Year 5 hang Gliding

Well, another great year has passed and I have many an epic adventure to tell you all about. There are so many highlights I can hardly choose where to begin, but one that leaps to mind is the following:

I was at Warehouse Stationery, clutching my 40% discount voucher, about to attempt a coup of unprecedented enormity. Tucked under my arm was 700 laminating pouches, enough for a whole year of NZHGPA membership cards. The pimply checkout guy stared impassively at me as I placed my gambit on the table. He pondered my voucher and, like the awesome foe I knew he was, his eyes went straight to the phrase “Does not include business machines or consumables”. He said to me, “Do you think these are business consumables?”

I said, “No.”

I was now committed, there was no going back. Did my clever logic win his confidence, or would he utter the dreaded phrase about checking with his supervisor... The seconds ticked by like... like about twice as many seconds as there really was... until finally he shrugged and put it through at 40% off.

My hand was shaking as I handed over the NZHGPA credit card. “Be cool, dammit!”, I said to myself, “finish the job and get out!”. And that, my friends, is exactly what I did. Probably the greatest moment in my career as Administrator so far... I saved you, my paymasters, over $65 with that one act of genius.

Before you get too impressed though, let me tell you, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I don’t want to give away too much, but let me just say that if all goes well with a certain Nigerian businessman I have invested your fees with, you will never have to pay membership fees again! Watch this space...

In between the endless hours I have devoted selflessly to being your humble and sensible Administrator, I have managed to score a bit of flying myself. The first thing worth retelling was memorable spring flight was from here in Marlborough:

Matt Barlow was here visiting, as was Clint Fraser from Nelson. Shane McKay was doing laundry, so didn’t join us. The idea was for Matt and Clint to stick around and let me keep up with them. This plan worked well for the first 3 minutes and I never saw them again. Matt got to Hanmer Springs (2nd longest flight in NZ history) and Clint laconically and mysteriously guided his weapon to a St Arnaud Pub for a personal best 99km flight. It was touch and go whether he would be conscious by the time we retrieved him.

One reason (excuse) I struggled to keep up with Matt and Clint was that my beloved Top Navigator vario/GPS died about 5 minutes into my flight. I had never successfully thermalled for long without a vario before, so assumed my flight would be short-lived, especially after following Matt down what turned out to be a no-lift dead end for both of us. I just barely crept over a saddle with maybe 30m clearance into the next valley where I knew there were good landings and prepared for the inevitable.

Before giving up though, I glided to a little spur near the valley floor that had worked for me once before. I was delighted when my glider was buffeted around by some decent lift and I set about rescuing my altitude. It was weird to say the least, thermalling without a vario, but it became enjoyable and quite easy before long. I became very quick at using near and distant landmarks and their relative rising/falling as a measure of my upness or downness. More effective though was how it made me really feel the feedback of my inside wing in any thermal. The feeling very strongly resembled that of using the angle of the water’s current to fling your kayak most efficiently across a river. I loved it. Things were even weirder once I got well above the surrounding ridges. It became much harder to know if I was rising or not, and consequently I probably left many thermals well before I topped them out.

Also of note was how I got the altitude heebie jeebies for the first time. Somehow being up there near the clouds in total silence brought it all home to me how odd this activity was and how tenuous was my grip on the air. This was exaggerated by hearing every little creak and groan of the harness, or twang of a side wire. But my progress was surprisingly smooth until I got to Mt Patriarch.

Matt and Clint had climbed over this mountain about an hour previous and reported some pretty grunty action. When I looked up at it looming vertically above me it resembled something out of the Lord of the Rings. It was shrouded with nearly black clouds and it was a psychological barrier for me to choose that route when I could see over the Wairau river was beautifully sunny foothills with tasty little puffballs overhead. I had to cross the river after Patriarch anyway, so I thought I would blaze a new trail.

However, what should have been a make-able glide was nullified by having to ferry glide across the sea breeze that was forcing itself upstream. It was with mixed emotions I landed for a new personal best by (500m) of 55km. Next time I will balls it out with the evil powers of Mordor! And yea, The Laminator shall reap his vengeance without mercy...

The footnote to this flight was when I bragged about it to Rob Whittall (He’s like this really famous pilot who is now living in NZ who I had to email because as Administrator I have to email famous people all the time.) I thought I was pretty much now in a whole new league being able to fly so far without a vario. But Rob soon deflated me. He said someone stole his vario five years ago and hasn’t flown with one since. He even claims if someone gave him a new one he still wouldn’t use it. Oh well, can I at least say I am equally good as Rob Whittall now?

