Yes, Frank. And for any one else reading,
the single most important action in hang gliding is the step off the ground at takeoff.
Some think the flare at landing is most critical. It's not.
Because at flare you are losing speed. If you crash, you crash while you are slowing down.
But if you screw up at takeoff, particularly in a stall/sideslip, you are gaining speed.
Not good. You can die. Many have.
Of course, your glider must be checked and sound, you must be hooked in, etc.
But in terms of action, the glider must be flying.
If the glider is flying at that moment,
you will be safe.
The hang glider will carry you away.
When I read "My worst crash ever," I cringed.
How many has he had? I wondered.
While I have some sympathy for those who crash at landing,
there is actually little excuse for a crash at takeoff.
Launching in ridgelift should be a breeze, if you will excuse the pun.
If the air is turbulent, you are attempting to launch from a poor spot.
Even launching in thermal conditions can be done safely.
Because much of my mountain flying in the 1980s was done alone,
I had little option but to learn to launch safely every time.
And I did, with bit of insurance, provided to me by Rick Rawlings:
keep running.
Go fast. Build momentum. Pull that bar in a little bit and dig.
Your speed becomes control authority as you leave the hill.
Run in the air as you lift off. None of this primadonna falling into your harness stuff.
Launching a hang glider is serious business.
Launching at 9,000 feet is even more serious.
Run! Keep running, just in case some little bit of down air is headed your way.
Run! Once in a rare while it can save your a**.
Just a few more silly-looking long steps in the air, then you can rotate.
For reading thermal cycles, I refer you to "Explorations with the Thermal Snooper."
https://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=283
...Fall had come to the Owens Valley, bringing the smooth north winds and the big, lazy thermals that would quietly disappear at the level of the highest peaks. It was a time to relax, a time to come down from the intense highs of the cross country season and again enjoy flying for flying's sake. The advanced pilots had gone home, burned out, sated. The intermediates worked the ridge lift of their local hills and longed for the next summer to hone their thermalling skills. Some day they would discover the Owens Valley in the Fall and Spring. But for now, as always this time of year, I was alone.
The peak I favor in Fall is Mazourka. It stands out from the northern Inyos in the path of the valley winds. In the summer, long and shallow Santa Rita Canyon gathers the south wind and guides it to the summit. It was at the head of this canyon I had located the 1984, and part of the 1985, Owens Valley XC competitions. But in the Fall and Spring, the north wind collides with Mazourka, rushing up its steeply cascading flank to offer thermal-rich ridge lift, while ten miles to the north Tinnemaha Reservoir indicates the wind strength and direction in the valley.
From the summit at 9140 MSL (Measured from Sea Level) the view is inspiring - all the more so because Mazourka is the only mountain launch in Owens Valley to offer an unobstructed view in all directions. Just east of Mazourka, the main spine of the 11,000+ MSL Inyo Range marches north to descend into the rolling hills of Westgard Pass, then rises again as the great White Mountains. Westward, the raw granite spires of the Sierra Nevada rear from the valley floor to form an unbroken wall, reaching over 14,000 feet. Between these awesome ranges the boulderstrewn alluvium, pockmarked by magenta cinder cones and scarred with tortured fields of dark lava, is cut by narrow, brush-choked streams that gurgle from every canyon only to be seized by the Los Angeles Aqueduct, leaving the meandering Owens River to struggle pitifully southward alone in a futile attempt to moisten the red eye of Owens Dry Lake.
The day was extraordinary. A broken cloud street of the classic type with flat-bottomed, underdeveloped cumulus had established itself along 100 miles of the Inyo-White range. Cloudbase beckoned a mile above Mazourka. Across the valley, the crest of the Sierra was laced with a narrow and continuous band of cloud. Only the tallest snowcapped peaks pierced the cloudtops.
At the north launch point on Mazourka summit the wind was light to moderate (5 to 15 mph), driven from the north but veering due to thermal cycles, resulting in a predominant northeast wind with an occasional west. But every few minutes the wind would straighten and hold north, the optimum direction for launch, for 20 seconds or longer. Several gaggles of ravens and hawks, the lords of Mazourka, drifted on thermals above me. I decided to set up.
The glider I'd chosen for this flight was a Pacific Wings Express "Racer," a fast European design that had carried me 178 miles great circle distance from Horseshoe earlier in the season - to my knowledge, the ninth-longest hang glider flight ever made. My hook-in weight of 215 pounds resulted in a wing loading of nearly 2 pounds per square foot, and therefore demanded an aggressive thermalling technique with tight turns centering the core for effective altitude gains. Because of this, I felt the Express would be ideal for testing the Thermal Snooper.
I clamped the Snooper to my instrument mount and turned it on. It's "beeps" and "boops" were easily discernible from the "chirps" and "buzzes" of my variometer. I assumed the Snooper would quiet down after the circuits normalized - but it didn't. That was my first surprise.
Instead of remaining silent like my vario, the Snooper was giving me a running commentary about the quality of thermal cycles rolling through launch. When a freshening breeze began to tease the first flag 100 feet down the mountainside, it would begin to "beep" hesitantly. Then as the nearer flags became agitated, the "beeps" would increase excitedly. If the thermal was centered and all the flags stood out from the north, the Snooper would fall silent. But when the flags skewed off to the east or west as a thermal passed to the side, the Snooper would immediately follow its "beeps" with a series of low "boops."
Fascinated, I stood at takeoff for 20 minutes. For each cycle that passed through, the Snooper gave an indication of it's size by the duration and frequency of it's "beeping." A few "beeps" meant a small, short-lived thermal. Many "beeps" told of the arrival of a large thermal. At some point during each thermal's passing, the Snooper would begin to "boop" - a few "boops" for small thermals, many "boops" for large thermals. It was obvious that these "boops" warned of the "downside" of the thermal's cycle.
Years of observation have led me to attribute the majority of takeoff accidents in thermal conditions to pilots launching into the tail end, or down-side, of thermaI cycles. It took a lot of practice to read thermals accurately, and some pilots just never became adept at it. Now here I was with a tiny instrument clearly identifying both the up and down sides of each cycle! I was impressed. Even if the Thermal Snooper didn't do anything else, it promised to make mountain flying a lot safer.
But surely, if it could read thermals on the ground, it could read them in the air. I eagerly shouldered the Express. When the Snooper announced another large cycle, I was airborn by my fourth step. The air was straight, smooth, and lifting. The vario began "chirping." The Snooper fell silent.
When I am first to launch, I never attempt to work the occasionally treacherous takeoff thermal. It has never proved necessary for me in the Owens because there is always another just as good nearby. So I flew fast and straight away from launch - and out of the thermal lift. The vario went silent and the Snooper began to "boop" just like it had on the ground during a down-cycle. With the gentle ridge lift helping sustain me, I turned to seek out the resident "thermal snake" on the knife-edged western shoulder of Mazourka Peak...
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