen Sergio Jijon Axel Lunbeck Jeffrey Parrot Bradford Kellogg Cruise Quenelle Joss Martin Brian Laird Jason Leus Chris Lee Erling Furseth Jim Bakker Heen Cheung Kevin Hung James Hayes Hakki Sumerkan Matthew Siegel Joseph Schad Brian Stempin Joe Anderson Steve Vaneerden Sebrand Warren Mike Wear Michael Lange Dan Thomson Paul Gela Miguel Verduga Matthew Potter James Macdonald Dean Dyrr Aaron King Arnaud Le Hors Solomon Lee Dylan Henryson Jenny Todorov Bryan Hughes Steve Simar Kirill Belyayev Robert Schmitt Marc Christensen Matthew Picard Jason Joseph Doug Lidiak Adam Krum Kyle Mccutchen Tina Swan Neal Partrick Charles Vadnais Lindsay Matush Erling Furseth Serdar Durna Reza Saeedi Sepehr Michael Odaniel Maury Primrose Riley Conley Nickolas Lopez Christopher Lazzaro Evan Mathers James Macdonald Andreas Krause Aaron King Christian Spannhoff Steven Wright David Koski Michael Rapp Roman Lisovoy James Stuart Patrick Baderkhani Thomas Martin Tommy Beeson Ashish Bhattarai Joshua Goldstein

MO

MO IN CT VA PA PA PA KY MD GA TX TX NY CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CA CO NM UT UT NM CO UT CO CO WY MO

VA MD MD NC NY AK CA CA CA CA HI CA CA CA WY PA GA TN TX

Stacy Whitmore Jonathan Jefferies William Purden Jr Michele Mccullough Granger Banks Granger Banks Jonathan Jefferies Lane Lamoreaux Jordan Neidinger Justin Brim Marc Radloff Patrick Johnson Chris Santacroce Alex Tang Chi Vi Marc Radloff Jaro Krupa Etienne Pienaar Stephen Mayer Terry Bono Terry Bono Rick Sharp Jonathan Potter Terry Bono Jonathan Jefferies Rob Sporrer Kay Tauscher Terry Bono Daniel Ribas Mitchell Neary Fred Morris Kim Galvin Jesse Meyer Fred Morris Mitchell Neary Gabriel Jebb Gabriel Jebb Gabriel Jebb Kay Tauscher T Lee Kortsch Stephen Mayer Chris Santacroce Chris Santacroce Gregory Kelley Nathan Pertuset Stephen Mayer Stephen Mayer James (matt) Combs Jerome Daoust David Prentice Patrick Johnson Murat Tuzer Murat Tuzer Philip Russman Patrick Johnson Chris Santacroce Heath Woods Paul Hogan Jerome Daoust Mitchell Neary Jeffrey Greenbaum Kim Galvin Rob Sporrer Gabriel Jebb Rob Sporrer Jerome Daoust Jerome Daoust James (matt) Combs Murat Tuzer Nick Crane David Hanning David Hanning Blake Pelton

HANG GLIDING RTG RGN NAME

H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-1 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-2 H-3 H-3 H-3 H-3 H-3 H-3 H-3 H-3 H-3 H-3 H-3 H-3 H-4 H-4 H-4 H-5

1 2 3 6 8 9 10 10 10 11 11 12 12 12 12 12 2 4 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 10 12 12 12 12 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 5 5 10 11 3 10 10 11

