A letter to friends that may have never heard of Otto L
Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 11:40 amI have property and a cabin in the southern Sonoran Desert of CA and I have a weather station there, accessible over the web. Once each month I e-mail the weather summary for the previous month to a large list of people who are interested in knowing what the weather has been doing down there. sometimes I will include a personal note about something (never political or religious) of interest to me.
So, this month i decided to write about our Otto meet at Docweiler last month. Many of the people on this list will have never heard of Otto Lilienthal and probably not heard of Dockweiler Beach either. Some of them may even consider hang gliding to be crazy (we've all known those). I have pasted a copy of this e-letter below FYI:
Hi folks:
Well last month I stated that the chance of getting any more rain before the end of the season was between “slim and none”. I guess slim won out and I measured 0.67” from the mid-month storm. This brings the season, which ends June 30, total to 3.03”. This was an all-day soaking rain which would give everything a boost going into the hot and rainless times ahead.
The ocotillo have leaves again, in response to the rain, but it took some of them longer than it does after a big summer thunderstorm. My guess is, the summer storms have hotter and more humid days following and probably speed the leafing out process.
May also brought another pleasure to me personally, as follows:
I was very involved from the first day of the birth of the worldwide sport of hang gliding, May 23, 1971. That day was picked (because it represented the 123rd birthday of aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal) to for the first time ever hold a flying meet of individuals who were building and flying hang gliders of varying designs. Never before had isolated enthusiasts of personal free flight gathered together on one hillside (in Newport Beach of all places). The gathering received worldwide coverage, including National Geographic Mag. This spread of information, before the internet, kick started the new recreational sport and created brand new manufacturing industries before that year was out. I designed, built, and learned to fly my own design hang glider. It eventually went into the San Diego Aerospace Museum and was destroyed when that museum burned to the ground.
So what about this pleasure in May for me? A 44th anniversary of the sport of hang gliding was held on Saturday, May23, this year, at Dockweiler Beach in El Segundo. That was one of the early learning to fly sites (most of which have been lost to housing now). We taught ourselves in those days but now there is a flight school operating there under an LA County permit. The school gave us the day and the loan of a glider to have this reunion of hang gliding pioneers. I had left the sport in 1978 so I got to visit with some people I hadn’t seen in many years although many of us communicate through the web now. Since 1978 I had made only two short flights in a hang glider, both of them at anniversary reunion meets like this one. At the Dockweiler meet, last month, I made two flights, in the schools glider, so I equaled all of the flights made in the last 37 years. It was pure joy for me! Mother Nature cooperated by providing a steady sea breeze blowing straight into the little 50’ high sand bluff there.
On the first flight I tended to over control the glider so I didn’t get as high or as far out across the beach as on the second flight. It’s like riding a bicycle, you don’t forget the technique but the first ride, after years of not riding, will be a little wobbly. On the second flight I relaxed and let the glider fly in its trimmed position and I just corrected for minor directional changes. That directional control ability came back very quickly, just as it does in bicycle riding. See an attached photo of my second flight.
This latest gathering, on Otto’s 167th birthday, has spawned the birth of new club to be concentrated on just flying at Dockweiler Beach. This will be made up of old timers, like me, who don’t want to challenge the big mountains we used to fly from. There will also be younger flyers who can enjoy an afternoon of skimming low out across a beautiful sand beach, to mix in with their other big mountain flying days. What part I will play, at age 80, in this new organization I do not know now, but time will tell. It sure felt good to “free the surly bounds of earth” even briefly, under a beautiful wing again!
Frank Colver
BTW-The Wright brothers idolized Otto Lilienthal because his application of scientific method of study, to the flight of birds, and also building and flying human carrying gliders, gave them the knowledge they needed to proceed from that gliding data base to get powered flight.
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So, this month i decided to write about our Otto meet at Docweiler last month. Many of the people on this list will have never heard of Otto Lilienthal and probably not heard of Dockweiler Beach either. Some of them may even consider hang gliding to be crazy (we've all known those). I have pasted a copy of this e-letter below FYI:
Hi folks:
Well last month I stated that the chance of getting any more rain before the end of the season was between “slim and none”. I guess slim won out and I measured 0.67” from the mid-month storm. This brings the season, which ends June 30, total to 3.03”. This was an all-day soaking rain which would give everything a boost going into the hot and rainless times ahead.
The ocotillo have leaves again, in response to the rain, but it took some of them longer than it does after a big summer thunderstorm. My guess is, the summer storms have hotter and more humid days following and probably speed the leafing out process.
May also brought another pleasure to me personally, as follows:
I was very involved from the first day of the birth of the worldwide sport of hang gliding, May 23, 1971. That day was picked (because it represented the 123rd birthday of aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal) to for the first time ever hold a flying meet of individuals who were building and flying hang gliders of varying designs. Never before had isolated enthusiasts of personal free flight gathered together on one hillside (in Newport Beach of all places). The gathering received worldwide coverage, including National Geographic Mag. This spread of information, before the internet, kick started the new recreational sport and created brand new manufacturing industries before that year was out. I designed, built, and learned to fly my own design hang glider. It eventually went into the San Diego Aerospace Museum and was destroyed when that museum burned to the ground.
So what about this pleasure in May for me? A 44th anniversary of the sport of hang gliding was held on Saturday, May23, this year, at Dockweiler Beach in El Segundo. That was one of the early learning to fly sites (most of which have been lost to housing now). We taught ourselves in those days but now there is a flight school operating there under an LA County permit. The school gave us the day and the loan of a glider to have this reunion of hang gliding pioneers. I had left the sport in 1978 so I got to visit with some people I hadn’t seen in many years although many of us communicate through the web now. Since 1978 I had made only two short flights in a hang glider, both of them at anniversary reunion meets like this one. At the Dockweiler meet, last month, I made two flights, in the schools glider, so I equaled all of the flights made in the last 37 years. It was pure joy for me! Mother Nature cooperated by providing a steady sea breeze blowing straight into the little 50’ high sand bluff there.
On the first flight I tended to over control the glider so I didn’t get as high or as far out across the beach as on the second flight. It’s like riding a bicycle, you don’t forget the technique but the first ride, after years of not riding, will be a little wobbly. On the second flight I relaxed and let the glider fly in its trimmed position and I just corrected for minor directional changes. That directional control ability came back very quickly, just as it does in bicycle riding. See an attached photo of my second flight.
This latest gathering, on Otto’s 167th birthday, has spawned the birth of new club to be concentrated on just flying at Dockweiler Beach. This will be made up of old timers, like me, who don’t want to challenge the big mountains we used to fly from. There will also be younger flyers who can enjoy an afternoon of skimming low out across a beautiful sand beach, to mix in with their other big mountain flying days. What part I will play, at age 80, in this new organization I do not know now, but time will tell. It sure felt good to “free the surly bounds of earth” even briefly, under a beautiful wing again!
Frank Colver
BTW-The Wright brothers idolized Otto Lilienthal because his application of scientific method of study, to the flight of birds, and also building and flying human carrying gliders, gave them the knowledge they needed to proceed from that gliding data base to get powered flight.
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