It'll come up...

A friend of mine lent me an old "piece of junk" glider to fly. It's old as dirt (in hang gliding terms) and a "stiff horry beast"... "If you crash it, you'll be doing me a favor... I can use the extra space in my garage". I was starting to get the feeling that he didn't like it (or maybe me?).

So yeah, I just had to try it ;)
Let's see how bad this old hunk of junk really is!
I've got this strange fascination with old gliders. Some truly are obnoxious pieces of junk. It's interesting though to see just how far modern gliders have come and to see where certain things came from.

I've been flying an old Moyes Mars lately. It's an old trainer glider and it is a bit stiff. But it's exceptionally light weight and easy to setup. I love it for that.
The other glider in the picture (on the left) is an Airborne Shark. It truly is a stiff beast. It's a fairly modern moderate preformance glider. My flatmate and fellow maniac Gerardo (pronounced Herardo) was flying it.

He'd flown the Apco the other day and deemed it "not so bad".
Unlike the Mars, the Apco takes FOREVER to setup (uhg!), but whatever. It was a cold grey day with no flying, so why not?

So we drove up Coronet.
The wind was blowing down the mountain (not flyable) but would "come up" just enough to tease us into thinking that we "might get off the hill" (fly). It's kinda like waiting for a wave when surfing... you get ready so when it comes, you just go.

So we setup.
Now the worst thing in the world to a hang glider pilot is to "pack up on launch"... to get ready to fly and then not be able to and have to pack the glider back up and drive down the hill.

While we were setting up (takes a while), waves up "good cycles" were coming up the hill... we were getting optomistic... "this might actually work".

Oh yeah, you know where this is going.
After we get our snow suits on "I gotta pee"... yup, the wind starts blowing pretty definitively down the mountain. CRAP! (no more up cycles).

No... we're waiting!
Neither of us showed any signs of wanting to pack it in. We could see each other checking to see if the other wanted to give up... nope. We were both hating waiting and getting less optomistic by the minute (esp with the wind getting worse) but NO... just a little longer.

After an eternity... "ya know what's going to happen?"
"as soon as we give up, it'll come up"
"yup, just a little longer eh?"
"yup"
(an other eternity)

Eventually, Gera gets out of his harness and starts walking around. If he was throwing in the towel, he'd start taking apart his glider... this was just frustration.

After a bit though, we started to very begrudgingly give up. Lots of explatives followed.
Then... yup... the wind died.
Down is bad.
Up is what you want.
But nothing is ok too... you just have to run like hell.
We don't do "no winders" with tandems cuz we have to be ready for them to not run so well, but solo we'll even do a (very little) bit of "downwind".

As I start to charge down the hill (it's a full on sprint in no wind) I hear Gera saying something... "uh, whatever". After I'm in the air, I look back. I thought he was saying something about liking the left launch better (I used the right) and sure enough there's Gera lifting off on the left.

Sweet :)

It's fun to kayak in the rapids from time to time. Tandem flying is the easy stuff... like going out in the family stationwagon... it's nice to take the Ferrai out every now and then.

Oh, and the Apco?
Yeah, pretty nice actually. Takes forever to setup, but flies quite well.
Jim