I was lucky enough to get to Omarama for two separate weeks this year. The first was a friendly week of flying organised by some genius to coincide with the equinoctial gales of November. I did not rig my glider even once in 5 days. Luckily I took my windsurfer and had a ridiculously fun week... the second trip was obviously the Omarama XC Classic, which is always my flying highlight of the year. I had the odd bombout as usual, but had again taken my windsurfer and thus rescued ruined days with some hilarious sea breeze blasting on lake Aviemore.

But there were great flights too. My best one started with a bold decision. Me and the majority of pilots had successfully established ourselves at cloudbase above Magic mountain, and one by one they all headed downwind to Snowy Top, with the aim of reaching Mt Cook 100km away. I was intending to do the same but I liked the look of the clouds over Lindis Pass, directly upwind. The sky looked a bit tatty and cold towards Mt Cook. So, to everyone’s surprise I headed towards the Lindis at a direction 180 degrees to everyone else, plugging into 5-15 knots of South easterly.

A couple of brilliant young lads were kind enough to bring my truck down the hill, and The Greatest Driver on Earth thoughtfully gave them a radio to talk to me with. I pottered along agonisingly slowly, as the head wind was compounded by the fact that after my first couple of textbook clouds I was confronted with blue sky. I literally had to wait at cloud base for about ten minutes each time for a new cloud to form ahead of me. Sometimes I was leaving a thermal aiming at nothing but the tiniest wisp and hoping it would be a real thermal when I got there.

I could see my gleaming silver Pajero as a tiny speck sitting on the roadside of Lindis Pass. The boys were probably regretting having the radio now as they felt obliged to follow me until I landed. I was really embarrassed about how slow I was going and almost hoped I would blow it so they could get home. My wishes nearly came true halfway to Tarras.

A pathetic wisp had let me down and I had glided down to a scrappy little blob of rock just above a paddock. I was mentally setting up my landing approach while trying to describe my position to the boys who had rather disappointingly averted their gaze from the tiny speck in the clouds. I unzipped my harness and as is often the case this created an instant thermal. I cranked my High Performance Super-Sport Aeros Combat 2003 Custom Prototype Comp Wing into that baby while apologising profusely to the boys who still hadn’t seen me in spite of being at the other end of my landing paddock.

Within a couple of minutes I was back chattering with cold at cloudbase and then it finally happened. The much loved, much talked about, rarely encountered Cloud Street materialised in front of me. There was a beautiful straight corridor of thermal clouds heading straight to LakeHawea. I had read about these things so often I actually knew what to do. Yes, I flew under the cloud street! What luxury... no need to do those annoying little circles.

Before I knew it I was at the end of the street after about 8km straight gliding. Maybe I took the textbook a bit too much to heart because I was lower than when I had entered the street. I should have maxed out my last thermal because the next cloud was about 10km at the start of the Pisa Range. The glide across a sea-breezy Clutha River sucked too much height out of me and I couldn’t make it.

But at that stage I was positively mortified at how long I had kept my two valiant escorts from getting back to their real friends at camp. I was glad to land beside what I thought was a handy road. This road turned out to be on the wrong side of the Clutha and necessitated the boys driving all the way to Cromwell and back up the other side. A 50km pointless diversion, sorry guys! Needless to say the beers were on me (That NZHGPA credit card is amazingly handy!). I came second that day to Guy Williams. My best ever XC Classic result, and a new personal best by about 300m! I now have four flights between 54 and 56 km. I need a psychologist I think...

I have nearly finished, but I still have to relate the most amazing thing of all of this year. Shane McKay was dribbling on one day and mentioned a super thermal he had found that day that made his vario go to a new “super-tone” that he had never heard it do before. It was like a special noise that it changed to after it had screamed as high as it possibly could. He said he had looked at his screen at the time and it expressed some unbelievable figure of lift, so we didn’t believe it. Anyway, I then got into the habit of glancing at my screen whenever my vario makes a particularly high-pitched noise. My record for a long time was 14.4m/s above a little knob by Mt Sunday, here in Marlborough.

