Hang gliding behind a boat on Canyon Lake

I was lucky enough to receive a visit from Greg Ludwig this passed Thursday, he brought his whole boat towing operation (Lake Shore Hang Gliding) up to Canyon Lake.

Of course the first thing that crossed my mind was cool! - I could take Heidi up! and so we did :) On the most beautiful day.

We went up just after Greg had finished teaching his morning class. I'm convinced teaching from a boat is a far safer way to go in Texas. Especially solo anyway. The water is warm, clean and considerably softer than baked dirt. Thermals and gusts lose their edge over the water.

Heidi and I pinned off at 1600ft over the lake, and lazily flew around, taking in the scenery. A few neighbors even spotted us :) 

Tracy flew solo a few times, great to see.

Then we took her son Hunter up a couple of times, and his girlfriend Jess. With the wind change we were landing over by the Baja BBQ, to be setup for the next tow.

I love sliding in on the water, coming from the california coast where water and hang gliders don't mix, landing on the water is a neat novelty.

As you can see, I wasn't the only one to think so. Fabulous BBQ back at our place afterwards, Thanks Greg and Kim for making the trip. Hope to see you again soon :)

Corpus crispy

Last week Heidi and I went down to Corpus to visit some friends. The visit coincided with copious amounts of rain. Of course we still had fun, despite getting drenched.

Port "A"ransas a very touristy town is out on the Sand bar, that is the real coast. 

Of course I was chomping at the bit to go and try windsurfing on the world famous bird Island. I put in at World Winds. Heidi and Mya were kayaking right there in the same spot. It was fun wizzing by them. Hopefully it was equally fun for them seeing me pile into the water moments later.

I had a heck of a time trying to get back to where I came from in the gusty switchy winds - the opposite of what Bird Island is known for.

But it was good fun in a pretty spot. .

The flight home

The long anticipated flight finally happened Saturday. It was everything I thought it should be. The lake is very pretty from the air, and its of course interesting flying over somewhere you are familiar with from a ground bound perspective.

I teamed up with Nate for the flight and towed up first. I was climbing through 6000ft when Nate launched. I think the clouds were starting to street from the south at that point, there surely was  a lot of sink around the airport. I thought Nate would take a second tow, but my radio was misbehaving, so I wasn't sure what was happening down there.

I waited around the airport for an hour but no relight, so I decided it was time to get going.

At 38 miles, it's not a hugely impressive task, but it is challenging, due to airspace and long tree crossings.

The wind was East so a complete tailwind, which made getting through the airspace a cake walk. Interestingly the cloud streets were north south, 90 degrees to the wind below cloud base. There was plenty of sink between the streets.

At this point (9000ft over pergatory) I knew I had the lake made. Unfortunately it's also when my camera battery quit. So I guess I will have to fly the route again.

I was in no hurry to land, so I noodled my way to the lake under the hazy areas, too minimize the sink, and got to lake at 6500ft. Plenty enough for a nice lap. I landed across the street from the bar in a freshly bailed hay field, where Heidi was waiting, with the video camera. I was in smooth widespread -500fpm, which made landing a piece of cake.

Landing at Canyon Lake Vimeo.

Other things in June

Down the street in Wimberly there is an open air theather (corral), it only opened for the season in May, when it is generally too hot and light to late ? But we found a cool Friday evening to go enjoy the latest Star Trek movie. It was a fun "local" experience ;)

We celebrated the end of the school year, and the party pit got its debut.

The steps we perhaps the hardest thing to get right, certainly looks better with a lick of paint. It's a work in progress.

Somewhere in there we went to go see Bob Schnider play some tunes again. A Fun band - I increased my enjoyment factor by wearing earplugs the whole night. I must be getting old.

With clouds like this around - the desire to fly is strong. Davis and Ricker were up north of Austin with Chris trying to break the Single Surface Distance world record. I happilly joined in and flew ~56miles upto near Waco with Davis.  

Big Bird flew quite nicely in the strong winds, although it's a pig to tow behind the light trike. Thanks to Mike for the tow.

Belinda was following along right below us. I'm looking forward to Big Spring this year, which she and Davis have taken on the organisation of.

In the meantime I've been working in a wood shop making a bazzillion draws. This is about half of them (unfinished). I am enjoying working with wood. 

Ricker visited again and we flew Luling. The plan was to fly back to the lake, but the weather had other plans. The forecast was for light winds on the ground and light winds at cloud base. This held true, but with 22 mph quatering headwind 3k through 8k. It was a fun challenge - but the flight to the lake remains uncompleted.

With the stretch between Hunter and Pergatory and to the lake in the background, rather tricky in the strong rough air, we talked ourselves down into a bar in Hunter. Rileys Tavern claims to be the oldest bar in Texas. It was 108'F so some cool liquid and air con was welcome. Thanks Andy for coming and finding us.

more windsurfing

Jacobs creek park - much better place to launch from. I've been improving day on day. Although the wind is finally calming down into what I understand is the normal summer pattern. When it was windy the other day, Ricker came down and played. He had so much fun, remembering how he used to windsurf, he returned the following week with a quiver of equipment.

I don't think I stayed on the board to much long after hitting this wave, but I figure it's a cool shot. I'm still trying to figure out good ways and places to mount the camera. Some of the wipe outs have lead my to believe I'm lucky to have not destroyed or lost the camera yet.

I've been picking up tips from Mike, Jack, Jim the local guys here, Also tips out of this book There are many things to learn of course. The tiny differences in setup have dramatic differences in handling. Mike has generously also lent me a board and harness to try out, which made me realize how bad the equipment was I had.

Now it's even more fun. The winds on the lake can often be gusty, leading to some fast crashes. Think I skipped on the water 3 times on Monday, still a bit sore !