STATE RATING OFFICIAL

Tanyel Yildirok OR Tom Neacy NV Lawrence Golomb Jr CA James Brindley KS Michael Asel NH Eric Kriner PA Christo Milholland GA Patrick Pratt TN Nelson Vallin FL Benjamin Sands TX Matthew Croix Nelson Parrott TX Robert Skinner NY Timothy Englebrecht NY Christopher Toomey NY Alison Bradbury NJ Kevin Finnegan NJ Tom Neacy NV Bill Cosgrove UT Jim Hehnen Jr OH Jacqueline Kelsey MD Scott Ashcraft KY Esco Hamidovic GA Jim Gibby TN Christo Milholland GA Patrick Pratt TN Nelson Vallin FL Robert Skinner NY Timothy Englebrecht NY Christopher Toomey NY Kevin Finnegan NJ Ignas Grazulis WA Pere Monclus CA Charles (marty) Allen CA Lisa Lesser CA Ashley Van Belle CA Scotty Allen CA James Regulinski CA Olin Georgescu CA Joshua Mazzoni MT Willie Van Caulart Nelson Vallin FL Mark Garnett TX Mel Torres CA Doug Barnette TN Kelly Myrkle GA Michael Howard TX

Alex Brewer William Dydo Joe Greblo Josh Laufer Josh Laufer Richard Westmoreland Matthew Masters Joe Bedinghaus James Tindle Jeffrey Hunt Andy Torrington Rick Brown Rick Brown Rick Brown Michael Appel Clifton Bryan William Dydo Kevin Koonce Aaron Johnson Aaron Johnson Joe Bedinghaus Scott Schneider Scott Schneider Matthew Masters Joe Bedinghaus James Tindle Rick Brown Rick Brown Rick Brown Clifton Bryan John Heiney John Simpson Robert Booth John Simpson Patrick Denevan Patrick Denevan Robert Booth Joe Greblo Jon Thompson Jon Thompson James Tindle Eric Hinrichs Rob Mckenzie Matthew Taber Scott Schneider Tiki Mashy

Take your ratings and expiration date everywhere you fly.

Download from the Members Only section of the USHPA website. Print, trim, and store in your wallet. Save to your mobile device for easy reference. Always available at www.USHPA.aero

RATINGS ISSUED

JUN

2015

HOW TO USE

CALENDAR & CLASSIFIED CALENDAR, CLINIC & TOUR LISTINGS can be sub-

mitted online at http://www.ushpa.aero/email _ events.asp. A minimum 3-month lead time is required on all submissions and tentative events will not be published. For more details on submissions, as well as complete information on the events listed, see our Calendar of Events at www.ushpa.aero

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING RATES - The rate for classified

advertising is $10.00 for 25 words and $1.00 per word after 25. MINIMUM AD CHARGE $10.00. AD DEADLINES: All ad copy, instructions, changes, additions & cancellations must be received in writing 2 months preceding the cover date, i.e.

September 15th is the deadline for the November issue. All classifieds are prepaid. If paying by check, please include the following with your payment: name, address, phone, category, how many months you want the ad to run and the classified ad. Please make checks payable to USHPA, P.O. Box 1330, Colorado Springs, CO 80901-1330. If paying with credit card, you may email the previous information and classified to info@ushpa.aero. For security reasons, please call your Visa/MC or Amex info to the office. No refunds will be given on ads cancelled that are scheduled to run multiple months. (719) 632-8300. Fax (719) 632-6417 HANG GLIDING ADVISORY: Used hang gliders should always

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

PARAGLIDING ADVISORY: Used paragliders should always be thoroughly inspected before flying for the first time. Annual inspections on paragliders should include sailcloth strength tests. Simply performing a porosity check isn’t sufficient.

Some gliders pass porosity yet have very weak sailcloth.

If in doubt, many hang gliding and paragliding businesses will be happy to give an objective opinion on the condition of equipment you bring them to inspect. BUYERS SHOULD SELECT EQUIPMENT THAT IS APPROPRIATE FOR THEIR SKILL LEVEL OR RATING. NEW PILOTS SHOULD SEEK PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTION FROM A USHPA CERTIFIED INSTRUCTOR.

OCT 15-17 > USHPA 2015 Fall Board of Directors Meeting 8am - 6pm | Crowne Plaza Hotel, Austin, Texas

CALENDAR clinics & tours OCT 8-11 > Lake Berryessa, CA. SIV/Super Acro Clinic at Lake Berryessa This clinic will be hosted by Torrey Pines Gliderport Master pilot Gabriel Jebb and Max Marien. The clinic will provide several hours of classroom theory and analytical discussion, personalized instruction on each tow by the SIV coach, and several tows per day to practice the maneuvers, recoveries and aerobatics. Upon receipt of payment or deposit, the clinic lesson package will be mailed to you. For more info: www. flytorrey.com, email: info@flytorrey.com, or call at 858-452-9858.

OCT 12-22, 23-29 & OCT 29 - NOV 9 > Iquique,

Chile - Iquique, Chile—the most consistent thermals on earth! Luis Rosenkjer and Todd Weigand have been winning competitions, leading trips, and working as local guide/tandem pilots in Iquique since 1992. With 22 years of combined guiding experience in Chile, nobody can lead new pilots to this region with the expertise that these USHPA certified, bilingual gentlemen provide. Four-star hotel overlooks beach landing. 115km flights possible. Improve flying skills, break personal records, enjoy the best of Iquique! More info: www.paraglidingtrips.com.

OCT 30 - NOV 1 > Torrey Pines Gliderport, La Jolla, CA, Basic/Advanced Instructor Clinic Join the Torrey Pines Gliderport Instructor Team and Instructor Administrator Gabriel Jebb, to earn your Basic or Advanced Instructor rating. This clinic is the USHPA accredited Instructor Training Program.

The clinic will include all your pre-requisite requirements to attain your Basic Instructor rating or your Advanced Instructor rating. More info: www. flytorrey.com, email at info@flytorrey.com, or call us at 858-452 9858.

OCT 30 - NOV 1 > Torrey Pines Gliderport, La Jolla, CA - Tandem Instructor Clinic Join the Torrey Pines Gliderport Tandem Team and Tandem Administrator Gabriel Jebb, to earn your Tandem Instructor (T-3) rating. This clinic is the USHPA accredited Tandem Instructor Training Program. The clinic will include all your pre-requisite requirements to attain your Tandem Pilot (T-1) rating as well as your Tandem Instructor rating. Both ratings can be attained after completing this clinic. More info: www.flytorrey.com, email us at info@flytorrey.com, or call at +1(858) 452 9858.

OCT 31 - NOV 2 & NOV 7-9 > Sebring, Florida (SIV) maneuvers training over-the-water SIV maneuvers clinic, boat tow to 3000ft over white sand beaches and crystal-clear waters in Sebring, Florida. Gain priceless knowledge and experience under your wing. Advanced instructor/guide David Prentice, with more then 20 years of paragliding experience, will guide you through the full range of maneuvers from beginner to advanced as each pilot progresses at his or her own pace. More info: 505-720-5436 or earthcog@yahoo.com.

NOV > Iquique Chili paragliding tour: This year we have divided the tour into four different segments: Instructional Days, Iquique Days # 1, 2 and 3. Our Tour leaders are Todd Weigand, Luis Rosenkjer and Ken Hudonjorgensen. The entire tour will be packed with instruction for all levels of paragliding (including P-2 thru P-4). Check the web site for more details. For anyone wanting to fly, fly, fly... this is the tour to join. The last tour will focus more on XC. More info: Phone 801- 9713414, email twocanfly@gmail.com, or www.twocanfly. com.

NoV 15 - APR 17 > Valle de Bravo, Mexico - Yes, great flying and fun during the months Nov. through April in central Mexico. Hang gliding and paragliding. Team FlyMexico has been at this over 20 years and continues to offer packages for all levels, big selection of wings, more local knowledge than anyone, and the attitude to keep it all fun and safe. Basic package is in and out on Sundays with lodging and airport pickup and return included. Thinking about your winter flying? Think FlyMexico based in Valle de Bravo, Mexico More Info: Jeff Hunt, 800861-7198, 512-656-5052, jeff@flymexico.com, www.flymexico.com.

Nov 12-14, 16-18 > Yelapa, Mexico. SIV/maneuvers clinic. Join us for another great learning and fun experience in beautiful tropical Yelapa. Tow up and land on the beach in a warm, friendly location with lots of great places to stay and eat. Brad Gunnuscio, worldclass XC and acro pilot, will be teaching the courses. As Brad says, «Yelapa is by far the best place to do an SIV clinic.» More info: contact Les at www.paraglideyelapa. com or Brad at siv.com or 801 707-0508. More info: www,paraglideyelapa.com or siv.com.

NOV 28 - Jan 17 > Valle De Bravo, Mexico - Fly

Cuervo! Fly south this winter! Fly Cuervo! The bestvalued tour package available. World-class lodging and logistics in one of the most flyable winter destinations on planet Earth, Valle de Bravo, Mexico.

Improve your thermal and XC skills with advanced instructor/master guide David Prentice, aka Cuervo, with more than 20 years of paragliding experience and 16 years guiding in Valle. We fly twice a day, every day! Valle de Bravo has something to offer for every skill level of pilot and is very family friendly. More info: call 505-720-5436 or email earthcog@yahoo.com.

DEC 7-16> Brazil. Paraglide Brazil with Paracrane

Tour. We’ll start in magical Rio de Janeiro, flying over the tropical forest surrounded by granite domes and landing on the beach, or try a flight to the world-famous Christ statue! After 3 days we head to Governador Valadares, for incredible XC opportunities. Depending on conditions other sites we may visit include Pancas, Castelo and Alfredo Chavez in Espirito Santo. Brazil is a unique paragliding and cultural experience! Open to strong P-2’s and up. Please note, you will need a Brazilian Visa. More info: 541-840-8587, or nick@paracrane.com.

Jan 17-24 & Jan 31 - Feb 7 > Tapalpa, Mexico.

Tapalpa, Mexico Fly Week. Parasoft has been guiding pilots to Mexico in January since 1990. In 2002 we discovered Tapalpa, site of a 2003 World Cup event. With big launch and landing areas and no crowds, this is the best in Mexico! With three other sites nearby, you soar in any wind direction. To guide our clients well, we limit our group size to four and offer tandem flights to improve flying skills. More info: parasoftparaglding.com/ mexico-flying, granger@parasoftparagliding.com or 303-494-2820.

JAN 18-28 > Valle de Cauca, Colombia - Fly Cu-

ervo! Fly Colombia! Fly south this winter! Fly Cuervo! The Valle del Cauca, Colombia, has quickly become one of the most popular winter vacation destinations for paragliding, with amazing XC potential and breath taking views, Valle del Cauca is world-class paragliding. Improve your thermal and XC skills with advanced instructor/master guide David Prentice with over 20 years of paragliding experience. Enjoy world-class lodging and logistics as we fly several sites along the Valle del Cauca, Colombia. More info: 505-720-5436 or email earthcog@yahoo.com.

JAN 22 - 29, JAN 29 - FEB 5 & FEB 5-12 > An-

serma Nuevo, Colombia - Colombia Thermal and XC Clinic Roldanillo & Anserma, Colombia. Pennsylvania Paragliding is running a thermal and XC clinic in sunny warm Colombia. Escape the winter and come to fly with us! Our focus is on improving your thermal & XC skills using both visual and radio contact and air-to-air guidance. Daily analysis of flights in a 3-D simulation program will give you a great insight. Contact maria@pennsylvaniaparagliding.net, 610-392-0050 or http://pennsylvaniaparagliding.com/Pennsylvania _ Paragliding/ Colombia _ Tour.html

FEB 7-21 > Medellín, Colombia - Paragliding &

Yoga Tour Colombia 2016 We will we paragliding in seven sites along the Cauca River for two weeks.

We start in Medellín on Sunday, February 7 and finish in Cali Sunday, February 21. Yoga in the mornings before breakfast and briefing. Cross-country and instruction P-3 and P-4 pilots only, all levels of yoga. Accommodation, breakfast, ground transportation and guidance included. $2000. More Info: Sofia Puerta Webber. 818-572-6350 sofiapuerta@gmail.com www.shiwido.com

FEB 25-28 > Lake Berryessa, CA - SIV/Super Acro Clinic This clinic will be hosted by Torrey Pines Gliderport Master Pilot and SIV/Acro Coach Gabriel Jebb, while Max Marien will coach the advanced acro pilots. This will be a super clinic and cover everything from deflations, to helicopters, tumbles, misty flips, etc. Pre-requisites for acro pilots are to be able to bring it and go big! More info: www.flytorrey.com, email at info@flytorrey.com, or call us at 858-452 9858.

