Wings Over Wasatch

Had a day off of work while on travel in Utah and made an appointment to get a hang glider lesson with Steve P. from wingsoverwasatch.com.  Only have a few photos, but am sharing what I have.  Steve made a GoPro video shot from the left wing.  High value from the morning's instruction!

I'm still in one piece after a whole morning of drills, short hops, and a few longer hops.  Max altitude was in the neighborhood of 20 feet.  Turning by weight shift is such an unnatural feeling and I got caught twisting instead of shifting early on, resulting in my only crash landing.  Glad I was wearing a helmet because my head whacked the keel tube as one wing tip caught on the flare and pulled my nose over and into the dirt.  No damage other than ego. Not having direct yaw control was weird, making crosswind flying awkward and left me wanting for a rudder to help move the nose around.  It was a lot like my last hand launch glider contest when my rudder pushrod broke and I had to tape the rudder at neutral.  Maybe that's why it was harder than I expected to hold a straight ground track line in the occasional crosswind.  At any rate, the cross breezes gave the opportunity to try some gentle turns.  If my shoulders weren't painfully turning black and blue from holding up the wing, I would have kept working up the hill.  I launched from at least twice as high as the dunes of Kitty Hawk if that helps build a mental image.  The South Side hill is several times taller than the dunes and a whole lot less soft :-)

Many thanks to Steve P. at wingsoverwasatch.com.  If you're ever in the Salt Lake City area with a free morning, give these folks a call and enjoy their excellent training and gentle encouragement.

All in all, very awesome to get back in the air and definitely an incentive to pull Goat back off the back-burner (at least back as a side-project to the kitchen, hehe).  Thanks for sharing with me!

The promised video: