I used to be a sailplane pilot but then I moved up to hang
gliders. Hang gliding is the purest form of flight I have
found. Here is a picture of me with my U2 from Willswing. This
wing is soooo nice to fly and responds to the slightest input, it seems
like I just have to think of turning and away she goes. Flying at
90 km/h she feels as stable and rock steady as she does at 30 km/h and
in a turn she maintains her bank angle even hands off. I love to fly
this wing. Now I have a wasp powered harness and one day soon I hope to
take off the two stroke motor and replace it with clean electric....
Me and a few friends have formed a brand new hang gliding club.
We purchased a Dragonfly which is an ultralight specially
designed for aerotowing hang gliders. I am the club's first tug pilot.
The tug pulls us up and we
release when we find lift or reach the agreed height. A standard tow is
to 2500 feet. We operate out of Palmerston airport and the GPS
coordinates are N43 51 07 W80 46 39 The area
has great potential for cross
country flights due to its location and the vast amount of farm land
in every direction.
Here is a shot of the dragonfly towing a falcon a
couple of thousand feet below me while I was soaring free in a thermal
above them.
Below is a shot of our Dragionfly after my first flight in her.
We have the 100 HP 912 engine on this version of the tug which allows
us to tow up in about 4 minutes.
I made some videos this summer and I put them together in this little
(NOT!) movie. This video represents all the aspects of a flight at SOGA
from launch to landing. The glide portion appears shorter in the
video than it would be in reality due to editing. Warning this is
about 40 Mb and unless you have a stinkin' fast connection I'd
recommend not trying to stream the video. Save a copy and play
from your local drive. Enjoy!
Internet Explorer seems to handle this file fine but mozzilla doesn't
like it for some reason. If it doesn't play when you click it,
then right click and select "save link target as...", then play from
your local drive. I suggest
viewing this at 50% size.
Since several people complained to me about some small deficiencies
in John
Pop's T-Dolly, which is an otherwise excellent evolution of the
typical
triangular dolly used for aerotow launches, I did some homework and
decided to make some refinements on the T-Dolly idea. The
S-Dolly has wooden supports for the base bar of your glider which are
larger, smooth and rounded so as to eliminate potential snag points for
a loose
zipper line on your harness ( or anything else which might snag on the
dolly during a launch. Yes it has happened but nobody was killed thank
goodness. Check the pic below to see what she looks like. A
couple of other members have badly pinched a finger
between the base bar and the metal handle on the T-Dolly on a bounce
while rolling down the runway (OUCH!) so my design uses a soft webbing
strap as a handle which has an adjustment buckle to adapt to your
prefered comfort level and hand size. There is no hold down rope
spanning the cradles as there was on the old style launch cart which
has been a factor in some accidents where a pilot accidentally routed a
tow rope or tow bridal under the hold down rope rather than clear above
it. The adjustable cradles are made to
accomodate straight or speed bar types of glider base bars. The
keel cradle is wide and flat and fully adjustable to get the proper
glider incidence angle for takeoff which we have determined should be
at least 20 degrees to the horizontal. I have added a storage bag
and a clinometer gauge tied to the adjustment pin so it is always handy
and you can take the guesswork out of putting a glider on the dolly for
takeoff. It is critical when using any launch cart that the glider sit
on the cart with a sufficiently high angle that the keel will lift off
the keel support once flying speed is attained. This allows the
keel to lower momentarily when the pilot let's go of the dolly and
rotates for takeoff. Failure to observe this will result in a
situation where the glider cannot attain sufficient angle of attack to
rise off the cart and it would seem as if the glider is "stuck".
There is a huge variation between glider types in the geometry around
the length of the control bar which determines the angle with which the
glider rests on a dolly. This is why it is essential that the keel
support is instantly adjustable in the field without tools. As a
note of interest, on a couple of occasions where pilots have failed to
heed this warning, the shallow angle of the keel support has allowed
the glider to yaw till the keel tube was able to drop off the edge and
then the glider was able to rise and continue the launch. On a
dolly with a more restrictive keel support this could not happen and
imagine the scenario when the pilot has let go of the dolly handles
expecting to climb but the glider does not rise. A bump in the
runway (common with grass strips) could jostle the gider's base tube
out of the support cradle ( especially on a dolly with small metal
cradles) on one or both sides. The next thing that happens is the
glider begins to fall but since the keel tube is restricted in the vee
of the keel support it only results in a further lowering of the angle
of attack causing the glider to dive at the ground. This is a
deadly combination at typical tow speed of 50-60 km/h. No amount
of pushing out can resolve this problem since the keel tube is
prevented from lowering. Another advantage of the handle style on the
S-Dolly is it affords a larger resting surface for the glider's base
bar making it easier to get the glider on the cart especially by
yourself in the presence of a breeze. The large surface also
virtually eliminates the chance that the glider might bounce out of the
support cradle if the pilot let go of the handle unintentionally, or if
a gust raises a wing during ground handling the glider will likely come
back to rest on the handle rather than falling off.
The new design is higer and allows short pilots to stand on the long T
bar so they can hook in to the glider hang point. The higher
position of the glider offers a safety advantage when coming off the
dolly in case of a bad bit of turbulence which causes the glider to dip
or drop a wing. A few inches can be the difference between a
close call and a tradgedy. The S-dolly shows a complete absence
of caster wobble which was an annoying and potentially dangerous
condition common to the old
style launch carts. The S-Dolly also comes apart with the removal
of a single bolt for transport or storage, but since the keel support
quickly folds down out of the way, it is very convenient for storing in
an aircraft hangar once the keel support pin is removed and folded flat
which can be done in seconds without any tools.
Here the dolly plans and bill of material are published as my offering
to the hang gliding community. Just click the link below.
Everybody seems to love the dolly and most of our members prefer to use
it from what I see out at the field on a typical day. Feel free
to build one for yourself or your club. Fly safe.
Oh here's a little tip for you cross country fliers. Yeah we
generally know the wind direction when thermalling and cloud chasing
but sometimes the wind on the ground can be quite different.
Here's something you can carry with you to give you the wind direction
in the field when you are landing out in the boonies at a strange
field. Take about 3/4 of a metre of red crate paper and tape it
to the end of a peice of yellow which is twice as long (1.5 m) and tape
a penny to the end of the red. Now roll it all up starting from
the yellow end, and place it in
a film canister. Open this up and shake it out over your chosen
landing spot. The penny end falls first and the rest of the
streamer unfurls behind it. The crate paper prevents the penny
fom falling fast enough to be a danger to anyone on the ground. When it
hits the ground the tail lays
down in the wind. You now have a bright yellow and red wind
direction arrow with the red end pointing into wind. It's not my
idea, I learned it from Kevin Caldwell, back in the day. Fly safe!
