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.

After adding another loop to my mouth release, it worked wonderfly today! I had light tension so i know it would release if i was in trouble. At 500 feet

eather should be a lot better tomorrow. Tonight we are just enjoying the grill and live music.

I flew once this afternoon between thunderstorms and had a small climb to 3k. I'm planning a xc flight tomorrow going downwind with some other pilots. W

Here's a video from the Flytec Race and Rally showing lots of aerobatics. Most of the film was shot from the dragonfly. Our weekend fly-in weather is looking so-so. There is a chance of rain and it seems nobody knows what the lift might be like. We have cross country, flour bomb drop, and spot landing contests planned, with food and live music on Saturday evening. It should be a good weekend even if it is not soarable. I am going to try posting via SMS this weekend. We'll see if it works. -Craig

I have completed the webpage for the Memorial Day Weekend Fly-In. Now we just have to hope for good weather.

I had 2 flights today and hit lots of sink. A lot more sink than thermals. My first flight I climbed for a short while but the thermal was very bumpy. My second flight I made it to ~5000 feet and decided to try going XC, but as I flew downwind the air only got worse. I was back on the ground 6 miles away from the airport. From 5000 feet in dead air I should be able to glide closer to 10 or 11 miles. The good news though is that the camera worked beautifully. I think I need to find a different location to mount it though because the down tube is in front of my face in almost every shot. Here are a few of the better pictures. Click on the image to see it full size.

I went to the airport today with forecasts of decent winds and strong thermals to 7500'MSL but by the time I got my wing set up, wind were aroun 15 gusting to 25, which is faster than I am comfortable taking off in (could make me take of before I start going down the runway). With predicted winds of 10-15 straight west I was planning to fly to Lake Michigan. I had planned out a flight to the beach. With winds aloft at 25-20 mph all I would have to do is stay airborne for 2 hours to make the 50 mile journey, but getting airborne was unfortunatly unsafe. I will be heading back tomorrow afternoon after teaching sunday school (should be able to take off around 2pm). Tomorrow's forcast is for winds of 10 kts on the ground, 15 at cloudbase of ~7k MSL from the northwest. This might be a great chance for me to try flying home, something I have wanted to do for a long time. There should be other pilots there tomorrow looking to go XC, so it could be a fun day if we get several pilots together. I will post some updates in a few days. The image shows possible routes for east wind to the beach and nw wind to get me home (Island Lake LZ). Click the image to enlarge.

Since it was a rainy weekend and not flyable, I spent some time making a mount for my new camera. I took a tripod I got for Christmas (Thanks Matt!) and removed the legs. I then bolted that to a piece of PVC pipe that I cut in half (leftover mouth release tubing). I put a rubber furniture foot between the tripod and the PVC to give it a nice flat but flexible surface to mount on. I then drilled slots in the PVC to add zip-ties. The camera can now be mounted on to any tube on the glider. Hopefully I will have pictures from the camera next week!

I bought a used Canon S70 digital camera a few days ago which will become my dedicated wingtip mounted camera. The camera has an Intervalometer that allows the camera to take a picture every minute until the battery dies or the memory card fills up (1 Gig Card). This makes picture taking hassle free since you just start it before the flight and don't think about it again. The camera is 7 Megapixels, and has a 28mm lens so I should be able to get everything in the shot that I want. The camera does a good job at taking long-exposure night shots as well, somthing I have not done since my camera I had in germany broke.

I stayed up in Whitewater on Friday and Saturday. We had around 12 pilots on Friday. I got a one hour flight in and then a 2.5 hour flight. There were a lot of thermals around and plenty of other pilots to help you find them. You can see a 40x speed animation of my GPS track below. Notice my altitude and climb rates at the bottom. Saturday was a bit more difficult. There was high cirrus and lower clouds starting to fill in. I made it up to cloudbase ~ 4k twice. I experienced some cloudsuck when I got there and pulled in for full speed and the vario was still beeping. I had an upwind glide that must have been right along a lift line because ~3 miles later I was still right at cloudbase. It was really cool to zip along the underside of the clouds at 40 mph. I eventually started to get rained on and raced back to the airport after the 1-1.5 hourflight. I got to kill altitude from 3k which was a blast (i'm usually struggling to stay up). I got packed up before the sprinkle turned into rain at the airport. A great weekend for sure!

I've been working on making flying a bit safer. I recently made the transition to a topless glider. With my old glider seen here at the left, I had a bike brake lever at my right hand (click to zoom in on any picture). With a quick squeeze of the lever, the release up at the top would open releasing me from the tow plane. Because it takes 2 hands to fly a hang glider, it is important to be able to release from the tow plane while keeping your hands on the control bar. I have experienced, and seen plenty of videos of pilots getting out of control on tow, and unwilling to take their hands off the controls. When you get in a bad situation, pilots tend to try to control the glider instead of letting go of the tow rope. In the second it takes to grab for a release, a glider near a lockout position can really get in bad shape. The pilot in this video failed to release from the tow plane when he started to lose control (PIO) which shot him at the ground after locking out. After switching from my Ultrasport to my Talon, it was time to start towing from the shoulders only (no rope going up attached to the glider). The talon really does tow a lot better from the shoulders (less yaw issues). The down side of this was that I could no longer use my bicycle brake release. After some pointers from Steve Kinsley and Tad Eareckson, I created the release shown here. The idea is quite simple, and can be made with $3 worth of material from the hardware store and an hour of spare time (more if you're like me and can't find your drill so you turn the bits by hand). Above in the picture (going to the pilots left shoulder) is the traditional barrel release which becomes the secondary release with this setup. The rope from that secondary release goes through the tow rope and then back to my new release. This release has a loop that goes through the tow bridle (red rope), and then back to the release, where it is held by another rope that goes through the diameter of the release tube and then up to the pilot's mouth. When the pilot wants to release, all he has to do is release the rope or scream a profanity, and the mouth string goes though the tube, and releases the loop which then releases the bridle which then releases the tow rope. "But isn't it uncomfortable?" No, the tow force get gets down many times over going through all those loops and through the tube. The force on the mouth rope is very low. What is really nice though is once you are a few hundred feet up and away from anything hard (the earth, for example), you slide the gray tube forward and it locks the mouth rope in place. Then you are left with a barrel release on both sides. Just pull back on the barrel on either shoulder, and you are released from the plane.

I plan to test the release over the next couple flights to be sure it releases when I want it to, doesn't release when I don't want it to. I will update again here as soon as I see how things work out.

-Craig Next week, first flights of the season and a new wingtip camera (hopefully). Hang Glide in Wisconsin! Get Towed up in Whitewater

Great video featuring the Dragonfly: The ultralight used to tow up Hang Gliders:

Hang Gliding FAQ -> This high resolution video teaches the basics of hang gliding: http://vimeo.com/3536482

We're Up!

I've completed the new websites for both the Whitewater Hang Gliding Club and Midwest Aerosports.  In both sites you fill find great information about learning to fly in Wisconsin.  With a close eye, you will even see my Mom, Dad, and Wife all flying.   ....the things they do for me.