6030

FLY-INS OCT 2-4 > Craters, AZ - Dixon White Memorial

Fly-in—The Arizona Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association is hosting another great event with the annual Dixon White Memorial Flyn-i! HGs and PGs, beginners to experts, the Craters offers almost 360 degrees of launching and landing. Saturday dinner, camping, and contests included. Hotels in nearby Flagstaff, AZ. Come join us for another amazing year! More Info: Call Gingher Leyendecker at 480688-2170 or visit azhpa.org for more info.

CLASSIFIED BUSINESS & EMPLOYMENT Proflyght Paragliding, on Maui Hawaii

is always looking for talented Paragliding Instructors. Must have years of experience in light wind, mountain conditions. Please contact Dexter: gliding@maui.net

CLINICS & TOURS ITALY - Fantastico! Great flying! Great food! Great

weather! ALL inclusive service suitable for all levels of pilots. Round topped grassy mountains and large flatlands. Flying with culture! www.flytaly.com

PARTS & ACCESSORIES GUNNISON GLIDERS - X-C, Factory, heavy PVC HG

gliderbags $149. Harness packs & zippers. New/used parts, equipment, tubes. 1549 CR 17 Gunnison, CO 81230 970-641-9315

SPECIALTY WHEELS for airfoil basetubes, round ba-

setubes, or tandem landing gear. 262-473-8800, www. hanggliding.com.

POWERED & TOWING Pilots: FREE Crossover Training when you purchase your Miniplane Paramotor! Instructors: Add PPG to your offerings and watch the fun begin! Visit our website for more info: www.Miniplane-USA.com/ USHPA AZ Paragliding: The World Record setting

SlingMachine air sports winch is available to address your towing needs. It is"The Mountain on Wheels". www.

SlingMachine.com, Sean @ 480-294-1887 HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

63

REAL ESTATE Own a flying site 5 miles from the tourist mecca of Salida Colorado. Salida known for its " banana belt" weather, white water rafting and mountain biking in massive mountain ranges. An excellent place for a tandem operation. $299K Erik 970-209-8376

SCHOOLS & INSTRUCTORS

able days each year. Learn modern flying skills safely and quickly. Train on sand with professionals at Dockweiler Beach training slopes (5 minutes from LA airport.) Fly any season in gentle coastal winds, soft sand and in a thorough program with 1 of the largest schools for over 40 years. 818-367-2430, www.windsports.com

MICHIGAN TRAVERSE CITY PARAGLIDERS - Soar our 450’ sand dunes. Full time shop. Certified instruction, all levels.

Sales, service and accessories for all major brands.

Call Bill at 231-922-2844 or email at tchangglider@ chartermi.net Your USA & Canada Mosquito distributor, www.mosquitoamerica.com

ALABAMA

COLORADO

MONTANA

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN FLIGHT PARK - The best facilities, largest inventory, camping, swimming, volleyball, more. Wide range of accommodations.

877-HANGLIDE, 877-426-4543, hanglide.com.

GUNNISON GLIDERS - X-C to heavy waterproof HG

Bozeman Paragliding - Montana’s full time

CALIFORNIA

FLORIDA

AIRJUNKIES PARAGLIDING - Year-round excellent

FLORIDA RIDGE AEROTOW PARK - 18265 E State

instruction, Southern California & Baja. Powered paragliding, clinics, tours, tandem, towing. Ken Baier 760-213-0063, airjunkies.com.

EAGLE PARAGLIDING - SANTA BARBARA offers the

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

FLY ABOVE ALL - Year-round instruction in Santa

Barbara & Ojai from the 2012 US Instructor of the Year!