This is probably more what things should look like, although the sail is too slack and the boom to high, but at least the mast foot is in a better position.

Luling to Chris's

Good flying day yesterday, Danny and Nate rallied Jeff from Fly Texas to tow us up. Goal was Chris's up near Georgetown, with a couple of turn points to clear the Austin Airspace. It's about 64 miles or so. I flew with my spot tracker, I love the convenience of it. Oliver our retrieve could track me easily on his smart phone. This is what it looks like.

With one thing and another we were slow getting going, I didn't go on course till nearly 5pm. Nate and Danny were a little way ahead. Climbs were quite slow, especially low under 3k.

I don't think any of us really got up to cloudbase until just short of Bastrop. I got a climb to near 7k, and the flight got considerably easier from there on. Unfortunately Danny got drilled just before there, but worked his way along through the hardest section.

Nate diligently flew the task I had set to avoid the airspace. Alas it went into a blue hole over Bastrop, and Nate went down just passed there.

I totally cheated the turnpoints by a few miles - sort of justifying it because I was behind, and had all the airspace programmed into my GPS. This kept me under the cloud street, which got me most of the remainder of the way to Chris's. The flight in was pretty buoyant and smooth, and there were still good climbs to be had at 7:30pm.

This is what the flight looks like with the airspace in Google earth. I use airspace files from Lloyd Bailey - find them here : www.lloydbailey.net/airspace.html . I haven't yet spent the time to figure airspace on the 6030, but I did put together a gpx file for the club since we all have a Garmin.

Basically I looked up the co-ords of the airspaces on Sky Vector .com Then found out the radii of the various airspace classes. Using Mapsource I put a proximity circle around center and traced the circle as a track. The track can then be uploaded. I'm sure its the caveman way of doing it, please leave a comment if you have some advise :)

Thanks to Nate for figuring out the logistics of a tow and retrieve - and the life saving sandwich, thanks to Jeff for the tow(s). Thanks to Danny for lettings us use his luxurious truck :)

Boat towing

Thursday was a fun day, Jeff invited Andy and me up for some afternoon boat towing at Marble Falls, just West of Austin.

Jeff runs Fly Texas Hang Gliding School and uses myriad ways of teaching the art of flight.

This was my first time towing from a boat, I gotta say I loved it. Warm clear water, flying in swim shorts, pretty nice views. What's not to like.

It's neat watching the boat get smaller and smaller as you you ride the smooth air up.

With a little wind we were getting upto about 1200ft on tow. There was a little 

lift around, but I think most of it was being stolen by an approaching storm, and of course we are over a lake.

Landing on water is totally fun, very low stress, smooth and lightly refreshing :) 

We had been watching the radar and some over development to our south. After 4 flights it was time to get the equipment away. We were in good time before the gust front hit. Yeeha - good fun - Thanks Jeff.

Messing about with a windsurfer.

I tried Windsurfing way back when I was 14 or something like. I never got that good, but now living almost on a really inviting lake it'd be a waste not to play with it some more.

There's a put-in spot just 5 mins away and it's generally pretty windy (which is among many reasons I've not been flying much recently).

It's really nice to be able to go for a quick sail after work. And go cool off in this hot, humid environment. The water is pretty clear and a good temperature.

There's a fun crowd here giving me a ton of helpful advice and lending me stuff. I got brave enough to put the camera on the boom last attempt :)

Next I need to tack, jibe and water start. I've been having some spectacular crashes maybe I'll run some video ;)

A huge thanks to Zac for delivering my forgotten mast :)

Lock out on tow

A couple of weeks ago I had an experience I'd rather not repeat. I think there are some lessons that can be learned, so I'll share. In short it was a hang gliding launch that went wrong. I got away with it but just barely, I was exposed to far more risk than I was comfortable with...

The day seemed fairly harmless, wind was SE on the ground at 5-15mph a little gusty - but that's Texas. Above 200ft it was probably S @ 20mph. Air was unusually cold for the wind direction. I had already taken one flight.

I came out of the cart very smoothly, level and perfect airspeed. Just as I was starting to relax into the tow, I got whacked on the right wing. That made me climb and yaw significantly left. With full right weight-shift I came back into line (though I was still high). Just then the second surge hit, this lift was a lot more turbulent.

I went to pin of with my right hand, I was already too high, and surging upward, right after taking my hand off the bar the right wing rapidly lifted.

I was happy that Joel beat me too it and gave me the rope. As you can see from the sequence below, I had quite a bit of energy from the sling shot effect, but also with the air being pretty radical. Even off line I continued to be pitched up despite pulling in. All to soon I was without airspeed in a bad sideslip, I think the images are 2 seconds apart.So the sideslip was about 4 seconds (that's a lot - I was begining to think I would side slip to the ground).

The nose did come around as I dumped the VG, and I was flying low right back into the air that had caused all this, downwind and I was dragging the the 180ft tow line. I was a pretty unhappy chap!

I think some of the nasty air actually helped get my glider back into the wind for a no step (check your underware) landing. I'm not for a moment going to claim full authority over the glider. From roll out  to kissing the ground was less than a minute.

So what can be learned from all this ? We certainly are exposed to a higher level of risk from 20-80ft on tow. Are there things that increased my exposure? After having mulled over this a while I'd say there were three different possibly companding factors.

1. I think I was flying with too much VG (4/5) This compromised my roll control.

2. I had a camera on my sprog, and I've noticed before at high airspeed, the handling does weird stuff (probably on acount of the zipper being open and air pressure changing the camber).

3. In Luling we tow at higher airpseeds, this narrows the envelope that a glider should be in behind the tug. Which in turn will reduce the amount of turbulence that can be handled.

I think each of these factors on there own are innocuous, but combined had a dramatic result. I'd rather not do that again.