But one flight from Magic Mountain last February, I got a new record. I was in an undoubtedly powerful thermal, rocketing up to cloudbase, then I hit an especially powerful core. The vario started screaming hysterically, higher and higher, and then, to my surprise it started making a whole different noise entirely that I had never heard before. I had entered the Shane McKay zone, I had gone through a portal to a parallel universe where logic no longer applies. I took a moment to glance at my screen between my white knuckles and was greeted with the figure of 18.8m/s. That equates to 3700 ft/minute. Or to put it in a way we can all understand, my glider was hurtling upwards at a speed of 67km/h (assuming my state-of-the-art highly computerised Swiss flight instrument was accurate.) The funny thing was, it was pretty smooth, so I just rode it out until it settled down to a pedestrian 12m/s average...

This year promises great things, with development of a new site above my house, and the imminent return of my nemesis, Chris Shaw. So you can be sure I will fill many a page next year with equally boring stories as this one... until then, go hard, and try and beat my 18.8m/s.

Year 4 Hang Gliding

It is that time of the year again for my annual recollection of my last year of 12 months hang gliding.

To help any new readers catch up, four years ago as a wildly enthusiastic beginner I was tearing around the Marlborough countryside hurling myself off any likely looking hill whenever I could sneak a few hours spare time. My enthusiasm was always matched and often exceeded by my partner in crime Chris Shaw, whose name will be familiar to all of you who have read my articles in the past. Any day that wasn’t a hurricane or raining was fair game. Even heavy morning fog would not put us off. I have great memories of driving up Paul Newton’s hill near Havelock to get above the fog. We would then wait around rigged up until a hole would burn off that was big enough to fly down though. This year has been significantly different. Chris has all but given up (please phone him on 03 547 1194 to abuse/encourage him back into the air) and I have been spending a shameful number of flyable days on my windsurfer. And yet I have been more involved in our sport than ever before. How so?

Well…around April my dear wife Heather got the job of NZHGPA Administrator. This was on my encouragement and was my cunning way of extracting a useful profit out of my marriage. And yes, the profits are rolling (well, dribbling...) in as planned. There has been one serious glitch though: as I am home more than Heather I have often been the one to deal with pilot queries and plough though some of the data entry. Before long I was the one with my finger on the pulse and had the slickest database skills. So as luck would have it I find myself “helping her” with about 50% of the work. This was not the dream! On the bright side though, I have discovered a great joy in fixing people’s bureaucratic problems. Try me one day... you’ll be pleasantly surprised at my soothing bedside manner and interminable bouts of verbal diarrhoea as I bombard you with the finest details on how to pay the Association more money. You may find my helpfulness dry up remarkably quickly if you’re after a refund though. Just joking, I am at your service 24/7. But let me not bore you any further with what is in fact the most tedious job in the universe.

another magic mountain launch

Far more exciting is my new hang gliding invention. Has anyone noticed that for many HG pilots the word “landing” would be more accurately replaced with the word “crashing”? Especially when landing fast gliders into light or nil wind. I can’t go into too much detail about my brilliant invention because a) it will be stolen by dark forces of commercial greed and b) you will all laugh at me. Ah, what the hell, they are flexible tapered plastic rods that point straight backwards during flight, but then lock into position pointing straight down at the ground for landing. The rods bend backwards when they start skimming the ground, turning into something resembling springy sled runners. Don’t laugh, but I call them “Fangs”. They will basically be something to replace wheels, but twenty times better. They will be so good as to make the flare redundant. In theory even a downwind landing will be doable. (Any volunteers for testing that one?) With the help of your toes dragging along the ground you could shorten any nil wind landing field down to 10m instead of the usual 40-60m. The implications of such a brilliant invention are nothing short of revolutionary. The hardest thing about hang gliding will become the easiest. I am confident that paraglider pilots and other weaklings will start defecting to the One True Sport in their thousands. Unfortunately I am also very confident that the invention will not work. The forces involved will probably be too significant for any known material to cope with. But I am embarrassed to say I am actually exploring the concept until I confirm that it can’t be done. Luckily I have an engineering student called Eddie using it as a live exercise for his CAD and CNC studies. (I am not dumb enough to spend actual money proving it won’t work! Eddie can destroy my dream in 3D virtual reality instead.) If it does actually work I will become the richest person in the entire universe.... as long as there are about 2 million HG pilots who are a) useless at landing, b) sensitive and new-agey enough to stick such unmanly items in their glider, and c) rich enough to buy them. I haven’t discovered such a pilot yet but the search goes on… I am sure they must exist because there’s this one dude who sells carbon fibre caterpillar tracks for hang glider basebars for €1100 a pair! And people actually buy them… idiots!