More students flying safely after 10 years than any other school in the nation. flyaboveall.com

Mission Soaring Center LLC - Largest hang

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

RENEW your membership at USHPA.aero to participate in our Green initiative. Online renewal is only available to current members, and members who have been expired less than 3 years.

Members who have been expired more than 3 years must contact the USHPA office.

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WINDSPORTS - Train in sunny southern Cal. 325 fly-

HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

gliderbags. Accessories, parts, service, sewing. Instruction ratings, site-info. Rusty Whitley 1549 CR 17, Gunnison CO 81230. 970-641-9315.

Road 80, Clewiston, Florida 863-805-0440, www. thefloridaridge.com.

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN FLIGHT PARK - Nearest

mountain training center to Orlando. Two training hills, novice mountain launch, aerotowing, great accommodations. hanglide.com, 877-HANGLIDE, 877426-4543.

MIAMI HANG GLIDING - For year-round training fun

in the sun. 305-285-8978, 2550 S Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove, Florida 33133, www.miamihanggliding. com.

WALLABY RANCH – The original Aerotow flight park.

Best tandem instruction worldwide,7-days a week , 6 tugs, and equipment rental. Call:1-800-WALLABY wallaby.com 1805 Deen Still Road, Disney Area FL 33897

connection for paragliding, speedflying, & paramotoring instruction & gear. Maneuvers courses, thermal tours abroad, online store. www.bozemanparagliding.com

NEW HAMPSHIRE MORNINGSIDE - A Kitty Hawk Kites flight park. The Northeast's premier hang gliding and paragliding training center, teaching since 1974. Hang gliding foot launch and tandem aerowtow training. Paragliding foot launch and tandem training. Powered Paragliding instruction. Dealer for all major manufacturers. Located in Charlestown, NH. Also visit our North Carolina location, Kitty Hawk Kites Flight School. 603-5424416, www.flymorningside.com

NEW YORK AAA Hang Gliding Teaching since 1977, Three training hills, certified, adv instruction with mtn launch, tandems, towing, pro shop, pilots lounge, camping.

We carry North Wing and Moyes, 77 Hang Glider Rd Ellenville, NY www.mtnwings.com 845-647-3377

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN FLIGHT PARK - Discover why 5

times as many pilots earn their wings at LMFP. Enjoy our 110 acre mountain resort. www.hanglide.com, 1-877-HANGLIDE, 1-877-426-4543.

Fly High HG Serving the tri-state area with beginner and advanced instruction- the only school with THREE USHPA Instructor-of-the-Year recipients! Area's exclusive Wills Wing dealer. Superior customer service, lifelong support, the most competitive prices. Just 90-minutes from NYC. Come Fly High with us! www.

FlyHighHG.com 845.744.3317 info@flyhighhg.com

HAWAII

NORTH CAROLINA

PROFLYGHT PARAGLIDING - Call Dexter for friendly information about flying on Maui. Full-service school offering beginner to advanced instruction every day, year round. 808-874-5433, paraglidehawaii.com.

KITTY HAWK KITES - The largest hang gliding school in the world, teaching since 1974. Learn to hang glide and paraglide on the East Coast's largest sand dune.

Year-round instruction, foot launch and tandem aerotow.

Powered paragliding instruction. Dealer for all major manufacturers. Learn to fly where the Wright Brothers flew, located at the beach on NC's historic Outer Banks.

Also visit our New Hampshire location, Morningside Flight Park. 252-441-2426, 1-877-FLY-THIS, www. kittyhawk.com

GEORGIA

MARYLAND HIGHLAND AEROSPORTS - Baltimore and DC’s full-

time flight park: tandem instruction, solo aerotows and equipment sales and service. We carry Aeros, Airwave, Flight Design, Moyes, Wills Wing, High Energy Sports, Flytec and more. Two 115-HP Dragonfly tugs. Open fields as far as you can see. Only 1 to 1.5 hours from Rehoboth Beach, Baltimore, Washington DC, Philadelphia. Come Fly with US! 410-634-2700, Fax 410-634-2775, 24038 Race Track Rd, Ridgely, MD 21660, www.aerosports. net, hangglide@aerosports.net.

