Am I really ready for the 2013 US Nationals at Big Spring?

Wow, I can't believe that it was just over a year ago that I logged my first XC (cross country) flight at the 2012 Florida Ridge Team Challenge. I got into hang gliding with the dream of flying XC and the reality of that dream is so much better than I could have imagined. In the last year, I have been fortunate enough to participate in the 2012 Florida Ridge Team Challenge, the 2012 East Coast Championships, the 2012 Highland Challenge, the 2012 TTT TC, the 2013 East Coast Championships and we are two weekends into the 2013 Highland Challenge. I have logged some amazing flying adventures and I am just getting started.

What is next.... the 2013 Hang Gliding Nationals in Big Spring, Texas, August 4th-10th!

It seems like just yesterday I was sitting under the pavilion at Blue Sky Flight Park in Manquin, Virginia, watching the other pilots climb to cloudbase and trying to imagine what it would be like. Now as I am making preparations for the promise of BIG air in Texas, it's almost hard to believe that I am ready for this next adventure, but I am. The spring/summer flying conditions on the East Coast have either been drowned out by the seemingly constant rain as of late or blown out by high winds. Good flights have been had, but as an admitted addict, I have been hungry for more. Most of my XC flights have been in competition and despite making goal on my share of days, I have yet to break 50 miles. Will I bag a new personal distance record in Big Spring? Highest flight? Longest XC flight?....... I am counting on it! As a newb to XC flying, Big Spring caught my attention early on. My good friend and mentor Peter Kane made the trip to Big Spring in 2011 and returned with tales of multiple 100 plus mile flights and altitude gains over 10K. At the time that seemed as sketchy as it did exciting, but now I can't wait.

Here is a picture from my first completed task. I got to goal a little high. :)

Stay tuned, as I will be documenting my adventures here.....

  

Day 4

After three days here at The Florida Ridge, it's kind of like the movie Ground Hog Day, but in a good way. The anxiety of  not knowing what to expect has subsided and I have slipped into a nice little routine. Since I have had a few late nights hacking together another entry for this Blog, I have been sleeping in a little until around 8:00am or so. A little breakfast with my wife and kids at our cabin, and it's off to the flight park. There has been no humidity to speak of since we got here and the days have all been beautiful, especially the mornings. At around 9:00am people begin to trickle into the staging area to assemble gliders and layout their gear. While I am terrible with names, I have gotten to know at least a little bit about most of the pilots here and a great sense of camaraderie has quickly developed among all the teams. All of the C pilots have been logging new personal bests, so each day brings a great sense of optimism fueled by the previous days achievements.

Steve Larson diagrams a thermal for us and teaches thermaling strategy to eager students..

Today was my turn to represent our team in the task committee with Davis Straub. Each day Davis has invited the days task committee into his 5th wheel trailer to review the days weather forecast and discuss options for the days task. Davis has an awesome set-up to say the least. As he walks us through the days proposed task, he has the large LCD TV hooked to his laptop, so we can all follow the thought process in developing a safe and hopefully achievable task. Weather conditions for the day looked promising, with winds switching to northwest at 8-10 mph. Cloudbase was foretasted to be around 5000ft with lift in the 4-600 FPM range. We settled on a 28.3 mile task for the day with two waypoints to tag on the way to goal. With the middle section of the task having a fair amount of crosswind to contend with, this again seemed like a pretty ambitious task for the C pilots, especially with the crosswind component. When asked what we thought about the task, I actually wanted to explore shortening the crosswind leg and lengthening the downwind portion of the task, but it was quickly pointed out that with the waypoints available and the combination of landing options, the proposed route would be a better alternative.

Pilots crowd around to watch Davis review the weather forecast and the days task on his TV. 

A Google Earth view of the Day 4 task.

