Airborne Again

On Saturday, November 30^th, I went to Quest Air Hang Gliding for the third time. The first time I had gone there, I had been extremely nervous about the height and as we climbed higher and higher into the sky, I could feel the fear of heights creeping up in me. The second time out was much more comfortable and a nice calm ride in the early morning. So this time out I decided to step up the game a bit and asked if I could ride from the lower harness.

Mark Frutiger, the manager, was great and got me all set up with the paperwork and Spinner, the pilot with whom I had rode tandem the last two times, got me set up to pilot from the lower harness while he rode from the top. The plane towed us up and Spinner kept the glider in position behind the plane for the most part. The first thousand feet or so were very turbulent, but the air calmed down above that. Once we were at about two thousand feet, Spinner let me control the tow, so I kept the glider level with the plane, keeping the horizon in between the wheels and the body of the prop plane.

Spinner took back over just as we hit three thousand feet, so then we released from the tow and the plane bailed downwards back to our fair planet Earth, leaving us to explore the sky. We had a strong wind coming from one direction, so I spent most of the flight flying in that direction to prevent us from going too far away from the landing zone. Once we reached about 1200 feet, Spinner gave me the last call for doing aerobatics, so I relinquished control to him and he gave his best effort to do some stunts, but since he was in the top harness, he couldn’t get as much power into the spins as usual.

After our aerobatics, we dropped back into the turbulent air and Spinner brought us down towards the ground, preparing for an exciting landing. We swooped over the trailer park and office building, out into the field before making a strong 180 degree turn and dipping down towards the grassy carpet of solid ground and flaring up to land gracefully back on terra firma.

Mark started a log on me for pilot training to keep track of what I had covered while in the bottom harness and also marked my payment so that if I took the pilot training I would have that much discounted. The guys at Quest Air are great and I love going there. The only problem I have with it is that there’s no topography in Florida to really enjoy while flying. The most exciting thing is to see rainstorms in the distance; otherwise it’s just patches of ground and water below. I’m sure I’ll be back there soon enough. Until then, another video!