My Flying Events

This is when the course took place. It lasted for five days and it was really hard in the beginning. The first three days I must say I was in doubt of the whole thing. It was so much harder then I thought. Anyway I thought that I had to give it a chance. At the third and fourth day I had the company of Anders and Kolbjörn, two guys that took the course last year. It felt better to be able to compare with someone. The last day I made six launches from the top of the slope and they went fairly well, no bumpy landings anyway. And I finally got rid of the feeling of fear. Instead I began to slowly feel the excitement of flying.

Today was a good day to fly. It would be my first day without Paul Kiraly and the first day after the five day course. I was excited and nervous. During the education I met two fellow gliders named Anders and Kolbjörn. The three of us got up this day on the hill left of the HFK:s flyingschool. There was a descent of maybe 15 - 20 meters or so. The flight had to pass over a small fence. Therefore we started right away at the top which made me a little nervous. But after the first launch the fear was gone. It was great to be flying with some fellow gliders and we were at the experience level. We made seven launches that day and they went mostly well. The landings were a little harsch but at the end they got better too. We were out for about 2 hours and it was about 4 m/s windspeed from the east. Pushing that wing up the hill makes you really long to be able to fly at the hang.

A month has gone, too long I believe. I took my friend Henrik with me at about 7.30 to HFK. At the hang there was wind at about 1-2 m/s from south. We took the wing to a place called "Rookie Hill" and it is a good slope maybe 700 m from the hang. It is about 20 - 25 meters altitude and there are good landing areas, and easy to get up again. It has a great view over the sea too. We assembled the wing and I was ready for my first launch. A little nervous but when I took the steps out over the hill and started to fly it felt even better then the last time. I made, in my opinion, a perfect simple flight. Landing very gently in front of the seashore. It was a good lenght and a soft flight. I felt me flying again! The landing was especially good. Very gentle. Henrik said too that it looked good. I made 7 launches today. 4 stright forward. 1 with turns and 2 with a spot to land. The last two had landings a little harch, probably of two reasons. Not wanting to come down and beeing tired of all the lifting in the hill. During the time Henrik took pictures that you can see at a later time. Just before dawn we packed the wing and drove slowly home. When we packed the wing we got attacked by BIG bees. They were set on us and we felt like from a scene in alien. He covered my back as I was packing the wing. 6 times we had to impact with a bee. All went well though. It was almost dark when we left the wing at the school. I think it was a lovely evening and it felt good all the way with the wing. I must try to get up more often. The time I got home was 11.00.

This day I was out two times. Ones in the morning and ones on the evening. I was alone in the morning and launched from a hill just to the right from the hang. It was a good spot with very different wind and ground. From the top I started and a few meters down there was a little upwind taking me some meters straigt up. There after the wind nearly dissappeared so I had to increase speed as I was on the top. With speed I flew over some ground that was full of big holes wich made it a little turbolent, but by turning to the right and aiming for a flat area to land the winds from the holes kind of lifted me a little bit at the end of the flight. The first launches were not so long, but when I mastered the wind I found ways to increase the flight length. It was both fun and challenging to controll the wing. The second time I flew it was less wind and there for less length and fun. I have discovered it to be much more fun with winds around 6 m/s. Too less wind makes no challange. I made 20 launches all in all this day wich makes it 34 totally. I want to go towing now to feel the real hight and to be able to make turns and dives and other fun stuff. I hope that I will be able to fly on the hang at the end of this summer.

Today I checked out a wing called Tecma Medium. It seems this is the wing to begin with. This wing was from 92 and was not flown too much. It looked in good shape and there were no torn parts. The speedbar was exchanged and I liked the look of it. I will probably buy this one to start with something of my own. He wanted 6000 :- for it and I think that seems rather sheap. I will have to speak with my instructor first though.

Today I got my first Hangglider. It is a Tecma Medium and a middle class wing. I have until today only used a schoolclassed wing and I believe I now have a chance to more use the wind and techniques of flying to later on be able to even hang at the beginners hang at Hammar. It is a long way there, but I will start tomorrow by setting it together so that I have full control off that part, then comes the first starts, feeling it and getting to know the caracteristics. I can´t wait. . Unfortunately the wind is fast and the weather not too stabile.

