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