I remember running the fangs idea past Chris Lawry about 3 years ago and he said, “Why don’t you just learn how to land.” Ouch, baby… very ouch. He has a point, although in my defence I’ve yet to damage a glider personally on a landing, mainly because I carefully studied an article in Airborn about how to land a hang glider, written by Tish and/or Chris. (I can summarise it with 2 points: Keep your wings very level, and flare exactly when the downtubes start pushing back into your hands. Easy.) Great article, one that has served me well, but the fact remains landing is a source of some stress and alot of expensive damage to many pilots. Just watch 50 landings on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean. Or watch Chris Shaw land once.... (Yes, I will pay dearly for that comment.)

Marcel Bakker completing a great low save at Magic

While I have your partial attention, I would like to take this opportunity to encourage all you pilots (including all you PG pilots out there who are still reading me in spite of the countless insults I have rained down upon your lowly caste over the years…) out there to look for new launch sites. When I started flying around here, there were hardly any pilots and hardly any sites. I had no concept of flying at “established “sites, and just assumed it was up to me to find places to takeoff from. This has turned out to be surprisingly easy. I can count eight sites that I personally found, got access to, and “christened”. They are all excellent in at least one way. Shane McKay has chipped in with another four or five excellent sites. We now have more than we need, but are slowly learning which sites are best for which conditions. My latest discovery (see photos of me with Shane) is a huge treeless peak right by the main highway that we have fantasized about as a takeoff for four years now. I had a spare afternoon last month so drove to the farmer’s house, asked him, and he was delighted to let us fly there. He is even going to grade the road for us so we can cane it on the way up. So get out there and discover the next Magic Mountain or Taylor’s Mistake or Paeroas. You can be the worst pilot in NZ and still discover the greatest sites. Lord knows I am living proof of that statement.

I have managed to get through most of an article without really mentioning my own flying. This is no coincidence. I have done very little flying this year, with most of my summer stolen by working on a cruise ship in Antarctica again. I did get to the Omarama Classic though. I must repeat how much I love this event and urge other pilots to come on down next year. Start the subtle hints to your significant other about now. I find just staring into the middle distance with a wistful, slightly moist-eyed look and saying things like “One day before I die I would love to do the Omarama Classic....” If this doesn’t work just start faking a full-on midlife crisis until you have permission to go. Anyway, I digress. I want to tell you briefly about 2 flights of mine at the OXCC.

A sailplane pulls up and around after a Magic mountain beatup

The first one was a launch from magic at the “Cheese Grater” but launching towards Omarama into a light easterly breeze/thermals. Rod Stuart told me if you head left off this launch to the next spur it always seems to work. Why should I listen to Rod? Well, because Rod is extremely old. So old, his PIN number is only 3 digits. (I know this because I am Ben “The Administrator” McAlpine. Actually “The Adminstrator’s Helper”, but that doesn’t sound as imposing...) He is so old he has living memory of constructing his first glider from bamboo, polythene and gaffer tape. So old, he was born before Rod Stuart was a silly name to call your baby. Anyway, three pilots took off, went right, bombed out into the Ahuriri river. Rod took off, went left, and skied out. 10 more pilots then took off, went right, bombed out. Now I’m no genius of calculus, but I could detect a subtle statistical trend here. I came up with a plan to exploit this after some careful number crunching. The plan was …. “GO LEFT.” I headed straight for that spur without a single beep of lift for about 2 minutes. I would have been tempted to turn back but I had faith in the ancient one’s words. Sure enough, when I got directly over the spur I was rewarded with my vario doing a convincing impression of (young pilots avert your eyes here) a female Japanese porn star doing her most wildly enthusiastic high pitched staccato scream of painful but unbridled pleasure at the hands of the world’s most amazingly virile and well-endowed stud. That would be me in this instance..."Oh yeah, who’s your Daddy...." but I digress. From cloudbase I linked a few more likely looking trigger points (note to learners: that is how you describe flying around with your fingers crossed and praying you’ll blunder into a thermal) and made it over Mt Cuthbert towards Otematata for a 31km flight. My landing was the only glitch. I flared too hard into the sea Breeze, too early and with unlevel wings, and did a ground level wingover thing (note to learners: that is how you make a complete cock-up sound like an exciting stunt) and ended up on the ground in an upside down glider. I miraculously didn’t ruin my impeccable record of never damaging a glider on landing (Take that, Mr Lawry!), and I was very pleased to have a decent flight on a day most pilots bombed out. But the interesting thing was when I was circling in that first thermal I watched the next 5 pilots all take off, go right and bomb out. Only about 8 out of 25 pilots that day got away from takeoff properly. Thank you Rod... if you say it I will do it. Unless it is something stupid like you normally say…