First day I assembled the wing, it was much bigger then I expected it to be. Last time I looked at it it seemed not so big. Well, with this it would finally be possible to fly, hang and do all that cool things!

I was out on the slopes today with my Tecma Medium. First time ever! I started out with some moonwalking down the slope with maybe 15 degrees angle. The wing is so much bigger then the beginners one. And the feeling of this one was that with just a little speed of the wing it started to glide, even close to ground. It became a little turbulence though. After two launches like this I went up the slope a little. With earlier experience I have discovered it to be easier to fly the higher you get, getting rid of the turbulence at the ground. I started out down the slope and I felt that the glider was not so hard to steer, in fact a little easier then the beginners one. But I reckon I will discover it to be a whole lot easier when I have learned more about it. The glider flew a lot longer then the other one (of course!) and I was a little afraid of ending up in the water, but after a few launches I guess it was no problem. BUT then again I only started half way up the slope, and yet I got about 150 m down with only 50 to the water. The wind came in from southwest but there was a definite side wind from the right so I had to compensate all the time by steering to the right. The last launch was the best flight. I had steady course all the way until the landing. Almost all the landings were bad. I did not get the wing against the wind enough. It ended up with the wing sliding to the left. I will have to further my skills in landing AGAINST the wind!! All in all, to be the first time, it went very well. Only trouble was when landing, when pushing the bar forward, instead of making the small stall, it continued flying several meters, wich made it hard to land, and probably coused much of the sidegliding in the end. I will have to ask what to do, or maybe test to fly the wing slower, near the minimum stall speed, but then again, maybe I need more altitude to test that . . // Note: At a later time I realized that the problem that caused this bad landings was that I did not examine the direction of the wind enough at the landing site. If I would have done that I would have seen that it was coming from the right.

This was truly a great day. It has turned to fall in Sweden and I was in doubt to ever get that towing-course. But Paul called me a couple of days earlier and summoned Anders, Kolbjörn, Johan and me. We went out to Högestad with the tow and a lot of expectations in our minds. I couln´t wait to get up, although some of us wanted to take it a little slower. We started out with just small launches with an altitude of about 2 - 3 meters and as time went by we incresed to 20 meters and made landings. Then we got even higher and we started to realize how high we were flying. Soon we were at about 70 meters and we did our first turn. I have only one word for the whole thing: Cool! It was fabolus to make 360 turns and then land. It took very little time and suddenly we were doing multiple turns and attempts to land where we started. In the end we were rather good and when I made the last launch I accidently released in a thermal wind. The first two turns I took made no decrease in altitude and my flying time was about 4 minutes all in all. I also landed almost next to my start area. This thing is just so cool. I must fly with my Tecma Medium in the slopes to learn to control it better so that I can take the Hangcourse soon, before winter. Then I can get a lot of flying time in the air before winter is over us!

It is a pitty I had no camera with me, but soon I will have pictures over the Hang.

The area where I fly is also a millitary area for practice. They have been there the week that has gone and I could not get out until at late evenings. This made very little time to fly. Anyway, I got out late this day and made 4 launches in practicaly no wind. This made me fly faster relatively to the ground and becouse of this the landing, wich I was gonna train, was harder to accomplish according to my goal. I wanted to land in wind and only use a little stall in the landing point, but instead I had to stall very much to stop the wingspeed. Instead of stopping, sometimes the wing lifted me a little bit instead and I had to tilt down and make a new landing attempt. The landings were straigt and controlled though and I believe that when I am flying at the hang I will learn more about landing and starting becouse I will be able to make more landings/starts in less time. It is needed to be trained. I hope Johan will be there at the hangcourse. It feels like there is too much fysical work for only very little flying at the slopes right now, and I do not want to push my friends to follow me out there anymore. They have been very supportive and I am very thankful. Soon they only have to keep me company at the hang.

