Friday, Oct. 31 2008
I have recently started doing hang gliding in Northern Virginia. I am taking lessons with John Middleton or Silver Wings Hang Gliding, and excellent instructor based out of Arlington, Va. He starts you out with some very basic stuff, like how to hold the glider and slowly works you up to running on flat ground with the glider, then a slight hill, then a little steeper. Usually by the end of the first or second class you will get a little flight or two in maybe 50 foot of distance no more that 6-7 ft off the ground.
The video I have above was from my 3rd lesson I believe, at the training site near Baltimore, Maryland. It is so much fun, I wish I had a picture of my shit eating grin while flying. I am hoping to have my hang 1 rating before too long, at which point I will probably start collecting the equiptment for myself. I am really hoping to get a mountain flight in by spring. Luckly, John teaches all winter if the weather is cooperative.
Here's a few notes I wrote before about my experience:
Getting a hangglider has been in my life master plan for a long while now, it's just been a matter of when. I was hoping to do it over the summer, but I ended up having too much fun doing other things like sailing in Maine, the batteau festival, spending time at the beach, and of course moving to Centreville, Va. So I started up work in Centreville and time to get to it! I did a little Google'n and found out that John Middleton with Silver Wings Hang Gliding (http://www.silverwingshanggliding.com/) in Arlington who teaches. So I setup a ground class, and inital flight class, which was only 10 bucks a person for the ground class, and 85/person for a day of flying, and got some friends to go in on it.
Day 1: Ground School
This was pretty generic how a wing works, how gliders came to be, how gliders have evolved, etc. We(Joe, Maggie, & I) went to John's house and were there for about an hour and a half. It was some good background info for the newbies, but I was pretty bored. I spent the whole time thinking about flying and hoping John wouldn't spred his legs too far apart because he has some ultra short shorts on.
Day 2: Off to Baltimore, MD
First day out, we didn't get a full day by any streach of the means. The field we wanted to use had a dog show, so we didn't even bother going out there until about 3pm. Once we got there, we took a bit of time getting release forms signed and geared up. Then we setup the gliders, for the five of us there were 3 gliders. I shared a glider with Leo, while Joe and Jason and another and Maggie got her own.
Day 3: Back to Baltimore, MD
Second real lesson, Jacob was visiting and came along. It was an awesome day of flying! It did start out a little rough for me, I'm not really sure what the issue was, things just didn't feel right. John said I wasn't 'pushing back' enough, so I wasn't getting any lift, but it felt like I was pushing back a lot! I also had a little 'doh' moment when I started running without having locked the D ring and it came undone, so when I started running the glider took off, but I didn't. Luckly I hadn't gone very far at all before I realized what had happened, so the glider didn't leave my hands and get damaged or anything. But I definetly got a little talking to about it.
But then things really started to pick up. We moved from the sloping area to the real hill, and I got to go maybe half way up the hill to start from. The wind conditions were really crappy, we had a tail wind of about 0-4mph, but we all felt like running like crazy and going anyway. And it ended up working out, although it made landing on our feet about impossible. Having Jacob along made it even more fun, because we were able to take some video clips as well, which was great!