The other flight of note for me was 47km to Tarras over the Lindis Pass. It started reasonably badly. Very badly actually. I launched first of everyone into a goodish thermal and found lift so widespread decided to go for a tiki tour to use up some time while everyone else launched. To cut a long story short my tiki tour somehow put me on the deck within 20 minutes. Thank God a kind driver named…. Ummm...shit I can’t remember now but I bought him a ALOT of beer… raced down the hill and took me back up for a reflight. We were alone on launch and after the world’s fastest, angriest rigging, my face burning with shame, I charged off straight into Rachel (the house thermal) and got slungshot straight to cloudbase, whereupon I pinned my ears back and sprinted to that peak above Killermont. I demanded a thermal when I got there and repeated this process at each subsequent peak as necessary. I was still fuming the entire flight at being such a dick, and the interesting thing was how fast I flew because of that. I was determined to catch up the field. I was like one of those proper racers you read about, ignoring weak lift and confidently caning it to my next thermal trigger. When I think about it, I was actually a lot better than Johnny Durand that day. If it wasn’t for my bombout causing my late departure and therefore getting myself grounded by a seabreeze, I would have broken the NZ record by flying to Stewart Island. Anyway, as the flight progressed I noticed I became subconsciously tuned in to a minimum pitch of screaming from the vario (let’s call her Noriko). If she wasn’t screaming to the pitch I was used to from earlier thermals, the glider just seemed to leave it of its own accord and sniff around until it was happily ensconced in another core worthy of the day. I ended up with about the fourth longest flight of the day and was about an hour faster than other pilots of a similar distance. It was a great change from my normal style of “never leave lift until you hit cloudbase”. That can really slow down your progress, pissing around in dribbly bits of lift you find between or at the edges of the proper grunty thermals. I hereby vow to fly like this from now on. So all you hotshots watch out, I predict I will be unbeatable from now on.

Also of note about that flight was that I logged it on my Aircotec “Top Navigator” flight instrument. I bought this off an Aussie pilot via their HGFA forum for $500 and it is awesome. It lays turds on the screen when you’re in lift, so if you lose the lift you just look at the screen and fly back into the biggest bunch of turds you can find. You invariably end up in a gaggle with the Dunedin Flying Club. (That was a joke! You DFC guys know I love you dearly….) But seriously, you fly into the bunch of turds and magically the vario starts going off again. It even compensates for the wind drift of the day. As the brochure says: “It’s like wearing thermal goggles!” The Top Navigator is quite an old design, so I imagine there will be some truly amazing developments in flight instruments in the next few years. Watch this space.

I put my flight log of that day into Google Earth and have enjoyed replaying it and flying around it in 3D. (See my screenshot of me coring the delightful Rachel.) In fact I think I have done that flight “virtually” for more minutes than the real flight took.

So where to from here? I am fully psyched for a summer of personal (if not competitive) triumphs. Last year I expressed my ultimate dream as being the man to break the NZ XC record. This was a very lofty goal, and it was always very unlikely to happen with my minimal talent and sub-optimal equipment. But it took a further blow last summer when Dave Newton broke Matt Barlow’s record by 20km or so. I would like to think I inspired him in this achievement. My publicly stated intention to break the record obviously sent a shiver of terror down his spine and spurred him on to greatness. All is not lost though. I intend lodging a formal protest with the FAI to have his record disqualified on the grounds of his obvious cheating: It is clear to anyone who has met Dave that he has had some sort of surgical implant into his nose to make it more than twice the size of any normal human’s. The aerodynamic advantages he enjoys because of this are fantastic, but surely against the spirit of the sport. I know of one other pilot who has employed this same dastardly technique of cheating. To protect his identity, instead of using his real name, let’s call him “John Smith”. I have included photographic proof of both these cheats so you can see for yourself. A few years ago “John Smith” totally dominated the field in a number of international competitions in speed gliding. Not just in the after match drinking games either. I think he even beat Manfred “Vicious” Ruhmer in one competition. Surprise surprise... some people disgust me! There is a happy ending though, with this pilot quite properly receiving a lifetime ban by the CAA. Hopefully “Dave Newton” will be next in line. Rest assured I am using my newly acquired administrative assistant powers in the NZHGPA to make sure this happens at all costs!

