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by Doug Carmichael
*images - Doug Carmichael Archive Collection -used by permission
San Clemente Sun-Post Newspaper photo shows me launching my jib-sailed Rogallo hang glider. It was given to me by Richard Miller when he completed his third hang glider the Conduit Condor. Dave Actor is running the right wing tip. My father Bruce Carmichael on the keel is stabilizing pitch. Lisa Asato is watching.
Not pictured, but on the effort end of the tow rope is Philip Jenkins. John Hancock and Dave Actor also flew my glider that day. It was in the February 1972 issue of National Geographic. Being unsure of who was flying in the Geographic photo, some issues had my name and some had Dave Actor's.
We had been planning for a few months to have the party at Harbor Hills Golf Coarse Capistrano Beach. Moving the location to a shallower sloping hill inland from Corona del Mar and Newport Beach was for safety reasons. Our group's senior members made safety the #1 priority and gave our sport the best possible start in my opinion.
May 23 1971 was a fun exciting day, the beginning of modern hang gliding. What impressed me most that day was Taras Kiceniuk’s high school age gang.
They were able to shift their weight much further than the rest of us by performing like gymnasts on parallel bars. The rest of us were controlling our gliders by swinging our feet and hoping for the best.
A little background
1954 I’m 5 years. My father takes a job with Northrop as test flight engineer at Edwards Air Force Base and we move from Mississippi to California. He buys a Schweizer 1-26sailplane kit and has it delivered to the airport at Elsinore, where we meet Jack Lambie. Jack is always having adventures. They border on the reckless, sometimes they involve my father, and usually featured unusual flying. Jack's adventures are prolific, wild, crazy and always very interesting.
Our living room was often the meeting place for NASA scientists, aeronautical engineers, sailplane pilots, designers, and builders. The discussions shifts from flight efficiency, meteorology and aircraft construction to crazy adventures; but they usually return to bird flight for humans, flying open air without a motor.
1967 - Richard Miller moves to San Clemente. He edited Soaring Magazine which my father had been writing technical articles for since 1952. Richard was extremely clever and cheerful with a very wide range of interests. I remember him playing Bach chamber music with his friend Marium and my sister Barb, exchanging puns with my mom, bodysurfing at T street in San Clemente, building successful flying machines with next to no budget. Richard had no problem with the math or the physics of flight. Complicated graphs, charts, equations and structural requirements were second nature to him. When faced with something he didn’t know, however, he would simply pull a pendulum out of his pocket and ask it. Twirling clockwise was yes, counterclockwise was no. This caused much exasperation to the professional engineers and scientist in the group. Richard's pendulums, pyramids, lemon water fasts, and unusual mystic beliefs were the source of much friendly banter. This banter was received and countered with humor and sharp wit. Richard designed and built the Conduit Condor in 1971.Twenty years later the best recreational hang gliders had wings with a very similar shape and size! Out of all those brilliant people the future was created by the flaky one. Maybe the rest of us were the flakes.
1971 I’m 22 years old attending mechanical engineering school in San Luis Obispo. Summers are spent in Capistrano Beach. Hang gliding is being done in many locations around the world, but most of the public is unaware of it. The odd group of aviators in our living room seems to be growing. They begin talking about a birthday party for Otto Lilienthal. A person like thousands of millions before him and since, who dreamed of flying like a bird. He was the first one to succeed. It must of been partly luck, the right place the right time, lots of help. It had to of been mostly skill, building skills, athletic ability, a mind that could imagine a solution and pursue it with a focused determination.
Happy Birthday Otto
Doug Carmichael
** written by Doug Carmichael March 2012 /
for the upcoming 41st Anniversary of the original, First Annual Universal Hang Glider Championships Celebrating the 123rd Birthday of Otto Lilienthal of May 23 , 1971 at Newport Beach California - presented through editor and organizer of the May 23 1971 Event...Joe Faust -
all images taken on the day of the event * from the Doug Carmichael's Archive Collection ,
* used by permission.