Due to some folks being slow to prepare for launch and the possibility of thunderstorms late in the day, the launch window for the days task was shortened to one hour and moved to 1:30. This means that there is a one hour window to get all the pilots launched and not much time for a relight if you sink out at the park. Luckily our team, Below Me, was scheduled to launch first today. We decided to launch Steve first, so that he could try to get established in a thermal and mark it for the rest of our team. I launched second with the rest of the team falling in right behind. I got a nice tow and right off release was able to start turning in a steady 2-300 fpm up. As the rest of our team joined me in the air, they all scrambled to get established in a thermal. On previous days we have had issues with one or more of our team members radio not working well, but today we had good communication and everyone was getting established in decent lift pretty quickly. After working the lift around the park to around 3500' we start to look at our next climb. Steve gives the command to head for the next good looking cloud and our team is off together for the first day.

Gliders staged and ready for the launch window to open.

The first waypoint was a juice plant approximately 6 1/2 miles west of the flight park . As we work our way west, Steve is like our shepherd, getting regular updates from us on lift conditions and pointing us in the right direction. Since Steve is flying a rigid wing glider that has much higher performance than the flexwings we are flying, he is able to quickly top out in lift and move forward to scout the next nice climb. As we make our way toward the juice plant, our team starts to drift apart and before long, I have lost a visual on everyone else, so I decide to move forward and tag the first waypoint. As I go on glide to catch this first waypoint, I am tracking slightly across and up wind and dropping altitude pretty fast. I started my glide at around 3800' and by the time I reach the juice plant, I am just north of 2000' AGL. For the more experienced pilots, this may not be a big deal, but with as much ground as I needed to cover to hit the next waypoint, I am eager to catch another climb. As I cross the road in front of the juice plant, I can feel the instability in the air and know that I am close to something. When I am directly above the intersection at the juice plant, my instrument sings me the waypoint song and I head crosswind back through the instability that I had just felt. One of things that I have learned in flying with Steve, is to fly through the first bit of lift to survey the strength and size of the thermal. At around 1800' AGL, my vario starts showing 4-600' up and I lock in with a nice high bank turn. It is truly an amazing feeling to core a thermal when you are dialed in to the core. As the vario whines away, I watch the shadow of my glider track along the ground, leaving the juice factory behind. As I enjoy the climb, I can feel that my flying has become more relaxed and efficient in just the last three days of flying. As I drift along, I am listening to the the radio chatter between my team mates. Just downwind of me I can see that Steve has joined back up with John and they are working something that looks like a boomer.  The three of us converge at the core of a solid 800-1000 FPM up. I will use my second movie reference of this post to help illustrate what this is like for you non-pilots that may be reading this. If you have seen the original Wizard of OZ..... remember the scene in the beginning when the house is spiraling up in the tornado and Dorthy looks out the window to see the guys rowing the boat and the wicked witch on the bicycle, well that's kind of what it's like. Instead of a cow circling through the air with you, it's your buddy cranking and banking with you skyward. Just the day before was the first time I had been able to thermal with anyone else and now the three of us are sharing a great climb. Two other pilots see us climbing in strong lift and are on glide to join us in this elevator. When we are about 1000' below cloud base, Steve and John head off to grab the next climb. Although we are on the crosswind leg of our task, I don't feel like I am drifting too far downwind to catch the next way point, so I stay with this one until I hit cloud base at 6200'. At this point, I see a little street of lift in front of me, so I slide out of  the thermal that I am in to crab back crosswind to set myself up for another climb that will hopefully take me up wind of the next waypoint. For the next couple miles, I bounce around from cloud to cloud trying to find something good. By the time the airstrip at the second waypoint is in sight, I am starting to get low and nothing near the waypoint looks good. The whole area is shading in fast. Just down wind of the waypoint, Steve alerts me that he is in 1000 FPM up and to come dial into it. Before I get to Steve, I find some nice 600 up and climb back up to 4200'. At this point, I can take the short glide up/crosswind and tag the second waypoint. When I join back up with Steve, he is still enjoying a quick climb in strong lift. I am now a couple thousand feet below Steve and can't seem to get into what he has. I would find decent lift and get spit out. As soon as I am out of the lift I go back into my search pattern trying to find the core of the lift that I know is close, but I can't seem to find it. Steve is now way above me and I am giving up everything that I gain in lift, each time I get tossed out. I know that I am on the fringe of the core, so I start turning the other direction. I hit punchy 600 up and keep flying through it opening my circle pattern into an oval, hoping to take a bite of the core. As I exit the 600 up that I had been in I fly through some really ratty lifting air and BAM! My glider feels like it hits a wall. I pull in and feel my glider being sucked into the core. Here we go, the vario hits the high note and I go a little rigid as I feel the upward acceleration. I pitch the glider into a left hand turn and watch the ground peel away.Before I know it, I have Steve back in site and we are dancing together just below cloudbase. Above 5000' there seems to be lift everywhere, so we take a downwind heading and push forward to goal. As goal comes into sight, I can see that Austin is already there and breaking down, with Steve Pearson working retrieve. Chris, one of the pilots from the Cloudbase team, joins Steve and I in the air above goal. Steve and I decide that rather than pushing on downwind, we will call it a day and join Austin on the ground at goal and hopefully share a ride back. Steve is a little lower than me, so I figure I will watch him and Chris land. As we circle around at 3000', there is light lift everywhere. Steve is circling to get out of lift and I am watching him slowly gain altitude until he is back and  level with me. Since I am flying a single surface glider, I know that I can stuff the bar and dump some altitude quickly with some slipping turns, but I kind of wanted to watch them land from the air. While Steve is working hard to get down with his rigid glider, I unzip my harness to let my knees hang out and open my visor. With my forearms resting on the bar, I make big lazy circles around the adjacent field  and I am still going up in a smooth 2-300 FPM everywhere. I have to laugh, as there have been so many times that I have groveled and scraped to find any lift and now while I boat around this pasture in the middle of nowhere, soaring is literally effortless. As Chris and Steve finally make their way to the ground with nice landings, it's time for me to get serious about landing and breaking down my gear. As I am up wind of the landing zone, I stuff the bar for a down wind leg, seeing how fast I can get my little freedom going without balling up. As I near the end of my down wind leg, I glance at my insturment to see that I am clipping along at 53 mph. As I ease the bar out and bring it back to trim, I roll into a series of slipping turns that have me dumping lots of altitude. At around 300 ft, I am back in a downwind, base and final that leaves me with a nice round out and landing with my new flying buddies at goal.

