Many pilots wonder what it really takes to
set a world record. Some wonder what it's like to fly at a place like Zapata or
other world class sites. Cloudsuck answers these and other questions while
telling the story of how I set the current Distance World Record for Rigid
Wings. Over this winter, I am pleased to make the book available as a gift to my
readers in serialized form. Each Monday, another chapter will be available for
you to enjoy here on the Oz Report. The best read is the one in it's entirety,
and both the soft cover book and an ebook are available to purchase here:
http://ozreport.com/cloudsuck.php. You can find the Kindle version on
Amazon.

If you enjoy the serialized installments, you may wish to skip the text below
and jump directly to this week's chapter, including any graphics or pictures
here: http://ozreport.com/docs/Cloudsuck2.pdf

I hope you enjoy the book and this week's chapter as much as I enjoyed writing
it.

I got my own first taste of
long-distance hang gliding at the 1989 Manufacturers' League Meet at Pine
Mountain, Oregon. Twenty miles east of the resort town of Bend and on the dry
side of the Cascades, Pine Mountain rises three thousand feet above the
surrounding flat desert, a perfect spot for a hang gliding competition. The
launch area was a broad, gentle slope, facing into predominantly west winds.

My first short cross-country flights had taken place the previous
summer, from Chelan Butte in central Washington State. These were truly short
flights — in fact it was only a month before the League Meet that I had actually
flown further than eleven miles. It had taken three years of baby steps for me
to progress from running with a hang glider down a small training hill to flying
any distance at all.

The League Meet was one of four top U.S. hang gliding competitions
that year. Although I had no competition experience, this meet was taking place
only a seven hour drive from my home in Seattle. It seemed like a perfect
opportunity to gain some cross-country experience so I figured, why not join in
the fun?

That June I had purchased a used Wills Wing Sport 167. Although
not a top of the line hang glider, the Sport was a significant step up in
performance from my previous wing. Larry’s buddy, Czechoslovakian immigrant
pilot Joe Bostik, had won the U.S. Nationals on a Sport the summer before. And
on my first flight with it from Chelan Butte, I had flown further than ever
before, about 25 miles. I was so exhilarated after the premature end to that
flight that my mind was still racing. It was clear to me this — flying across
country on a hang glider — was all I really wanted to do.

The League Meet attracted all the top U.S. and Canadian hang
glider pilots, plus a number of highly-ranked competitors from Europe and
Australia. Everyone came to show off the new gliders from their sponsoring
manufacturers. There was (and still is) very little money to support these few
top pilots, but they do get to fly the latest models, which helps them maintain
their positions in the world rankings.

I was a clueless nobody who was about to get a great education,
even though it would take me a good number of years to appreciate those lessons.
I brought my new 4Runner that sported a large rack, along with my neighbor
Stephanie to act as a dedicated driver — and these resources were in short
supply. As luck would have it, I was able to hook up with the elite Wills Wing
team, ranked first in the U.S., who were looking for just what this little twerp
had to offer.

With the Wills Wing team in my truck, I got to listen in on the
ride back as Larry Tudor, Chris Arai, and Randy Haney discussed their flights
and tactics. It was way too much for me to understand.

The first day's task was a seventy-five mile race to the east,
following Highway 20 to the truck stop at Riley on Silver Creek. Here Highway
395, winding its way up the eastern side of the Sierras from Southern California
through the Owens Valley and the eastern deserts of Oregon, joined Highway 20
and jogs east to Burns before continuing north. Silver Creek provided an oasis
in this sagebrush country, a swath of green visible from many miles away if you
were high in a hang glider.

The thermals that got us above launch and over the top of Pine
Mountain couldn't have been friendlier. I looked out for the first time on that
big expanse of sagebrush, and was just happy to see that I could follow Highway
20 as I flew east. I had no idea how far seventy-five miles was in a hang
glider. There were already plenty of faster pilots out in front of me; I figured
all I had to do was look for where they were circling up and I'd probably find
the next thermal.

I struggled, flying from gaggle to gaggle and getting further and
further behind, but making my way over that bewildering eastern Oregon
landscape. It was three hours later when a fast pilot (who had obviously taken a
later start time) joined in me in a thermal and then quickly dove off to the
west. “Where is he going so fast?” I wondered as I kept circling up.

