http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=29415
Holy Crap
Lin Lyons - 2013/07/03 16:38:14 UTC
I've been flying down in Hollister, with Mission Soaring, for a bit over a year.
I started because I've always wanted to fly, and now that I'm old and retired, I have time.
None of my friends were hang gliders before I started.
Name some glider people you count as friends.
I have seen folks out at Funston for many years, but just didn't get to it.
I also, back in the Seventies, saw someone bring his Regallo rig to Point Reyes, hike up a dune, take off, stall, and peel right and bend a wing spar.
At this point, I've gotten my Hang 2, and have two to three hundred flights...
Guess we're not keeping a logbook.
...most of which are five to ten seconds on the training hill.
Guess you're really good at foot launching and foot landing now.
- How much good was all that practice good for on 2013/06/15?
- Is it possible that some of the time and effort that went into all those bunny hill hops been put to better advantage elsewhere?
I do have eighty-some flights (says Pat) off the tow though.
- Guess we're not keeping a logbook.
- Does it count as a flight if you're still on tow one second before you're back on the ground and you land upside down under nylon?
Harold (and Pat) is the only mentor that I have right now.
Super. How could you lose?
I presume that there are folks at the various sites that do that.
Why does person have to be on a flying site to act as a mentor?
- You could teach yourself to fly a hang glider isolated from everybody else - like plenty of people did at the beginning of the sport - and do a lot better than a lot of dead people I know about who had FANTASTIC instruction and mentorship from idiots with USHGA qualifications and awards coming out of their asses.
- Nobody with half a brain or better would ever dream of towing up on a piece of fishing line that broke every third or fourth effort in order to keep himself safe without brainwashing from the establishment.
- Assuming you have half a brain or better - and I'm starting to have serious doubts on that - if you had researched remote start surface towing you'd have learned what the proper equipment for the job was, acquired it, and used it without any problem. Instead you used that cheap deadly crap Pat and Harold set you up with and sold you and damn near got killed.
What Harold has told me is that after I fly off the top of Ed Levin, I can go elsewhere, with him and other Mission students, which seems reasonable.
Fuck Harold. You'd be a thousand times better off isolating yourself from him and his other victims and reading Kite Strings to fill the instruction/mentorship void.
I actually did drive up to McClure and watched three or four guys get high enough that I couldn't see them.
That was during the day.
How'd the night flying go?
I drove up to Hat Creek, but didn't fly (my glider's still in the shop).
I only saw people fly around evening glass off there.
Yeah, I know I can do it, but when I looked over the edge, it does cause some consternation.
That's 'cause you weren't hooked into a glider. If keep looking over edges five seconds prior to running off them for every flight thinking of the possibility that you're not hooked into a glider I one hundred percent guarantee you that you'll never run off an edge not hooked into a glider.
Seems that I was wire holder, bailout LZ retriever, and cameraman for the day.
I did try briefly to hang out at Funston, but the folks there didn't seem to want to talk to me, so I left.
Coulda been a lot worse. They might have wanted to talk to you and you might have listened to what they were saying.
