[AccipiterStriatus]

Also, that's a great picture. Where was it taken?

Tuscarora Mountain affectionately known asTheTusc.
This section is flyable for about nine or ten miles. Launch is
NNW 1200' AGL. Near Port Royal, PA

[AccipiterStriatus]

Re:The short flight to the kitchen in floor in Blairsville is the only air time I can claim in PA

No helmet?

[SamKellner]

Welcome to U.S. Hawks Hang Gliding Assn

Welcome

[Bob Kuczewski]

Re:The short flight to the kitchen in floor in Blairsville is the only air time I can claim in PA

No helmet?

[hangtom]

Hello US Hawks,

I'm new to this forum and Bob asked me to give a short introduction about me and my hang gliding "career".
Well then: I got my licence back in 1995 with the age of 19 flying in the Sauerland region in Germany with Elmar Müller, one of the HG pioneers of the 70s and 80s, being my instructor. After years of flying seldomly due to studies and work, I moved to Berlin in 2008 and since 2012 I am in the air as often as I can at the airfield "Altes Lager". We use winch and ultralight towing to get into the air in the beautiful northeast German flatlands. You may have a look at www.DCB.org and http://www.dhv-xc.de/xc/modules/leonard ... offID=9426. I flew HG models in this order: Bergfalke (training hill, only) --> La Mouette Atlas 16 (first high flights, great memories but flew like a truck without servo assisted steering) --> Moyes GTR (GREAT wing, gave me the feeling to be one with the wing, superb handling) --> Aeros Stealth KPL/2 (good wing but landing it is a pain, sometimes literally) --> Aeros Combat 14.2 09 GT (my current wing, more than 200 hrs on that one, like it a lot, easy without VG but extremely stiff with full VG so that I barely fly with full VG except for absolutely calm air).

My current interest is to streamline my harness. Luckily, before testing it myself, I saw that something very similar to what I built had already been tried ages ago, the UP Pod harness (http://www.delta-club-82.com/bible/73-harness-up.htm), by the "Pod People". That's why I contacted Rick Masters, who told me about the yaw issues with these harnesses, about Jim Lee's Z1 fiberglass pod and about www.ushawks.org. That's how I got here...

Looking forward to nice and fruitful discussions,
Thomas

[Rick Masters]

Welcome Thomas!

[Bob Kuczewski]

Welcome Thomas!!!



Thanks for a good introduction. Most of those sites and wings are "foreign" to me ( ), but it looks like quite a history in the sport.  

Thanks for "landing" at the US Hawks and please contact me any time if I can help you with anything about the US Hawks. We're not the biggest, but we're working to be the best.  

[Frank Colver]

Welcome Thomas

Although I have always prefered to fly seated I understand the desire to make the prone position as low drag as possible and some of the harnesses of today are sure better at that than the early versions. I think that the joys of sitting upright and looking around at the world below (with no neck strain) have been lost to the hang gliding world in the constant search for better performance. That's OK, but since I was always a local flyer, without cross country ambitions, I stayed seated as all of my flying buddies went prone. Still, with all of my additional drag, I worked thermals or slope lift for extended time in the air.

Ironically, after I switched to hot air ballooning every flight was cross country but I was still seated (see attached).

FC

Reading in flight magazine.jpg (193.34 KiB) Viewed 5932 times

[Bill Cummings]

[hangtom]

Thank you for the warm welcome!
Feels like I am where I belong: Among the positively crazy ones . Great picture!