TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
From someone on my project's homebuilding list. I thought our glider friends, and all those enthralled with the magic of flight, would enjoy it...
This was a post on the Rec.Avaiation.Homebuilt Usenet group by Badwater Bill many years ago. Bill had a falling out with most on the RAH group, particularly those who had been sued by Capitan Zoom, The RAH 15, because he went to the dark side. He changed camp and became an associate of Zoom's. But, that doesn't take away from the Bill's experience and this post was inspirational and thrilling to read. I thought it worth passing along. Bill was killed in a landing accident several years ago. His wife was severely injured in the same accident. She survived, but I never have heard how she did. It has taken me a few day to find someone in the old group who would send this to me.
Many years ago I flew hang gliders off a 1000 foot ridge south of the city of Las Vegas. Hang glider flying was the most spiritual form of flight I ever experienced. We launched off a horizontal ramp that extended out into the lift band of the ridge. You'd hook in, do the hang safety test, pick up your glider and simply walk off the end of the ramp into the sky. There was no sinking if the wind was up to 15 knots or so, you simply stepped into the sky and rotated your body horizontal between the two down-tubes above the horizontal crossbar. In this configuration your head was out in front of the leading edge of the wing above you and you had no view of the ship around you at all. It was like flying under your own power with your own wings. I've thought many times too that it resembled the old Superman movies. Clark Kent would peal off his clothes and jump head first out of a 25th floor window propelling himself horizontally through the air. The feeling of walking off a cliff into the sky under the wing of a hang glider is very similar. Because of this strange and new sensation of flight I began to have dreams, like the ones I had as a child, of flying under my own power. As a child I routinely had dreams of levitating or flying like Superman but those went away as I got into my teens. Hang gliding rekindled that spark which stimulated such dreams.
Peter Lert writes here of the turkey farm and his 1-26 being interpreted as a large buzzard. It brought back a memory of my experiences with red-tailed-hawks and hang gliders. In the spring of the year the baby hawks would hatch and start to fly. Each spring there was a new batch who would share the lift of the ridge with the hang gliders. It may be hard to believe but it's true that the babies couldn't fly very well at all in the beginning. They had terrible landings, especially in wind. They'd crash and tumble and ground-loop. They had trouble staying up and they couldn't find a thermal to save their hide. We had great fun watching them learn to fly and floating with them on the ridge. In a hang glider, human beings could slow down to 18 knots, wrap the thing up to 60 degrees and core a thermal. For the first time in the history of man this machine allowed us to fly at the same speeds as the baby hawks. They'd watch us find a thermal then enter along with us, usually above and at our six o'clock position. If you stretched your neck a bit you could see them in the rear, turning with you at your six. It usually took about three to five minutes for them to accept you as something that wasn't out to eat them.
Once that happened the fun began. They would usually dive on you, shoot by your upper surface and leading edge then drop down right in front of your face about two meters ahead of you. From this position you could watch their multivariable dynamic wings work. What a gorgeous sight as they would pull in the wing on the inside of the turn and extend the outboard wing to stay in the thermal. Or, they'd pull in both wings if a gust hit them to counteract the increased lift. They could change the angle of attach of each wing separately or even span-wise so each segment of their wing was producing lift differently. What an advantage.
I remember how I perceived their general collective personality. Once they weren't afraid of you, they accepted you in their sky and the fun began. The best way to describe them is they acted like baby kitty cats. We would make up some small dough balls from flour, lots of sugar, egg and water the night before a spring flight. We'd dry them in the oven and load them into our flight suits. The dough-balls were easy to retrieve while in flight and would penetrate if threw them toward a bird. Actually I remember flicking them with my thumb like shooting marbles. The baby hawks loved to eat these dough-balls. If a bird would miss grabbing the ball as it went by you got to see absolutely wonderful flight dynamics. Many times the bird would roll inverted, pulled his wings flush to his body and redirect his path while twisting and redirecting the flight path with tail feathers. They looked like a torpedoes shot from a submarine since they could streamline themselves so well. Then there was competition too. Sometimes I would fly with three to five birds in the same thermal. I'd have a bird off to my right, a couple ahead of me, one on the inside of the turn and maybe even one over head. I'd flick out a dough-ball and watch them all go for it. They'd roll inverted, spin, split-S, hammer-head, whatever it took to get to the dough-ball first.
As I said, they have personalities like small house cats and that best describes how I felt watching them. They were funny and they loved to play with the big bird of the thermal (me). They were very intelligent. It was unusual for them to fly with you in the ridge lift but if you started circling they knew you'd found pay-dirt. If you snagged a thermal and did more than a couple turns you'd have two or three heading at you to cash in on the lift. Once established in the core they could just leave me in the dust. Their sink rate was much lower than mine and their ability to change the dynamic shape of their airfoils gave them far superior performance. I've seen them enter the thermal below me and go whizzing by me vertically at astonishing rates. However, they would usually throw away their climb performance to stay with me thinking they might get a dough-ball. Here's where they really got fun. It seemed like the most common maneuver was to out-climb me to get the superior energy edge. Perched behind me and above, they'd do that diving attack-like move until they were in front of my face and applying speed brakes, all the while turning in the thermal. From that position anything would happen. I've seen them roll on their backs and pop their wings (inverted) for a couple seconds then cut inside on the turn and climb above and behind me to the superior energy position once more only to repeat the same move. If you got two or three of them to start playing among themselves and include you it was spectacular. They'd dive at you from six o'clock high and roll together right in front of your face. Then you'd see them split-S, go off in different directions below you. They'd hide from you somewhere behind and above your wing again for the next run.
It occurred to me many times as I said above that what we were doing here was putting ourselves into their environment for the first time in the history of man. I had flown sailplanes for years and never had this happen. The reason is that the sailplanes fly too fast. Even an old clunker S-222 flies at about 40 mph for minimum sink and stalls in the high 30's. Flying hang gliders was the first time man could slow down enough to match their speeds in thermals. Slow down and without a noisy engine to scare them away. We too used them as thermal finders. If you saw one circling, it was show time. Interestingly however, if you entered a thermal with them established first, they would leave for a few moments then reenter. I sometimes thought that might have been some kind of built in survival mode since I was so much bigger and scarier to them. Once they determined you weren't there to eat them they loosened up and joined you. Then their curiosity got the best of them and although they could out climb you they usually stayed and played with you, diving and rolling and spinning. Once you got this far with them you could flip them a dough ball and it was all over. You were buds for life. You couldn't shake them if you wanted to.
Garfield, Dave Pincus and a couple of the others have been playing with me over the past couple days about my inner self . That's all being done in fun and they are really funny men. However, I've spent hundreds of hours for real watching the hawks and buzzards soar the ridges in the heat of the dessert down here in the Southwestern U.S. When I flew hang gliders I always felt like a big buzzard, sort of bulky but still pretty capable of thermaling with the hawks. Although most of these posts are tongue-in-cheek I'll bet many of you never thought I really had a reason for admiring the buzzard. Carl Johansson (who is a PhD. Ornithologist) points out the buzzards lack of manners or it's eating habits and that's funny. But, you watch one fly and they don't fly funny. In fact they fly better than man ever has. They are an animal to behold while in flight. I'd be so lucky to be able to fly like a buzzard! Now, the buzzard's and my eating habits, social graces, etiquette? Well, now you know why, the buzzard! Yes! Behold the Buzzard!
Best Wishes,
Badwater Bill