Steve and Chris breaking down at goal.

We are all smiles as we shed our harnesses and recap the highlights of yet another great day of flying. After breaking down and extracting all of our gear from the field, we stage it next to the dirt road and take the time to get to know each other a little better. Nobody is worried about how long it will take for our retrieval; as we are content to enjoy a beautiful Florida evening, lounging in the grass with our gear as we share in the satisfaction of pushing ourselves in this truly amazing pursuit of hang gliding. It's just icing on the cake that I get retrieved again by my beautiful wife.

Day 4 was good to me with two new personal bests, longest flight duration
 at 2:46 and longest XC flight at 28 miles.

Day 3

First things first, after bonking big time yesterday, I wanted to make sure that I got a good breakfast in me and lots of water. After eating a nice bowl of cereal with some juice and water at the cabin, I showed up to the flight park at 9:00 to find the smell of breakfast in the air. There has been a couple here preparing fresh meals for breakfast lunch and dinner since we got here . I couldn't say no to a couple fried eggs with bacon, eggs, potatoes and toast.. It doesn't get any better than this, sitting next to the pool with my beautiful wife eating a great breakfast and getting ready for another day of flying with some great new friends here in Florida.

A quick pose by my amazing wife after breakfast. She was
 helping ground crew this morning with Amy.

As we have on previous days, we start the day with a discussion on the previous days flights. Lots of pilots  logged personal bests on Day 2, so there was a nice buzz going into our pilots meeting. Austin Tindle, a 16 year old pilot participating in the event demonstrated the true spirit of the Team Challenge on Day 2, by dumping altitude to help a C pilot from another team find some lift and got flushed for his good deed. Don't feel bad for this kid though, he is a stud. Flying as a B pilot in this competition and kicking butt with a U2. Oh and by the way, he has been making laps daily on the super sweet T2C that Steve Pearson has here for Demo Days. What were you flying at 16?