Year 3 Hang Gliding

here we go again...

A dream of mine is to fluke the New Zealand cross country record as the barely competent intermediate I am. Don’t laugh, I’m serious. My local takeoff here in the Marlborough Sounds (Mt Duncan) is where the current record by Matt Barlow started. I know the route he took. I own the glider he got the record on, and I have flexible enough work hours to fly on any good looking day that comes along. If it starts thermalling nicely I can be on launch in 30 minutes flat. I figure if I can get a better day than he got, and I can takeoff an hour earlier than he did, all I have to do is fluke a few thermals at the hard bits, wet my pants, not get lost, and the record is mine, all mine. The decent pilots out there would undoubtedly go further if they came along, but they are all at work, or living in stupid places like Christchurch. Idiots!

Another textbook commitment of aviation

The hang gliding fraternity in NZ should be egging me on. Someone amongst us needs to smash Matt’s record before the unthinkable happens. Yes, there are darks forces gathering. (I can't even bring myself to type their name but it starts with P and rhymes with "karagliders") Yes, the most evil, stinking creatures imaginable are nibbling at our rightful dominance. The most lowly lifeform known to man is daring to be so, so… disgusting and offensive as to attempt the same magnificent airborne feats that we alone in our majesty can hope to achieve. One of these airborne pathogens accidently drifted within a few kms of Matt’s record, and would have definitely beaten it if not for the innate cowardliness of the species that forced it to land at the first available opportunity. This was a close shave for hang gliding and we must be careful not to let ambition or confidence take root in the lowest caste of aviation. This could happen if their XC record stays so close to ours for any length of time. As it is we should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves and avoid all contact with these… people, until we reestablish

the natural order of things.

Anyway, as it happened, I missed all of December, January and February last summer by taking a job on a cruise ship driving Zodiacs on the Antarctic Peninsula. So I never really threatened to break the record. (Lucky for you, Matt.) In Marlborough I left behind Chris Shaw, who claimed he was too busy to break the record, and Shane McKay, who claimed he didn’t feel like it. Come on guys… we’re at the “End of Days” here. A little urgency would be helpful right now.

So I’m sorry, but my flying adventures were few and far between this season. There are really only two events worth filling you in on. The first was one spring day that the three of us took off from Mt Duncan, not thinking of the record but going that direction anyway. When I started this flying thing with Chris Shaw, we used to fantasize about racing each other along remote mountain ranges and we would work ourselves into a giddy frenzy about how great that would feel. On this particular day the dream actually happened. I want to write about it mainly to inspire the learners out there, to reinforce their dreams while it’s still fresh and novel enough to rave about it before any jadedness or cynicism sets in.

Chris Shaw

Shane took off first, and as was his tactic at the time, he raced ahead aggressively without even taking his thermals as high as they could go. (He was using some theory that he had picked up from Australia. As with most of Shane’s theories, we ignored it.) That left me and Chris with the sky to ourselves. So there we were.

Chris launches

Chris took off about 20 minutes after me, long after I had reached cloudbase (which, for all you beginners out there is pretty easy when the day is good, so keep the faith, you too will be doing all this stuff before long). What with it being unmanly to dither on a cross country, I had forged on ahead to the summit of Mt Duncan only to find a complete absence of lift. This was unusual, and normally would have sent me scurrying back to takeoff where I knew I could get straight back up again. But the day looked good, I was feeling manly, and I decided to just pop further along the route to see what was there with the plan to go back to takeoff if I found nothing. Well, sure enough, I found nothing, but takeoff suddenly seemed a long way away, and was totally out of the question when I spied my nemesis at cloudbase above said takeoff. After coming up with a feasible bombout excuse (one of the skills they don’t teach you in your beginner course), I decided to make a hopeless dash for a spot just above my house that has given me modest success in the past. I got there lowish, and, no lift. My mind did that depressing switch where it went from trying to decide what cloud looked the tastiest, to deciding what handkerchief-sized piece of flat ground was I most likely to survive landing on. That moment happens every cross country flight really. It always reminds me of getting out in cricket. It is always a shock, not in the script. It almost always feels unfair too, because by definition you have willingly left lift to get where you are now. That’s manly. Doesn’t that count for something? Hint to beginners: If you’re not careful you can end up being one of those pathetic creatures who are unwilling to leave the “house thermal” (a permanent area of lift that everyone except you can instantly find after takeoff).

