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Home..... Hang Gliding Interests
   
Learning to fly on the sand dunes behind St Ouen's bay Jersey on my  Hiway Super Scorpion.

Learning to fly involved lots of carrying the glider up a slope for an all too brief low flight down again. After many hours carrying the glider up and several minuets gliding down, I was ready for a "top to Bottom" flight, launching off  the top of a steep 200 foot slope to glide down to the beach. Flight time approximately 60 seconds! After packing up the glider and getting back up to the top this would be repeated until I managed to put in tight enough S-turns to stay close to the slope and keep in the lift, this enabled me to stay airborne for as long as I wished and my average flight times  were then about an hour.

   
Myself (right) with the Watts brothers on a towing course in the Isle of Wight, note the standard wearing of moustaches, the RAF would approved of them, but not I suspect of the casual uniform and shouts of "Tally Ho chaps! Ginger's going down!"
   

My first tow on my new Airwave Magic 4 Glider.

There's a simple rule for towing, "run like hell or be dragged along the ground!"

We were pulled into the air by a powerful stationary winch across a large field and we released from the tow line above the winch at a height of about 400 feet, then we turned downwind to the start area and burnt off the height with some steep S-turns or 360's to land and wait our turn for another tow.

   

Brian Johnson "operating the glider outside of the recommended flight envelope" (pulling an extreme wingover!)

This looks a bit dangerous, but as long as you keep up plenty of airspeed going into the manoeuvre, centrifugal force keeps you from side-slipping.

What am I talking about! of course it's dangerous! Get it wrong and lose too much speed and you stand a good chance of killing yourself! So don't try this at home kids!

   
I'm the last to launch, seen from below at about 09 seconds. Me being tow lanched, early realease due to foot stirrup tangle .