The forecast for today looked good, with winds looking lighter than yesterday at 3-5mph from the southeast, so we wouldn't have the lake-effect to contend with. Cloudbase was foretasted to be around 5000', with lift from 3-500 fpm. There was the possibility of over development and thunderstorms later in the afternoon, so the thought was we needed a task that could hopefully be completed ahead of the possible OD. The task committee reported back to the group that the C task had been set as a 33km out landing with a turn point a little over half way to goal. As with the previous tasks, the B and A pilots had progressively more difficult tasks. The B pilots had to fly to the C pilots goal and then back to the waypoint. The A pilots had to make the B pilots task and then make it back to the flight park. C pilots score 100 points by reaching goal, with the B pilots scoring 80 points and the A pilots scoring 60 points for reaching goal. If the A pilot escorts a C pilot to goal they can score 60 points for their team. If you launch and get flushed, landing back at the flight park and can relaunch (relight) within the launch window, you score 5 points for your team, plus whatever other points you score.

At noon the day is looking good.

Today was our team's turn to launch first, which was good, because we have been ready to go each day and with the forecast today, it looked like getting off early was going to be the ticket. I launched forth and despite the rough tow, I found nothing right after releasing. I was worried about getting downwind of the flight park without some decent altitude to carry me, so I headed up wind to search for something that I could hook into, but found NOTHING! I was amazed with the forecast and the beautiful clouds that I found zero lift, so I headed back to the flight park for a relight. Steve Larson, our team captain, also landed for a relight. My second tow was much smoother than my first, so I wasn't optimistic, as I was thinking that maybe things were going to shut down with all the cloud cover, but what do I know. Just after releasing, I found a smooth 300fpm of climb that I stuck with until around 3400'. From here I went on a short glide for a nasty looking cloud directly down wind with a bottom that was steadily getting darker and bigger. When I got there, three vultures were circling about 100' above me and the vario started singing the tune of 600fpm up, until I am at just north of 4k. One of the things I had resolved myself to work on today was physically efficient flying. After yesterday, I know that I was working way too hard, so today my focus was to fly smarter, not harder. Easier said than done when you only have two XC days in the logbook and a handful of decent thermaling days worth talking about. None the less, I quickly realized that if I am going to ever hang with any experienced pilots going XC without really holding them back, I will need to get a lot better at this.

Feeling like I have tanked up sufficiently to go on glide for the next good cloud, I start to evaluate my options. "Matt this is Steve. Copy?" "Copy that Steve" "I am out in front of you in nice lift, come join me." I have never flown together with anyone like this before, so I am excited to get some tutoring from a master. I have to say that I was wondering how this would work with me flying my Freedom and Steve racing around like a super hero with his EXXTACY. As I go on glide to join Steve, he slices around in a high bank and levels off flying toward me, and it was like I was having an out of body experience. I have spent so many hours reading about this very experience and preparing for this opportunity and here I finally am. I am not watching someone else's video, this is me baby. As Steve approaches me his rigid wing is a sleek flat silhouette that gracefully wisps past me and for a few moments, I am just a spectator. As I continue on glide Steve's glider casts a shadow through my mylar sail and I watch him take the lead from above me. "Let's go" he cracks over the radio and we are off. As we hop from lift to lift, Steve heads out in front looking for the good stuff and I keep topping off wherever I feel it makes sense. At one point, Steve and I are circling about a 1/4 mile apart and he comes over the radio, "here it is!", and I go on glide to see what he has got. As I get closer to Steve I fly through some ratty 400'fpm up and Bang! The vario hits a high note that I have never heard before. "I have 1200fpm up, what do you have?", I couldn't even answer right away, as I was circling skyward at such an insane rate that  I couldn't even bring myself to look to the left at my vario or hit my thumb switch to transmit a reply. When my adrenaline shot subsided a little I looked at my vario to see that it was pegged and singing a steady tune as I rifle skyward in smooth sustained lift. Steve cautions me about cloud suck and I again survey my proximity to the beast above me. I am comfortably close to the outer edge, but the rate at which the cloud is getting closer is a sobering sight. I level out after a slingshot ride to cloudbase and set out on the glide that will get me to my waypoint. As I leave the proximity of the cloud, I am tied up in some gnarly turbulence and get to experience going negative as my glider unloads and the front wires twang. WOW! That was interesting..... I make a beeline for my waypoint and tag it so I can head for goal. Surely that won't be a problem with the monster lift that is lurking out there. As I head northwest from the waypoint, I see a few more pilots searching for lift, a couple are well below me and one is high out front. Below me I see Austin at what looks like about 500' off the deck, take a heading out into a mass of trees, which looks like a very risky move from where I am. As he reaches the center of this large mass of trees, he starts to slowly, gracefully circle up. At this point I am under 2000' and searching. Everywhere I think there should be lift, there is nothing. Steve confirms that he hasn't found anything out front, but it doesn't matter, as I can't find a blip of lift and am at 800' trying to get a read on wind direction for my landing. The dust off the dirt road is coming straight up and the small pond in the middle of the field doesn't seem to have a ripple in it. Austin is now just ahead and below me setting up his approach in the same field. We land within 30 seconds of each other and 75 yards apart.