I would rather double or quits; make a move and bombout straight away rather than float around for two hours around takeoff. That is, I would rather do that until the precise moment I realize I am bombing out. At that moment I want to beg the Lord’s forgiveness (my desperation always quickly leads me to belief in the supernatural, but not as quick as landing leads me away again) for my arrogance and swear that if a miracle happens I will go straight back to the house thermal and be thankful. Whenever the miracle happens and I am lifted from landing approach back to cloudbase I sensibly remind myself that there is no god, but I am one hell of a good pilot, so why not strike out and utilise the next skillfully predicted thermal generator?

So it was on this day, I was about to land 5 km from takeoff when that delightful beeping sound started interrupting my landing approach. I was totally off the “proper” route by now, but extremely happy knowing that when I got back to cloudbase I could glide to Havelock if nothing else. Why this made me happy I don’t know. Joy is relative I guess, when you stare despair in the face.

From there I just kept lucking on timely thermals, over to Footes’ takeoff, along to various unnamed peaks, laughing ever louder as each tiny step made my flight less embarrassing. The fact that Chris was surely halfway to Hanmer springs by now was the only dampener. Before I knew it, I was back on the planned route, roaring skyward over Mt Riley, a geographic barrier that has stumped us more often than not. Ben happy. Then to my shock I saw Chris groveling low in Long valley, way below and behind me. Ben giggling deliriously.

From there it was a cakewalk along the Richmond ranges until Mt Royal where I couldn’t seem to get high enough to risk going on the sunny side of the peak. The risk is if you lose lift below the ridge you have to do a long glide out to the Wakamarina valley which is a cacophony of lifestyle blocks and 20m long deer fenced paddocks occupied by bored randy Shetland Stallions. I bailed out while I could still glide to the Wairau river.

As I battled on the southern (shady and therefore less thermally) side of Mt Roya,l Chris caught up and the feeling was absolutely brilliant. Here we were, two barely competent best friends (double meaning intended), in the middle of f___ing nowhere, circling for our lives above the snowline. It is definitely the highlight of what was already an amazing three years for me. What happened thereafter is not important, nor is the fact I beat Chris by 10km that day. That’s not what it’s about, even though my total distance was 20% further than his. That’s not why I fly. The reason we fly is to keep expanding our universe and our souls, and if I expand mine way further than Chris’s then that’s just what the universe wants. Chris understands this. He congratulated me heartily on my success, just not in a way you’d notice.

Upon my return from Antarctica I was fizzing at the bung to go flying, and had some fun flights, but overall, the weather was only average. Then one day, the sky started boiling at 8.30 ambehind the house. I decide it was a cracker and set about getting my gear together. I was so organized I did things like hydrate for the flight at home. I lovingly placed fresh batteries in the GPS. The whole morning felt like a slow motion scene in a sports movie where the underdog talent is getting ready for the event that will take him to glory. You know the type of scene, extreme close-ups of Paul Bettany doing up his laces in that movie Wimbledon. Every tiny sound is heard in astounding clarity. You are unnaturally patient and deliberate. Like the twenty minutes of contractions before you take a dump. Or is that just me?

I was there ready to launch at about 11.30am, the wind was blowing gently up the takeoff ramp. It was only about 5 knots but that was fine, Chris and I had both done nil wind takeoffs there the night before. All systems were go. I was extremely excited but telling myself to stay calm and not forget the basics of takeoff. So I forgot the basics of takeoff. I decided to make the takeoff “extra safe” by getting in three good running steps on the flat rigging area before I headed off down the ramp. The wing felt solid as I ran down the ramp, sort of too solid. I pushed out as I got to the end of the ramp and immediately realized I was “mushing”, my nose was too high. I pulled it in and started to fly properly but by then I was a lot lower than normal. My righthand wingtip clipped the furry top of a spindly xmas tree. The tree top bent easily but the tip was delayed by a second compared to the other one. As I watched in disbelieving horror I saw it had lost vital airspeed and it started dropping out of the air. I pulled the bar further in and slowly regained control, but not before an accelerating 180 turn back towards the hill. It was clear at this stage I was going to crash straight into a mountain at speed in a topless glider.