Oh — oh — there a little to my east I saw not brown desert but
this long thin stretch of green around a wandering creek. Uh, let's see, just
what is that, oh, wait, it — no, yes it is — it must be goal. Perhaps I'd turned
in too many circles, because it took a while to realize I was already there.

I was the last pilot able to make it to goal on that first day,
and there were quite a few who didn’t make it that far. I was happy just to be
there at all, having flown three times farther than I'd ever flown before.
Again, it was all too much for me to absorb. I was delirious.

I continued to fly well beyond my experience level for the next
few days, scoring in the upper third of the pilots at the meet. Then on the
fifth day the meet director called a 98-mile task south, across an area with
only a few gravel roads, to Valley Falls. The goal was a hay field next to an
old gas station at the intersection of Highways 31 and 395, only thirty miles
north of the Oregon/California border. It was the longest task yet called in a
hang gliding meet, from central Oregon to almost California.

With no easy overland route over the back of Pine Mountain and
through the Deschutes National Forest, Stephanie would have to take my truck
back into Bend and then south on Highway 97. She could veer off to the southeast
on Highway 31 and, I hoped, get close enough to hear me calling on the CB radio
by the time I was sixty miles or so out on course. This was assuming I could get
that far, and was high enough at the time to have decent radio communication.

The early going was really tough. I wasn’t getting high over the
mountain, and had to drift downwind in the weak lift that rose off the
mountain’s eastern flanks. Dropping below the low hillcrests, I was searching
everywhere for less sink — or better yet some air going up. I followed a low
ridge line hoping to catch something coming up its sides. I just didn’t want to
lose the race so early, and was desperate to get up.

At the last minute, just before I had no choice but to set up a
landing, I found a weak thermal over the ridge that slowly got me up out of that
sink hole. Later I learned I had been lucky: much more experienced and expert
pilots than I was had not gotten away from the mountain on that day.

To the south there were broad areas of old lava flows heated by
the sun and small buttes of warm rocks that provided the necessary lift. As the
day got later it got better. Since I had no way to contact Stephanie until we
got closer together — and no idea how to describe where I was if I should have
to land — I was happy just to stay as high as possible and keep going.

The first inhabited spot to the south was Christmas Valley, a
small dry farming community forty miles from Pine Mountain; I found myself there
working low over dusty plowed fields. At least I could see civilization nearby a
few miles to the west, so I knew I wouldn't die of thirst out in the desert if I
couldn’t get up. A few thousand feet over the ground, I dove for a tractor
working a circular field, and sure enough there was a thermal right over the
farmer's head. That thermal took me high enough to get up into the gray, brown
and empty hills to the southeast, following a dirt road up the swales.

I knew I had left my chances of reasonable retrieval behind as I
worked back into the hills with nothing but jeep trails crossing them. Later I
learned that Ken Brown, a highly-respected U.S. pilot, had landed in those very
hills and spent the night sleeping in his harness next to an alkali lake. But
when I got there I found the strongest thermal of the day and started climbing
out fast.

I just hung on as this fat powerful monster took me from six
thousand feet to fourteen thousand in just a few minutes. As I looked down, the
landscape seemed to have lost all of its features. I had never been so high
before, having barely reached ten thousand feet while flying in Chelan. I wasn't
carrying oxygen, didn't own an oxygen system, and couldn't imagine getting high
enough here in Oregon to need one. I had never been in a thermal so powerful,
and I was scared, holding on for dear life. I was also so excited I could hardly
stand it. Most of all I was happy to be high enough to cruise way over the tops
of the big buttes in front of me, south along the western edge of Lake Abert and
on down the ridgeline toward goal.

Finally I had to leave at almost fifteen thousand feet, when I
started to experience symptoms of oxygen starvation — there were little black
spots wherever I looked. I was still scared, but I was high and freezing cold.
And I was even finally able to raise Stephanie on my portable CB radio. She
wasn't but thirty miles behind me, driving as fast as she could down Highway 31.
It looked as though I would survive this day — and maybe even make goal.

Continue reading here:
http://ozreport.com/docs/Cloudsuck2.pdf.