Austin packing up the U2.

Breaking down my little Freedom. It has been good to me on this trip so far.

 Right after landing Austin makes his way to me to offer a bottle of water. What a great kid! Missing a few days of school to fly in the Team Challenge with us and taking it all in stride. As we are breaking down, two of the Russian pilots flying Combats are low over the field and working hard to save it. One of them is able to dig out, but the other lands between Austin and I.

R to L: Austin, Me and Dma

To put the finishing touches on a great day of flying, my wife is retrieving for me today and arrives just as we are done packing up. We hang around for a few minutes and manage to get all three gliders on the hoaky ladder rack that I have rigged up for this trip. After a quick recap with the guys at the flight park we are back to the cabin for a quick shower and headed into La Belle for some Mexican food.

One more quick pose before some chips and salsa.

This trip has already surpassed all of my expectations and there is three more days of flying........  There is lots more that I could say here, but I have got to go to bed. If you have any ambitions of flying XC, you have got to participate in one of these events.

1:26 for today's flight and 18 miles.

 Let me summarize the day for you, WOW!

Day 3 is in the books.

Day 2

I woke up with one goal for today, to beat my previous days personal best XC distance of 2.5 miles. I did not want to report back to the crew at Blue Sky that my best flight of the trip was 22.5 minutes and 2.5 miles. Per the daily routine, our pilots meeting was held at 10:00am and we kicked the day of by discussing the previous days flights and sharing some of our little victories. After Day 1, the Air Hogs team (mostly Russians) were leading by a nice margin (I can't remember the score) with Below Me (our team, be careful how you say that name) in second and team Cloud Base in third.

Today's task for the C pilots was originally called as an out and back to the La Belle airport and back to the Florida Ridge, a 22 mile round trip flight. Based on my previous days performance this seemed like a pretty daunting task, but the conditions looked good with around a 3mph headwind foretasted for the up wind leg, lift at 3-500fpm and cloudbase at around 5000'. The launch window was set from 1:00 to 3:00. Those of us who had never used the waypoint and GPS functions on our instruments were scrambling to get all the Florida waypoints downloaded and the route function figured out. Davis Straub gave us a quick run through on how to set things up and we were ready to test it out. After taking a short flight, Davis reported back that the wind aloft was stronger than foretasted and the C pilot task was revised to be landing at the La Bella airport, approximately 11 miles from the flight park.

Today, our team was scheduled to launch last, which was fine with me, as it looked like it was going to get better as the day progressed. When the launch window opened, our team captain Steve Larson, decided that he would launch first, since nobody was jumping up to the starting box. Steve is flying an EXXTACY rigid and we figured he could get up and start marking for us.

