US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

I learned to fly hang gliders at Gudelupe Dunes.
But never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this.
1923


The entire film:
https://archive.org/details/TheTenCommandments1923NR_201503

I also flew at the Gudelupe dunes a number of times.

Great place to fly unless a rotor developed over the beach. One of those would have killed me if I had been in a paraglider instead of a hang glider.

Frank

That place could kill anybody.

HG fatality # 266 – Robert Burt Miller, 30
December 4, 1977    Guadalupe Dunes, California, USA
    Turbulence. Bert Miller was soaring Guadelupe Dunes when the notorious offshore wind shear set up. This happens when a southerly wind rounds the point at Devil's Slide and flows under the prevailing westerlies.
    "Turbulence from an offshore wind shift caused two forward loops and a 200 foot dive into the hill on his Seagull VII," someone speculated.

I had a friend who was paralyzed from a spine injury by slamming into the beach in one of the rotors, at that site. I learned that one has to pay attention to what is happening to the ocean surface to predict the shear rotor. It's deceiving because you look at the open ocean and you would think it would be as smooth as Dockweiler Beach. It took some deaths and injuries to learn otherwise.

The time I could have been injured or killed I have described on this forum before. I was flying my WW SST and had several sail inversions while trying to get down below the turbulent rotor. I wonder how differently my glider might have handled it if it had cambered sail battens (like all modern flex wings have) so it couldn't invert.

I had launched from the top of Devils Slide. I should have noticed that all of the gulls had left the area while I was walking my glider to the top.

Once I finally got below the rotor I made a stand up landing on the beach. Then I kneeled down and kissed the sand!

Frank

BTW - I was flying seated (swing seat).

Frank Colver wrote:The time I could have been injured or killed I have described on this forum before. ...

Some guy named "Frank Colver" posted this to the RGSA forum:

Frank Colver wrote:Thanks Robin.

I had a flight at Guadalupe Dunes CA, many years ago, that I know would have killed me in a PG. At less than 200' AGL I was getting loud sail inversions on my WW SST which didn't have full length battens. But having a rigid airframe kept the sail in position to pop back up as quickly as it popped down. It was while I was taking PG flight lessons, several years ago, that I realized I wouldn't be there then, had I been in a PG during that long ago flight. I turned away from PG lessons that day and as they say: "never looked back".

Frank

And then his paragliding instructor got killed off LaCumbre.
Marge from Santa Barbara.
That didn't help.

Kinda reminds me of when I was at work in Bishop and I looked and some kid over Flynn collapsed and streamered in.
Eric from Mammoth.
Or when I was at the ParaGnats and a primo expert hooked back into launch in a twist.
Jodie from the Bay.

Surprisingly, I still haven't actually seen a guy die on a hang glider.
This long life stuff is not over-rated.
Cutting risk works.

I would venture back to Guadelupe Dunes from Olympia in the 70's with my Windlord and Cirrus 5B, on my 51 Chevy Panel truck "Melba".
The rotor there gave it the nickname "poopy guadelupe". We would let air out of the tires and haul a** across the river to the dunes, then return to town for air and dinner at a fabulous little Mexican restaurant there. It was fun to watch the 4wd bad boys get pulled out by tow trucks after a few too many brewskis.
We would camp near there, in Paradise valley, or back behind Figuroa Mountain. I first saw shaped aluminum battens there on one of Bob T's early designs. The long amount of beach between the water and the dune could also create weirdness in what we thought would be regular on shore flow. Logged 1/28/78, 2/17/78 thru 2/21/78, 5/27/77. There were more but I didn't log them...About 20 logged flights total and noted "shear" or "turbulence" about 8 times. I was able to get over the top of the 500" dune a few times. I wound up back in Washington flying the coast at Copalis shortly thereafter.

How about that! I had a 1950 Chevrolet panel in the 1970s, too.
Loved that thing.
In fact, I was just looking at this 1954.
A little pricey but what a beauty!
https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/gmc/unspecified/1818058.html

I used to go out to Guadelupe Dunes with my old 60s 4x4 Scout and Seagull III.
I met Rick Montenaro there on the beach over by Devil's Slide, in a little 4-door sedan mired in sand with the waves splashing up against the side.
Got him out but almost lost the Scout.
He thought he was done.
Pretty funny. People were losing their vehicles there all the time. Nice ones, too.
Rick was appreciative.
I told him I was looking for a sail for my sailcar and he gave me a tiny aerobatics sail he used to fly at Makapuu.
Carlos Miralles helped me fit it to the mast.
It was too small for the beach but that thing would haul a** out on El Mirage Dry Lake, Manzanar and Bishop Airports.
60 mph easy.
I even flipped it in a gale out on El Mirage once at full speed, sliding along on the tip of the mast and a back wheel.
That was surreal.
Woody Woodruff and I got a ticket in it on our way to Bishop down Hwy 395 on a blown-out day of the '82 Classic.
Roy Haggard told me to frame it.
I fought it. Looked at the vehicle code. The cops had written it up as a vehicle. Vehicles have engines.
Sailcars don't have engines. Or brakes. Or steering wheels.
I got off. The judge made me promise not to do it again, though.

My best altitude at Guadalupe Dunes was 1000' AGL from a launch off the 300' training dune. I was able to "park" my SST in any spot in the sky I wanted to or cruise up and down the beach. Only one other pilot caught the same brief elevator that took us up to that altitude and a steady lift zone. I stayed over the area near the beach and he hovered about 500 yards behind me in equally good lift. None of the other HG's got up to that zone and I was looking down at them all sitting on the beach because the surface wind had quit. So I yelled: "Hey, how do I get down". Of course I got the finger from every one of them. It was a magic moment!

I didn't time my flight so I don't know how long I soared that time.

One of the later arrivals saw me and the other glider way up in the sky, from the parking lot, and he rushed to get down to the dunes and soar like the two gliders he could see. I can't imagine how disappointed he was when he got there and saw everybody else down on the beach except the other guy and myself.

Ooo....I'm so cruel.

Frank

Living and flying in the north east I'd never even heard of Guadelupe Dunes. It looks like an amazing site!

To become more familiar with the site I looked it up on Google Earth. One photo "link" I clicked on revealed the following picture - http://www.panoramio.com/photo/95597877 ... google.com

Also - http://www.panoramio.com/photo/95597755

If you keep forwarding through the pictures there's a total of three HG shots taken at the dunes around 1976-77.

Do people still fly there?