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/Cloudsuck3.pdf

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

Over
the next five years I flew in as many hang gliding competitions as possible in
Chelan and in the high mountains throughout the west — after all, I still had to
run my far flung computing empire back in Seattle. For sure I was not one of the
top pilots, not even close. But I could rationalize that I only spent a few
weeks each year competing. Still I loved the sport, and I had a great time
hanging out with my buds when we’d join up at some odd mountainside.

In those years the national level competitions were held again in
Dinosaur; repeatedly at Sandia Peak above Albuquerque, New Mexico; in the Owens
Valley ; from Sugar Mountain just over the California border from Lakeview,
Oregon; at Chelan Butte in Washington State; and in Telluride, Colorado. All the
big U.S. competitions took place out West in the deserts, in the big air
conditions. Year after year you'd find us launching off the sides of high,
craggy mountains in the heat of the day.

In 1994 we held the national championships in Telluride, Colorado,
an out-of-the-way but fashionable ski resort town. Of all the crazy and
dangerous places that we could put on a nationals, this place had to be the
worst — still, it was so over the top that we really liked it. I’d flown there
in a national level meet before, so I knew was I was getting into.

To get us to the top, they’d take us up these steep gravel ski
hill service roads in old pickups that were way too top heavy when loaded down
with hang gliders. You could just imagine the driver missing a gear or going a
little too close to the edge, and the truck with all those gliders on top
rolling down the steep mountainside, throwing out hang glider pilots with each
flip. They had done just that in the past.

We were launching from over twelve thousand feet, way up near the
top of the ski runs and three thousand feet above the valley floor. Up that high
the air is so thin that it’s actually quite difficult to get a hang glider to
start flying; there just aren’t enough air molecules to support the glider’s
weight unless you are going fast. It takes a long run down a steep hillside to
get up enough airspeed to get airborne. You start off with your oxygen bottle
already turned on and then you climb out in a thermal to eighteen thousand feet,
sucking in oxygen as fast as possible.

It was hard just climbing on foot the last few hundred feet up the
hillside to the launch from the end of the service road, especially with 125
pounds of hang glider and gear. Then you’d set up on a slope you could just
barely stand on, it was so steep. It was great to be surrounded by such natural
beauty.

The San Juan Mountains around Telluride are so steep and the
valleys so narrow that any wind is extremely dangerous. Often during the meet I
would fly out across the valley to get up on the other side, next to the sheer
cliffs. I’d be circling up within a few feet of the rocky face and, so help me,
holding on as hard as possible, hoping the powerful and swirling thermals didn't
decide to flip me over.

I’d finally climb up above the rocks and get on top of the ridge
line still going up fast, but at least not in any danger of hitting anything.
I’d look around and all I’d see would be trees. Of course, this was high in the
Rocky Mountains, so there were trees everywhere, and nowhere to land out on the
course line but in those trees. I’d just better get high. It was incredibly
thrilling.

Douglas fir and pine trees are no fun to land in. There is nothing
to hold on to. You clip the top of the tree and then go for a fast ride to the
ground fifty or a hundred feet below.

I was a last-minute replacement on the Wills Wing team at that
particular meet, so that meant that I was the “rabbit.” They would send me off
early to see if I could stay up. If I could, then I would report back about the
conditions. If I did well, great. If not, the other team members would get the
points for the team.

I lived through that meet and so did everyone else, but we never
went back there to have a national level meet again.

In 1995 I read Chris Arai’s story about the magnificent flying
down in Australia, the land that produces many of the world's leading hang
glider pilots. His story also spoke about how terrible the conditions had been
that year, with a drought until the day the meet started, then floods that wiped
out the tow paddock. That’s Australia for you.

Still, I got excited about the prospects of flying during our
wintertime, so the following December I took the opportunity to head south for
six weeks of full time hang gliding on the Australian summer competition
circuit. I'd recently finished a best selling computer book, Windows 95 Secrets,
so I could afford to take some time off before starting in on the next one.

Consider this. Australia has a land mass about equal that of the
U.S. and a population of competition hang glider pilots about equal to that
found in the U.S., but with less than a tenth of the overall population. Ten
times the enthusiasm! Here in this land devoted to sport, hang gliding isn't
thought of as an activity for crazies only, but a legitimate form of recreation.

Over ninety percent of Australians live within an hour of the
ocean, and water sports are an integral part of the lives of many Australians.
Many find time to surf, leaving their offices to hit the waves when it is on.
Hang gliding started as an adjunct to water skiing here in the sixties then grew
into a sport whose participants took off from cliffs overlooking the ocean.

Later it moved into the flat interior, with hang gliders towed up
behind cars. Things got even better when pilots recognized that ultralights
(light experimental aircraft) could be used to tow up hang gliders. Bill Moyes,
the founder of Australia's leading hang glider manufacturer, went further and
worked with Bobby Bailey in Florida to produce an ultralight specifically built
as a hang glider tow vehicle, the Bailey-Moyes Dragonfly. This only encouraged
more flying in the flatlands to the west of Australia’s Great Dividing Range.

Continue reading here:
http://ozreport.com/docs/Cloudsuck3.pdf.