It's been a long time since my last update. Things have been great in California. I am getting my fare share of beach time, mountain biking, and of course, hang gliding. My first flight at Fort Funston (a WWII gun station on the western San Fran coast) was incredible. I flew with hawks, and the highlight was seeing a whale breaching in the ocean. The following week I flew on the east side of the bay at Ed Levin county park and had a long flight. This was my first time flying with an Eagle.

My most recent flight was at Fort Funston again. This time I flew with the video camera running. Below in a bit of the 3 hours of flying that day. Fort Funston is by far the most beautiful place I have soared.

Hang Glide Fort Funston from Craig Stanley on Vimeo.

I had a great last flight at Whitewater on Thursday. On my first flight I released around 1200' and stayed up for around 15 mins but was unable to gain altitude. On my second flight I went up to 2000'. After sitting around there for some time I was up to around 2500' but the climbing was very slow. There was no thermal core. I flew to the north over a large sod field and eventually "bumped" into something. I climbed at around 150 feet per minute until I got to 3000'.
At this point the strangest thing happened to me. A black duck flew ~30 feet under me. I did a double-take. I never expected to see a duck that high since they are not soaring birds. He quacked as he flew by.
I eventually made it up to the clouds at ~4000' feet. I flew out to the side of the cloud and kept going up. I was cruising along the side of the cloud diving through wisps that were sticking out. Then, when a cloud wisp formed under me, I was able to spiral down through it. I eventually came down and had a great landing after a 1 hour 40 min flight.
This was a great last flight in Wisconsin! California here I come.

As most of you know, Mandy and I are moving to California (Cupertino) at the end of this month. We will miss all of our friends here in Chicago. Since this is a flying blog . . . .now something flying related. I shot this video while in California a few weeks ago. This is a pilot flying at Fort Funston on the San Francisco Pinnensula. This will be about 40 mins from where we will be living and is soarable for ~50% of the year. With mountain biking and a beach nearby, there are plenty of things to do when the wind is not good. My hang gliders will be in the moving truck for all of August, so tune back in for September posts!

I had a wonderful flight on Friday. I had a personal best for time aloft (4 hours 15 mins), altitude (just of 7k AGL), and solo flight distance (30 miles). It was also my first time sharing a thermal with a sailplane, and my first time flying over Kettle Moraine (see the image) which is where I go mountain biking.

One of my favorite parts of the flight was when I was 15 miles away from the airport and getting very low. I had picked out my landing field and was under 1000 feet when I spotted a bird turning circles over a corn field to the south of me. I quickly flew over to the bird and sure enough there was lift. It was slow and first but eventually I found the core of the thermal and made it back up to 5000 feet. I was so glad I got LASIK because otherwise I don't think I could have found that bird!

When I first got the the field the bird flew away. I had luckily learned a lesson from a wise pilot awhile back: "Never follow a bird that is trying to fly away from you."

At this point I decided the weather was not good enough to make the flight all the way home or to lake Michigan, and I did not have a driver lined up to come get me, so I decided to try and make it back as close to the airport as possible. After another low save over a sod field I had enough altitude to safely fly over the town of whitewater and back to the airport. By this point the clouds had completely decked over. The lack of sunlight usually means thermals are done, so I assumed my flight was done. At around 1500 feet my vario started to beep indicating there was some rising air. I found a spot where I was able to stay between 1000 and 2000 feet for over a half hour turning around and around and around. Then all of the sudden the thermal "turned on" and i started to actually gain altitude. I thought I was the last person in the sky, but at 5000 feet I reached to top of the thermal and was surprised to meet Dale and Terry there. They apparently saw me turning down low and joined the thermal above me.

I slowly flew around and floated back towards earth. At around 2000 I decided the day was done, so I did some fun high-speed turns and spiraled back towards earth. A good landing put a nice end to my day. My neck was a bit sore the rest of the weekend from all that time in the harness, but that's nothing to complain about!

Saturday's flights were uneventful. I had a ~25 minute flight with only a single climb. We were lucky to get what we did with the weather how it was. That evening we had a cookout with campfire and live music that was a lot of fun. Sunday ended up being a decent XC flying day. Mark, Rich, Greg and I took off. I launched first and hung out at cloudbase (4500 feet AGL) until everyone had launched. We then all started drifting downwind. After my first glide I released my VG rope (which allows me to tighten the sail for a better glide) and the rope went all the way through the cleat that holds it. I tried for some time to put it back in the cleat, but doing so would be a long 2-handed operation, and it also takes 2 hands to fly a glider so I gave up on it. Rich and Greg were 1 thermal ahead of me for most of the flight (~2.5 hours) which actually worked out very well since I then always knew where the next thermal could be found. Mark caught some horrible sink at 35 miles and was forced to land before a very long blue hole. I was hoping to have radio communication with the others (we all brought radios) but it seems my radio must have had the button stuck (which I re-soldered that morning) causing radio communication to not work at all. During one of my long glides about 1 hour in I was flying while holding the VG rope in my hand and tried to get a drink from my camelbak. The bite valve came of the hose and unfortunately with a full face helmet, visor down, and the camelbak located well above my back, it was like a geyser going off in my face. Blinded by the water all I could do was search for the hose with my gloved hand and eventually got it out. The hose flew over my shoulder and continued to soak me. I was very hungry the whole flight because I skipped breakfast (stupid mistake) which did not help when I started to get airsick. After getting low and drifting at 1500 AGL for a long time, I decided to glide for something better, but not much was there. I spent my last 800 feet searching over a neighborhood in hopes of finding a Memorial Day BBQ I could partake in while waiting for my ride. I saw smoke coming up from behind one house and my mouth started to water. After flying over there I saw they were just burning some yard waste :-( so I continued over to the soybean field to land. After a good landing one of the neighbors came out to inform me that the airport was only a mile north of there with a "what the heck are you doing here" voice. I told him I didn't want to land at the airport and he seemed a bit shocked. It's always great seeing peoples faces when you land away from the airport. I landed 47 miles from my release point (as the crow flies). Greg and Rich made it 75 miles landing ~5 miles short of the Mississippi river. The flight had it's share of frustrations (radio not working, camelbak explosion, VG rope not functional, GPS tracklog started too late, landing just short of 50 miles, no cell signal after landing), but with a "personal best" for XC flight and a good landing, I had a very big smile on my face. I uploaded a whole bunch of photos from this weekend to: http://tinyurl.com/q7h62a My flight can be seen on the map and loaded into google earth by clicking the KML link here

I flew a personal best of 45 miles today! I just got picked up and am heading back to the airport for more flying tomorrow.

i was able to slide the lock and clamp the release so i could release the string from my mouth. I then pulled the barrel at 2k and released.