This was truly a great day to fly. It was clear and the sun was warming. The idea of this day was to learn how to hangglide with Paul Kiraly, but the wind was too weak. We need about 7 m/s to be able to hangglide at the small hang. Today it was about 5 m/s and that was more than I usually fly in. I flew without Paul. There were lots of both paragliders and hanggliders in the sky. I flew at a new slope this time. It was a slope just about 150 m from the big hang and therefor I could see the others all the time. This slope had about 20 to 25 meters altitude relative to the landing area and there was a few small hills to the left. The wind was smooth at most places but at the middle the wind was stronger under the left wing, making it hard to hold it when I was climbing up. I did first 5 starts from a little over the middle of the slope and it felt great to fly again after so long time. These flights lasted about 20 to 25 seconds and were good ones. The only thing that I feel I need a lot more training of is the landdings. They are not bad, but not good enough. I soon felt that I would be able to hold the wing still over the ground if I could find the minimum sink speed. The 6th time I found it rather quick and tryed to keep it. I flew for the first time "like" I should do when I hang. I managed to extend the duration of the flight to about 1 minute and all the rest of the flights that I did this day lasted for about that. My best time is now 1 minute and 17 seconds. I was also able to let the wing go by itself in the upwinds. I only had to adjust it a little to keep it horizontally. This is the best of all my times in the slopes and I got rid of some of the fear before the upcoming hangcourse. It was not that hard! The starts were also very easy. At the top the wind took good care of my wing and I only had to take a few steps to lift up to about 5 meters. I suppose I could be able to turn and keep me up for longer but I want to take it slow and safe. I will try to get upp some more with the same windspeed and at the same slope to train my hang abilities. It was great fun, but soon I want to learn how to keep me there and to land at the top, so that I wont have to lift my wing in the slope anymore. I get very tired of that . .

For a long time I have not been able to fly at all. I have been moving to a new appartment and I have been working very hard at my new jobb, the few times that the weather has been good, I have been way to tired to even think of it. But now the summer is comeing if the warm wind against my face makes my mind wich for that flying feeling. This summer my goal is to get the Hangcourse so that I can fly much longer time. I started out the day before with checking and packing my wing at my brothers house.
Today my friend Henrik followed me to the slopes and at first it was wind from the south making it a little harder to start and land. The first take of was not good at all but after 3 takeoffs I was kind of back again. Dispite some rough turns I always could make an acceptabe landing.
At the take offs I had way to little speed, I saw that afterwards on the video that Henrik made. I did not get speed enough wich made the starts harder. Often I sank about 3 meters emediately. Efter a couple of hours the wind turned from south to southwest but it did not increase in speed. Unfortynatley for me since the landing area is in front of the sea. The last two times I had to make steep turns and swiftly land towards the wind. At the bottom near the sea there was almost no wind at all! The wing that you can see at the pictures is the one that I bought in September last year!

There was a lot of aviation in the air today dispite the "kind of" bad wind. A helicopter came by and seeped very low from the west. This helicopter is very rare in Sweden. First of all we don´t have very many and secondly we don´t have this type. I think we only have maybe 10 in Sweden, the few rest is just very small "usual" kinds of helicopters. It was a cool deep sound when it came slowly hoovering in over the slopes. Man if I could fly that thing ! That would be cool. We also had the chance to see a airplane comeing by, circling the area for about 30 minutes, probably a millitary one. Later after our flying we went up to the hang and there we talked to a paraglider who desperatly tried to fly in the poor wind. At a distance we also could se a small radio steered plane, so all in all it was a rich day. And I am glad tto be flying again.

Hanggliding - Helicopter.jpg (12778 bytes)

I still walk those slopes and after having done this now for almost a year I am getting pretty tired of it. As my condition is kind of "behind" I got very tired walking up with the wing all the time. I am very lucky to get so much help from my very good friend Henrik who is also very interested in aviation (Thankyou !). My instructor talked about getting that course done soon so that I can gain flight time soon. I long for it but is also a little nervous. I hope that I can get out there with about southwest winds and 6 m/s windspeed so that I can practice some hangabilities!