PUERTO RICO FLY PUERTO RICO WITH TEAM SPIRIT HG! Flying

tours, rentals, tandems, HG and PG classes, H-2 and P-2 intensive Novice courses, full sales. 787-8500508, flypuertorico@gmail.com

INTERNATIONAL

TENNESSEE LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN FLIGHT PARK - Just outside Chattanooga. Become a complete pilot -foot launch, aerotow, mountain launch, ridge soar, thermal soar. hanglide.com, 1-877-HANGLIDE, 877-426-4543.

BAJA MEXICO - La Salina Baja's BEST BEACHFRONT Airsport Venue: PG, HG, PPG: FlyLaSalina.com. by BajaBrent.com, He’ll hook you up! Site intros, tours, & rooms. bajabrent@bajabrent.com, 760-203-2658

TEXAS

EXOTIC THAILAND X/C CLINIC - Phu Thap Boek,Thailand's most awesome,highest flying site 5,200ASL.Open to P-2 and above.Come learn how to fly high and far! Very inexpensive! More info: pchumes@ gmail.com

FLYTEXAS TEAM - training pilots in Central Texas for

FLYMEXICO - VALLE DE BRAVO and beyond for HANG

25 years. Hang Gliding, Paragliding, Trikes. Hangar facilities Lake LBJ, Luling, Smithville www.flytexas. com 512-467-2529

UTAH CLOUD 9 PARAGLIDING - Come visit us and check out

our huge selection of paragliding gear, traction kites, extreme toys, and any other fun things you can think of.

If you aren’t near the Point of the Mountain, then head to http://www.paragliders.com for a full list of products and services. We are Utah’s only full time shop and repair facility, Give us a ring at 801-576-6460 if you have any questions.

GLIDING and PARAGLIDING. Gear, guiding, instruction, transportation, lodging - www.flymexico.com 512-4672529 / 1-800-861-7198 USA

SERVICE

WINGS & HARNESSES

CLOUD 9 REPAIR DEPARTMENT - We staff and maintain

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

a full service repair shop within Cloud 9 Paragliding; offering annual inspections, line replacement, sail repair of any kind (kites too!), harness repairs and reserve repacks. Our repair technicians are factory trained and certified to work on almost any paraglider or kite. Call today for an estimate 801-576-6460 or visit www.paragliders.com for more information.

RISING AIR GLIDER REPAIR SERVICES – A full-

VIRGINIA BLUE SKY - Virginia's full time, year round HG School.

Scooter, Platform and Aero Tow. Custom sewing, paragliding, powered harnesses, trikes, representing most major brands. 804-241-4324, www.blueskyhg. com

OUR

SUPPORT

service shop, specializing in all types of paragliding repairs, annual inspections, reserve repacks, harness repairs. Hang gliding reserve repacks and repair. For information or repair estimate, call 208-554-2243, pricing and service request form available at www. risingair.biz, billa@atcnet.net.

FLY CENTER OF GRAVITY CG-1000 - The most

affordable single line suspension harness available.

Individually designed for a precise fit. Fly in comfort. www.flycenterofgravity.com; flycenterofgravity@gmail. com; 315-256-1522

STUNTS HAWAII - 147 Moyes Xtra Lite + 2 harnesses, 1 moyes w/ parachute + 1 UP harness. Less than 25 hours on the wing and in excellent condition. Wing has been stored in my garage. $2,500.00 OBO. John 805798-1121.

Support the Cloudbase Foundation buy Keen bags through USHPA

SPORT

Start ALL of your Amazon shopping at the "Shop Amazon" page at ushpastore.com Buy ANYTHING at smile.Amazon. com and Amazon Smile will donate 0.5% of your purchase to USHPA!

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PIONEER MOUNTAINS, IDAHO

by Nick Greece

“If one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

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— Henry David Thoreau HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE