Almost everyone asks, “How do you learn to hang glide?” Well, I learned at the beach in Hawaii. I was taught by a woman who was quite talented but the funny thing about her, I never saw her fly. I’m not questioning whether she did or not, the fact of the matter is, I just never saw her do it.
She just told me what to do and I did it.
Everything turned out fine. I listened to her instruction and then returned demonstration. Her boyfriend taught me as well. We did tandem instruction together.
There was a sand dune in Laia on the North shore and we would go there and learn to set up the glider, how to keep it pointed into the wind and run into the wind. The glider would carve the air and you could feel how to steer it by shifting your weight forward to go faster, backwards to slow down, side shift to turn. You learned to coordinate turns as well by turning and slightly pushing out to make the glider turn without slipping down the wing that was down.
At the beach was where you learned the basics.
In Kailua, there was a 300’ hill. This is where hang gliding got serious. There was no tandem here. You went from a 20’ sand dune to a 100’ hill. And you had to turn to not over fly the landing area. I practiced so much at the beach that I was tired of it begging to fly higher. But they made me fly at the beach more until I was ready and I was ready.
I learned a big lesson in Kailua.
If you look at an obstacle, you will hit it.
I landed in the top of a tree and just hung there I wasn’t hurt, the glider was not damaged, it was fortunately not a Kiawe, a really thorny tree, it was big and soft. The boyfriend yelled at me and I was so scared and embarrassed. The woman told her boyfriend to lay off the yelling, this was a good crash, nothing got hurt and I learned a very valuable lesson, don’t look at things you do not want to hit.
Tandem flights are the best way to learn. You see it, you feel it, you do it. You can ask questions while doing it. I went to the beach one weekend or two, then a tandem flight. Back to the beach, back to tandem. I think I did 7-8 tandem flights, each one about an hour long. It gave me the confidence to take off at Makapuu, a 1,200’ windy, advanced launch sea cliff.
I knew it was time to finally fly the ridge on my own. Two weeks before I took off, my mind started to hesitate, what was going to happen?
I was scared.
But I was ready. It was over before I knew it. I had learned to fly and I had a key to the gate at Makapuu. I flew a lot. My longest flight was 12 miles down the Koolau Pali, fly around, turn around and fly back. One time I flew for 5 hours! I flew with Ewa birds and clouds. If the trades were cranking, and if there was a cap cloud on the ridge, I would ease out and fly the wave that deflected up the side of the cloud bank.
I would play chicken with Rabbit Island trying to drop down into the lift. It was a mile out to sea and I remember squeaking in to the LZ a couple of times. I also remember diving on the needle on top of the lighthouse, I played in the air, it was surreal.
I joined the Arizona Hang Gliding Association and started to fly with the guys here. I was a Hang 3, an intermediate pilot which allowed me to fly everywhere in AZ. I finally got to fly Shaw Butte, South Mountain and the Craters, Merriam and Sheba. But I sucked. I was safe, but I could not find the thermals. When I did, I would blunder around it and it would get away from me. At my disposal, I had literally world record holding friends that helped me.
There is no short cut to learning the fine art of centering a thermal, you just have to learn it on your own. And that’s just what I did.
On a cracking spring time day, there were thermals too big to fly out of. I was sucked skyward with a bunch of other friends. It was an amazing experience. I knew I was ready to step up to a better, more efficient glider. I got with the sailcloth color expert at Wills Wing and we decided on a color scheme that was going to suite my style. I ordered the glider and it finally came.
It flew faster and more efficient. It retained energy much better but it was a handful to fly. I had to think ahead of the way it flew and my skills were up to it but I was increasing my skills and able to realize my performance much better.
I had friends that invented truck tow launch systems and I decided to build one too. I literally went to a junkyard and removed the disc brake hub and axel assembly from a Toyota car and welded a cage and put together a cable actuator for the disc. We built a nose release for the glider, drove down the road with me hooked into the glider loaded on my truck and I would release and the disc brake would hold resistance against the 5,000’ of 1/8” Kevlar line. I flew behind the truck releasing at altitude generally 1-2 thousand feet, the tow operator winding the line back in and I’m off looking for thermals. Sometimes I would release early because the truck would release the big bubble of hot air and I would circle up in it.
I flew in a couple of airshows at local airports but that is a story for later.
I advanced in my skills and started flying cross country. Take off from a mountain or from a tow, circle up, fly downwind, find another thermal, circle up, fly downwind and just keep going. I flew a lot of 25-30 mile flights but finally flew out of the 50 mile class with a 60 mile flight! Sometimes I would get so high, like 14,000’ and higher. I carried oxygen and if I started to get cold would turn it on.