It is hard to describe the incredible change of circumstance my mind had to cope with during those two seconds. Going from the exquisite joy of what was surely going to be my best ever flight, to the fact I could well die in five seconds time. The first response that flooded through my mind was not fear but sadness. I remember being surprised at the power of this feeling, and the fact it was there at all. Mixed in was a good dose of shame, and anger. None of it was particularly helpful. There were even two types of anger I had; one at the fact I had been an idiot, and another separate batch of anger that I was not going to get to fly in the best sky I had seen all summer. I am still coming to terms with what it all means but you probably want to get back to the crash. Previous to this day I had visualized many times what I would try and do if things went pear shaped. My plan was always that I would stay calm, “keep flying the glider” (as Ben Judge once told me) no matter how bad the situation, and try to salvage the best result possible. Much to my amazement, this is exactly what I did.

I pulled the bar even further in as I screamed in towards the hill, and flared out for all I was worth just before impact. I remembered to let go the uprights just before hitting. The basebar hit and shattered (not that I noticed) while I turned my body so it presented itself perfectly parallel and side on to the hill. I turned my head side on and shielded it with my forearm and hand and waited (all of 2 microseconds) for the impact. It was about as hard as if I had jumped off a van roof and landed on the dirt side on. Or maybe a shed roof. It was pretty hard. I snapped a carbon crossbar and a leading edge, both uprights, the basebar, a carbon wingtip, a batten, bent my heartbolt, and also stretched the steel ring joining my nosewires into an oval.

Then there was complete silence apart from a twittering skylark above. I was winded and had contradictory feelings of extreme joy I was still conscious but being terrified something was broken in me. I wriggled tentatively and was amazed to find nothing wrong at all apart from a sore rib. The relief was almost worth the whole ordeal, but not quite.

In the weeks that followed the crash I had to analyse what I felt about it all, which wasn’t easy. I had always said I wouldn’t carry on if it became apparent that random events could make you crash. I think this was definitely pilot induced. Can that be a random event?

So what happened? I can only conclude the crash was caused by my run along the flat before heading down the ramp. I think I started with the correct nose angle for the flat and didn’t then adjust the nose down enough when I got on the ramp. Therefore I was pulling my glider down the ramp like a drag car’s parachute. Two steps down the ramp like that and there was no hope that I could recover without clipping a pine tree. The term “Intermediate Syndrome” probably applies nicely. I was confident enough to try and “improve” normal takeoff technique, but ignorant enough to not understand the subtle trap I was creating for myself.

I haven’t flown since, mainly because it has taken this long to get my glider back together. Shane test flew it for me last weekend and it was great to see it screaming around. I am very excited about getting back in the air in the next week or so.

I bring up this tale of woe in a learn-to-fly issue for many reasons, most of which are self explanatory. But mainly I want to tell the learners of the terrible grief I felt at the thought of never flying again. When I was humming and hahing about whether I could trust myself from now on, I tried to visualize sitting at home while the sky boiled off all around me. Such a thought was too depressing to consider. After a near miss crash I still cannot imagine life without flying. So I will continue. I will be different, for sure. I have told myself that it wasn’t the physics’ fault, it was my overconfidence and undercompetence. From now on I will stick to the tried and true, but try and keep my aspirations and joys as high as ever. No one should crash like I did, it is not acceptable. But such crashes are very rare, and rugby players get far worse injuries in their hundreds every Saturday. I was amazed how my glider protected me, but don’t intend to ask it to protect me ever again. So I hope you get some respect for the dangers of our sport through my shame, but also get my more important point that it really is the most fantastic, amazing sport you can do. So get out there, learn properly, and join me in the fight to keep the paragliders at bay. And come back to Marlborough this summer for the Nationals, even if you’re a learner (like me…). The flying should be to be fantastic, the geography spectacular, and the sight of a strung out gaggle racing along the Richmond Ranges will be inspiration to keep all of us going for years to come. Bring it on!