Steve Larson our captain and John Brantley talking strategy for
team Below Me in the  staging area.

Steve gets ready to launch his EXXTACY and start the day. John and I sit in the shade
 of his wing trying to figure this all out, while Amy keeps us organized running ground crew.

Steve, hit something that felt good shortly after launch and released at 800', but couldn't get it to stick and jumped back in the box for another launch. Shortly after launch he again hit something solid and released at around 1000'. Again Steve was back on the ground and shuffling to get in the launch line. This had John and I scratching our heads. If Steve isn't skying out, we are in trouble. Downwind of the field looked pretty good, but up wind was a big blue hole, which they call the lake affect from Lake Okeechobee. Withe the launch window coming to a close, I geared up and jumped in line one pilot back from John and three back from Steve.

Please just let me beat 2.5 miles today........

I had a nice tow and although, there were some sharp thermals out there, it wasn't nearly as sporty as my tow yesterday. Off tow, I immediately head down wind flying through some rowdy smaller stuff hoping to hook something just up wind of the nice looking clouds that were downwind from the flight park. Around a half mile downwind of the park I spotted Pedro flying a T2C and working something just down wind and about 1500' above me. I was able to use him as a marker and hooked up with some nice 4-600fpm lift below him that brought me from around 1500' to just over 3000'. When I lost that thermal, I started looking for Pedro again and found he had gone on glide and was about a mile down wind and working what looked like some pretty good lift, that was the last I saw of him. For the next couple miles I hit pockets of decent lift, with what seemed like disproportionately strong sink, bouncing around between 1500' and 2800' AGL. I found myself over an abandon subdivision project at around 1800' and working hard to stick in broken lift. I would claw up to 2300' and dump it off in sink before I knew it. At around a 1000' I unzipped and started scouting my LZ. On an up wind leg of boxing the field, I hit a BOOMER at around 800' and took it to just below cloud base at 6200'. I was so dialed in to staying with this thermal that I didn't even think about zipping back up until I topped out and my legs were feeling a little chilly. After that, I knew I had the airport nailed. I hit strong lift and strong sink as I got the airport insight. At one point I had it banked up pretty steep and climbing nicely, when I got spit and hard over the falls I went. That really got the juices flowing! I tagged the airport at around 4800' and flew around for 10 minutes debating about what to do. I decided that if I made it back to cloudbase on my next thermal that I would, continue down wind over La Belle and if I didn't, I would head back up wind toward the flight park....... Bang, and I am back at cloudbase and drifting as I circle over La Belle and into the mist at the bottom of cloud base, oops, ERR UHHH I mean "I was 500' below cloudbase and legally compliant".........so I stuff the bar and go on glide porpoising down a lift line for a couple miles until I am back to around 3000'. Time to circle again, and I am back at cloudbase, how freaking AWESOME is this flight!!!! After the last cork screw to cloudbase, I am actually a little loopy from cranking and banking so much. I opened my visor for a little fresh air and went back on glide. At this point, I am kicking myself for not eating more than an Egg McMuffin for breakfast, because I am actually feeling pretty whipped. The sky in front of me is starting to open up a little and I can see that the landing options are getting a little tighter in the next few miles, so I decide to start scouting an LZ. My first choice is a ranch with a nice green pasture, but as I get lower, I see that it is speckled with some small trees/bushes that don't look good, so I start looking for option number two. This turns out to be a nice field about 1/2 mile back up wind and right next to the highway. As I commit to the field and begin to box it, I can see that it is one of the abandoned orchards that has shallow ditches running the length of the field and they are about 15' apart running perpendicular to the wind. I couldn't see this from 800' with all the grass, YIKES! As I round out into ground effect, with good ground speed I am focused on my airspeed and not worrying about trying to time the ditches. I flared a little late and set the base tube/wheels down as I landed in one of the shallow ditches, no whack, but not a no stepper, oh well.

Getting ready to breakdown after a great day in Florida.

What an AWESOME DAY!!! The first hour and fifteen minutes of this flight absolutely kicked my but and not eating right didn't help. I actually felt like an XC pilot today and that is something that I have waited 20 years for, since I learned to paraglide..........and I still have 5 DAYS OF FLYING LEFT!!! Today's flight really made the trip for me, so anything else is gravy. There is still time to come down and join me.

Good stats for this rookie.

Here are my stats for the day, with three new personal bests; longest flight 1:56, highest altitude gain 6617' AGL, farthest XC flight 23.5 miles.

Day 1

What a beautiful morning here in Florida. All the pilots participating in the Team Challenge met at 10:00am for introductions and to discuss the format of the competition. After picking teams, Davis Straub gave us an overview of the days forecast. Winds were still predicted to be fairly strong, blowing 10-13, but lift was predicted to be up to 1200 FPM with cloud base around 5K! Wow, looks like we are going to get a booming day right out of the gates..... It was decided that the task for today would be very straight forward, so that the teams could get used to working together and the newbs like me could get a feel for the whole process. There was no declared goal, for the C pilots, just to stay aloft for 1 hour, which seemed very achievable given the forecast. Pilots had the option of going XC if they wanted to or landing back at the field. My team has 5 pilots, 1 A pilot, 1 B pilot and 3 C pilots. One of the other C pilots on my team is John Brantley from Northern Virginia. He is also flying in the Highland Challenge, so I was glad to have him on my team. His girlfriend Amy is here with him and is an H2 with her AT rating, but isn't flying in the event. She has graciously volunteered to retrieve for our team.

Getting ready for the first day of flying.

   The launch window was set for 1:30 and then pushed back to 2:00. Our team was scheduled to be the second team to launch, but we pretty much got snaked in the launch line, so John and I ended up launching last. I think there may have been a little communication issue with the Russian and Spanish teams, oh well. We ended up launching last at around 3:15. I had a nice clean launch and things were pretty straight forward until around 800', after that it got interesting. We flew through some punchy lift and sink cycles like I have yet to experience, that had me pushing out and pulling in hard to keep the tug on the horizon. It was a relief to get waved off at 2500'. Right off tow, I was able to find some broken lift that got me to around 2800' as I drifted back towards the field. Despite the great forecast, lots of pilots were getting flushed. There was lift to be found, but it was broken and sharp. I got spit twice today, that really felt like I was going over the falls, yee haa. Our team captain Steve Larson radioed that it might be a good bet to follow anything I found downwind towards the town of La Belle, as there were some pretty nice clouds in that direction. I was hesitant to get down wind of the field, as I had intended to land back at the park and the wind aloft was blowing pretty good. As I continued to work some broken lift, my drift was such that I had to make a decision to commit to going for it or head back. Well I came here to go XC, so what the heck. I continued to work lift and drift down wind of the park, with my sights set on a nice cloud building about a mile from the park. I got there with around 1600' and found nothing but sink alarm. I continued to scratch to the best of my ability, but every time I would claw up a few hundred, I would quickly get hammered back down. I bounced around between 1000' and 1500' for another mile and a half, when I got to a big canal that crosses HWY 80 and quickly found myself in a big sink cycle at 700'. Well I was about to have my first landing XC landing. It wasn't tough to tell where the wind was coming from, based on the wind shadow on the water. I set up a pretty high approach and nice landing parallel to the highway, just inside a field speckled with cows.  The brush was taller than it looked from the air, but I had a pretty nice landing. After carrying my glider a little closer to the road, I got John on the cell, but had to get off the phone, because two Sheriffs pulled up with their lights and sirens on.....

Nice of the local Sheriffs to stop by and check on me, lights and sirens were a nice touch.

The first question I got was "Are you OK?" The second question I got was "What are you doing here?" After I explained that I had great intentions of flying further towards the town of La Belle, one of the officers said, "Isn't the hang gliding place just down the road?" "Yes it is" I replied. "Don't they have a place to land down there?" he says.... OK, now I have a cop cracking on my pitifully short maiden XC flight. After assuring them that I was OK and would not damage the fence as I left, they were off. A few minutes later an elderly lady who had to be 85 came screaming to a stop off side the road. After wrestling with here seat belt for what seemed like five minutes, she made her way around the car asking if I was OK and offering the use of her cell phone. I assured he too that I was OK and that I had a driver on the way.

Thanks to Amy for coming to get me and helping to extract my gear from the lumpy cow field. Well, Day 1 is in the books and I can now say that I have logged my first XC flight, a whopping 2.5 miles and 22.5 minutes. Lots of fun today with some great new friends. With the forecast improving over the next few days, it should be a great week of flying adventures ahead.

The site of my first XC landing.

We finally made it to Florida

If you know me, you know that hang gliding is truly a passion for me; and I am blessed to have a wife and family that support me and my flying. As long as I can remember, I have dreamed of flying. Almost 20 years ago I learned to fly paragliders at Point of the Mountain in Utah, and my life has never been the same since. While I have enough amazing memories from my paragliding days to fill another blog, I always wanted to fly hang gliders. Ever since I was a kid in the 70s (the crazy days of hang gliding) I have been drawn to this pure and simple form of flight. Anyways, I will spare you all of my childhood dreams of flying. Fast forward to last spring when I finally decided that I couldn't put my hang gliding dreams on hold any longer. Since that time I have received my H2 rating from Steve Wendt at Blue Sky http://www.blueskyhg.com/ and have logged well over a 100 flights at 5 different sights across the country. Last Thursday I checked off a big milestone in getting my H3 Intermediate rating.

We left Northern Virginia at 9:30pm on Thursday night and rolled into The Florida Ridge flight park in south central Florida at around 2:00pm on Friday. According to the GPS driving time from Vienna was estimated at 17 1/2 hours, so we made pretty good time. True to form, Erica and I were busy with work right up until we started packing, so once again we hit the road with no real game plan....... No big deal, it just adds to the adventure. After some quick introductions at the flight park and a tour of the facilities, it was time to figure out some accommodations. If you have ever been to The Florida Ridge, you know that it is basically in the middle of nowhere. Across the street from the flight park there is a little golf resort with a marina called The Glades, we figured we would start by checking there, as we had heard that they have a few cabins that they rent. Lucky for us, they had one available and 60 bucks a night seemed like a steal after confirming that the cabin would accommodate our family of five. As we drove through the resort and pulled up to the cabin, Erica (my wife) and I just started laughing. Our 10' x 20' cabin was just what we needed for a little quality family time. The panoramic picture below is the entire cabin. Erica and I are laying on the queen bed and the kids are sitting on the couch that folds into a queen bed.

Whether it is a short glide or an extended soaring flight, I truly love being in the air. One of my ambitions with hang gliding has been to fly cross country (XC) and participate in some race to goal competitions; which brings me here to The Florida Ridge to participate in The Team Challenge. This is a seven day event designed to give fledgling pilots with XC ambitions like myself, the opportunity to participate in a less formal competition, while being mentored by world class pilots. There is so much to learn here that it is truly a little intimidating to think that I will log my first XC attempt tomorrow.

For those of you that aren't hang glider pilots, an XC flight is a flight where your intent is to fly an extended distance from the location of your launch and either navigate and land at a specified goal (task), or to fly a designated course (task) that might return to the location that you launched from after passing through one or more designated way points. Without going into a lot of detail about the process, I would describe it as an aerial chess match where your intent is to complete your task and make it to goal as fast as you can. In the course of flying a task here in Florida, we will be flying over ranches, orchards, swamps, houses, golf courses, etc. If you should find that you have lost your lift and are not going to make goal, it is up to you to find a safe place to land and communicate your location for a retrieval........... 

I have started this blog to share my experiences here in Florida with anyone out there that may be interested in following my progress and those that may be interested in participating in an XC event like this. I will start off by saying that I am not a blogger and I don't intend to put a lot into my writing here. My intent is to give a daily account of my experiences and hopefully give you a feel for what an adventure this is going to be for me.