US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

Big Blue Sky
The Hang Gliding pioneering movie

Harry Sudwischer <harry> writes:

“Big Blue Sky” Dreams, Fears, Joy and Tears

Bill Liscomb has managed to reach down into the part of my brain that holds all the emotion I’ve accumulated since I first wanted to leave the Earth and Fly.

The collection of restored 8mm home movies, stills, interviews and the reporting of first-hand participants had me enthralled. Waves of memories dimly recalled have been restored to me. It’s as though a Veil of Gauze was brushed away and I was there rediscovering the most significant moments of my youth. Powerful recollections of the time when I and untold thousands of dreamers realized that the gift of personal flight was there for anybody to take.

The stories of the rediscovery of Hang Gliding includes the context of the 1970’s and the realization that society was ready for this leap of personal freedom. Of course with that freedom came personal tragedy as a movement into the sky for so many included the loss of friends and loved ones. Today we still suffer the loss of friends but not to the extent and scale of the early days of what was sometimes seen a "Death Sport."

The narrative is California centric with a nod to the Eastern pioneers but basically that’s the way Hang Gliding really developed. I got my inspiration from “Low and Slow” and "Ground Skimmer". My enthusiasm for being a Man Bird knew no bounds. Every couple of weeks another publication arrived in the mail and leaps of imagination, techniques, new radical ideas flowed like a drug into my brain. My personal journey included discovering local Hang Gliding junkies by accident. Driving along the Long Island Expressway on my way to work in September 1974 I saw to my amazement 4 or 5 colorful kites in a sand pit to the side of the highway. Forget my job I stood on the brake and swerved off the next exit backtracked to the sand pit and so ended my rational ordinary life. Everybody in that sand pit was as addicted to the notion of personal flight as I was.

The film is true to the feel of the times. Maybe it is best appreciated by those who lived the dreams of the pioneers of Hang Gliding. Fear was also present, when I first found myself thousands of feet above the ground at Mittersil Ski Area in New Hampshire in August of 1975. Hanging under a 43 pound Wills Wing 20/20 Swallowtail Standard Kite with my recently purchased Colver vario screaming UP UP UP. I had the same thoughts as expressed by Sky God Taras Kiceniuk flying his Icarus spiraling up into the big blue sky: "what am I doing here". I wasn’t alone in the sky that day. Just off my left wingtip was Terry Sweeney in the new Sky Sports Kestral. He proceeded to get even higher than me and went XC upwind several miles from the mountain before landing.

My fears of that flight were overcome later that day by joy when it sunk in what I had just done. The next morning I met Tom Peghiny in the LZ at the base of the Ski Slope. I told him I was impressed with the Kestral that he and Terry Sweeney had developed. He was all enthusiastic about the gold colored Colver audio vario hose-clamped to my control bar. I was in the presence of the "Sky Gods", great fellows who shared all they knew and reached out to help anyone who asked for help.

So it continued. I met Stu Smith “Future Sky God” that very same weekend. We rode up the ski lift and he was pumping me for flying tips. I guess he thought I knew what I was doing when all I really knew was how to hang on really tight and let the sky have its way with me. I was extremely lucky to have lived and survived those early days. My tears came years later hearing of the death of Stu Smith at Grandfather Mountain. Stu, a champion gymnast, became disconnected from his wing while doing aerobatic maneuvers and was not able to hang on, I cried again last night.

I am grateful Bill Liscomb was able to capture the time of my and many of my friends lives in this important work of love. It faithfully focuses on the passion of those heady early days. The story is now frozen in time. We can all revisit it and remind ourselves how we really Left Earth.