The first official Funday Sunday (third Sunday of each month) will be reported upon in a few posts, as I have some moments.
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Fun was had! For sure! Ian Brubaker,
Fly America president Greg DeWolf, Robert from the eastern USA, another new hang glider pilot, and myself. Ian was practicing the arts that are involved in teaching hang gliding. Greg was wrestling with the wind meter and could not get it going on readings above ...3 mph or whatever to near zero.
Greg had a big puzzlement and at one moment had to move readily to the north launch where he saw someone flying a flying mat while the guy (JoeF) was still on the ground and off to side of the wing. Greg could not quite understand from a distance what was going on, so he came over to see what the fun was all about. How could something be flying when the wind was SOOO low in speed? He had to get over there to take a close look. I told Greg that I had published that any trash that arrives on the Dockweiler Hang Gliding Flight Training Center had better be prepared to fly. Even up close Greg took a double take on the matter. He saw a beach reed mat flying what to him was way off wind until he got the full picture. I told him I found the mat discarded at the site. I arranged far-separated two anchors to two lines to the mat and managed to tie in some reflex and bridle to get net quality flight in really tiny humid wind. Greg finally saw the whole matter and smiled. I was having great fun putting trash to task as any reputable trash on a hang glider site should do. The mat was an outdoor woven-straw mat:
HEREexample. The mat had two free-flights with me as pilot before I set up the arch kiting of the beach mat; the free-flights were hang gliding the mat during some full down-slope wing runs; the micro-second flights in the wing runs were fun; I held the mat at both ends and set the angle of attack and did the wing runs with full pleasure and joy. Such was a warm up for the only fully independent Condor flight of the day by the same pilot.
The wind (lack of) kept some FDGS friends away. Humid and calm from influence of Delores ... challenged me to have fun on this historic day. I took the bus with my large sack of flying-related items into El Segundo. Bought lunch and dinner to take to the Dockweiler site. Hiked down Grand Ave. and was pleasantly surprised to see the green flag for the HG site. Yeah! Ensure and nutrition bars and water ... kept me going from noon to 4:30 pm at the site: more than four hours of funday. The activities included taking barefoot wading breaks in the tiny-wave surf between flight experiments. Then one break got me into a full swim in the Pacific Ocean. The distant squall was approaching; I guessed right; at 4:30 pm plus some minutes on my hike back into El Segundo, a warm rain drenched me and my sack of flight-fun things.
On the bus route to the site, I noted some things toward the 5-ft HG pack movement that I will be sharing in time. Another note here shared: Have a bicycle where most all of its parts convert into being integrated to an effective dandy-Dockweiler hang glider. My day's walk meter: just over 20,000 steps. No injuries.
The first official Funday Sunday by FDGS just went well.
Next one in August?
Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2015 4:33 pm
Maybe we could extend Sunday Funday into a combined Sunday/Monday Funday? 
