Category Archives: HG Course

Hanggliding, HG Course

Fall summary

So, it’s been a rather long blogging hiatus for me, sorry for not updating much lately. I’ve been working, not doing much flying after the nationals, but we’re starting a new hanggliding beginners course now so I finally have a excuse to get out and get airborne again.

A short summary of flying related stuff since the last update;

The last day of the nationals was very good, with epic conditions and many happy faces in goal. We got a 91km task, with a FAI 50km triangle to start with, then back SE to Aasarbrua, via the bridge in the centre of Vaagaa and to goal. Conditions were a little slow in the beginning, typical late summer and not extremely unstable, but we got to 3000 meters towards the end of the task.

I got 6. place overall in the competition, I was not too pleased with my performance at the time, but in retrospect it was a fun competition to fly in since I was finally free of the organization, and could just concentrate on my own flying, then again maybe I was too relaxed and did not really push hard enough.

I also received my new Moyes Malibu hangglider, and I got to test it gliding down from Vole one late evening during the nationals, and I flew it at Tronfjell toplanding 9 times. The Malibu is a great glider, flies like a dream and handles even better. It’s extremely forgiving, landing and talkeoff characteristics feels superb. I just wish we had costal soaring site with top landing nearby. I should probably go looking for one…

Some photos by Stein Edgard Strandli.

After the nationals I was back in Vaagaa arranging a 4 day comp for the paragliders. It was fun, we got unstable conditions, but 2 days of very good flying. I flew the course with the paragliders, looking out for overdevelopment and filming a bit from the air.

Back in Oslo the weather was great, but was swamped in work and could not get out and fly much. The meet at Tronfjell was as aways in late August, and this year the conditions were super nice. Fantastic top landing conditions, 40-50 pilots, great thermals, cloudbase at 2500m, just perfect.

This week we started the next beginner course, so I will be getting out a lot more to fly and teach hanggliding.

Hanggliding, HG Course

Work in progress on the 125cc towing rig

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I went out and got some building materials to mount the scooter on a small trailer, while Steinar produced the drum that will hold the towing line. So far so good, now we just need to test it, hope the weather will allow it tomorrow.

Here’s the scooter mounted on a trailer. I made the supports and mounts from some 2 by 4, steel angles, and bolts. Feels quite solid and it should hold the scooter in place for towing and transport, at least until we can test if it works out ok. We fully recommend looking at the latest dirt scooter reviews to find out which one MyProScooter recommends the most. If not we can just put the wheels back on and sell it as a normal scooter.

Go go go!

Steinar will bring the rear wheel/drum tomorrow, and the rollers for the line.

Strapped down

Almost ready to go.

Needs some rollers for the line in front still

HG Course

Scootertowing news

Our scootertowing project have been a great success so far, and we are committed to continue training students with the big Condor and the 50cc scooter. The low power in the scooter makes it perfect for training, and low altitude flights while keeping it as safe as possible.

The low power is also the limiting factor for high altitude flights, and more general towing needs. Tandem towing is also high on our list, as we can get some income to pay for running the rig. So last week I bought a new 125cc scooter, to be converted into a towing scooter.

Here is a picture of our new ride to heaven. It’s a cheap Chinese made bike, but for our purpose it should be perfect. It has twice the power of the old one, and a faster gearbox. It will be interesting to see how it pulls.

Our new ride to heaven

Since the scooter is new we needed to run it in first, and putting licence plates on it would cost the same as the price of the scooter, so we had to find a closed area to do some laps. (The garage at my job soon became too boring, but we did 3 km there :-) )

Steinar and I did 50 km on a very cold evening at a local racetrack, and Steinar did 100km more the next day (With some more clothes this time) It was mind-numbingly boring to do the 2 km laps, but thinking about the cools flights we can get with the new scooter made it worthwile…

Hanggliding, HG Course

Happy new year

I was on call for my job this newyears weekend, so no big party, and good shape to go flying the first day of the new year. I met up with Sindre who had driven 330km to fly, and we went to Sundvollen. It was nice conditions for a sled ride down through light snowfall, and landing on the frozen fjord in quite mild weather for the season – just below freezing. I had one flight, Sindre two.

Setup  in light snowfall

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Sindre setting up the Falcon and his first flight on his new Skyline harness.

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The LZ, Egil Toft in the background packing up the paraglider.

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A week before Christmas we flew at Sundvollen, and saw ice flowers on the frozen fjord. I’ve never seen something like this before. They were fragile like a snowflake, and seemed to grow straight up from the ice. It was very humid and cold, so I guess a small crystal form around some small object on the ice, and just keep on growing in the humid air.

Closeup of one of the nicer ones. There were thousands of these on the fjord.

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This is with flash. Wish I had a better camera with me as the flash washes out some of the details of the crystal.

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The whole fjord was covered, looked like a flock of swans had lost all their feathers.

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There was no snowfall the days before, just frozen fog on everything, notice the huge crystals.

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Hanggliding, HG Course

Streaming videos, course progress

Yesterday Steinar and I were instructors again. Our student did 10 tows, I did two, and Steinar one flight. All in less than three hours including setting up and packing up. The student did his first full tows, learned to turn around and set up a landing pattern, and spot land.

I did a test to see how far we can push the Falcon on the towline. I found it nearly impossible to stall the glider on tow, the scooter will loose power and the glider will just dip the nose and recover even if I have stretched my arms out as far as I can.

Videos

Since YouTube does not allow videos of more than 100MB, I made a direct link to the video files in the previous posts. I then discovered that Google Video will let you post much bigger videos, by using their desktop uploader. So here’s the two towing videos for your pleasure;

The videos were taken with my Canon Ixus that records 30fps, in 640×480 progressive scan. It’s actually quite good quality, but the compression used by Google lowers the quality drastically. Posting the full quality would be a few hundred megs per minute of video.Maybe I should look into a way of embedding my own video player into the site…

HG Course

Sunday at Brandbu

Bjørn, Brønstad and I met up at Årvoll, where the students had their first flight on the Falcon 2 to prepare for the first high flights today. After trying the glider we packed up and went to Brandbukampen. It was perfect timing, as the fog just lifted above the takeoff when we came. I was at the bottom guiding the students on the radio. They all had good flights, with no major drama. We also gained a new student today, so in total it’s 6 students now. The last 3 should be ready for the height in a few weeks if the weather stays nice.

HG Course

Course at Sundvollen

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Sunday I went out with Bjørn to be instructor for the course. Pål would have his first high flights, while Lars and Petter would take their last flights to finish the course. We met up 09:00 at the landing, the conditions looked good. Lars missed the landing on the frozen lake(!) on his first flight, and had to land on a nearby field when he misjudged the height and came too low to make it over the trees out to land. He landed OK in the field under powerlines between fences.

Pål got his first high flights and looked like the happiest man in the world after both. Seeing the students like this makes it worth all the work and responsibility it is to be instructor. Petter is now finished with the course, and have earned his SP2 displaying very solid flying skills.

It was soarable for periods, and when we went up to take the last flight just before dark the wind picked up and became very soarable, but too strong for the students. Bjørn and Terje had both got some 20-30 minutes soaring earlier in the day.

All three students are in need of gliders, let us know if you know of any beginner gliders for sale. They also need varios and harnesses.

HG Course

Winter flying at Flesberg

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Winter view at Flesberg On Saturday Bjørn and I decided to take two of our students to Flesberg. It was forecasted light snow and easterly winds, which turned out to be an accurate forecast. It was perfect conditions with almost no wind and only light fog at times. Both Petter and Lars got 3 flights each, they both made good progress in learning how to set up for landing.

We went back again today, driving under dense fog all the way from Oslo. Luckily it was sunny and clear skies at Flesberg, we could see the dense fog just down the valley from takeoff. Since it was almost no wind we gome some periods with tailwind from catabatic flow, but Petter got 3 flights again today, while Lars got 2. The course from Lier also showed up with 2 students that got 2 flights each. It was a cold day in the mountains with -11 degrees at the LZ when we packed up the last time.

Petter taking off with FalconSince Lars was late this morning I took the new WillsWing Falcon 195 for a test flight, it is a very, very good glider. The glider started easily, flies nice and slow, but handles like a much smaller glider. I was very suprised by the quick and effortless roll response, it’s by far the easiest beginner glider I have flown. It has no spiral instability, and suprisingly light pitch pressure. I tested to initiate a turn and just let go of the bar, the glider just continued the turn with stable bank and speed like it was on rails. Flare window was a mile wide, easy to nail the spot on first landing.

Compared to gliders like Atlas and Clubman this is MUCH easier and more fun to fly. The Aeros Target is in the same class, but the Falcon has better handling. If I was going to have a “just for fun” glider this would be it. Highly recommended!

HG Course

Updates, Vikersund pics

This website is now running on the 3. generation of hardware. I’ve upgraded from a Pentium II 300Mhz server to an Athlon 1400Mhz. The old server had 450MB RAM, the new one has 1Gig. The speed increase it quite nice when doing searches and adding more pictures and content.

The first server back in ’98 was a Pentium 75Mhz, with 64MB RAM, it’s still running in my lab as a test server.

I’ve fixed some problems with image uploads also. To celebrate I’ve added some pictures from the Ski jump at Vikersund. These were taken with my Siemens S65 phone, the quality is no match for a current digital camera, but OK for quick shots like these.

The jumpers set off down here!
The jump

View from the tower
Vikersund

Walter and Bjørn checking out the view
Tower

Yours truly, in need of a shave :-)
Ego