Oz Report

The problem with landing

Are your hands too high and are you pulling down on the down tubes? (Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, Arizona)

Zac Majors had a bad landing on the practice day at the Santa Cruz Flats Race landing in stiff winds behind the eight story hotel at the Francisco Grande.  We got to watch the whole thing and I spoke with him later.  At the time he felt that he might have broken his thumb on landing.

From our point of view it looked like he was coming in with his hands way too high up on the down tubes and way way too slow so that he was getting tossed around pretty strongly.  From his point of view he was pulling in hard and still getting tossed around strongly.  Could we both be right?

Rob Kells came up with an answer that says we were both right.

Rob states that pilots who fly harnesses with back plates often have this problem (as their back plate wants to push them down) of coming in with their hands too high on the down tubes.  They are pulling themselves up on the down tubes to counteract the tendency of the harness to push them down.  So they are holding on strongly to the downtubes and doing a pull up.

Holding on strongly (which, of course, you would also tend to do when landing with a lot of turbulence, like Zippy was doing) high up on the downtubes transfers you center of gravity backwards because the apex of your glider is behind your hang point (so that when you flare, you can flare with authority).  This means that just when you want to pull in and get your center of gravity forward to get on some speed, you are doing just the opposite, getting your center of gravity further back.

In addition, you are holding on strong and pulling in hard, but you are really just pulling down and even though it feels like you are pulling in to get that speed, you are actually doing just the opposite of what it feels like.  The harder you pull "in", the more you shift your weight to the back.  So it feels like you are doing the right thing, but your aren't.

So the idea is to get your hands low on the down tubes, or stay on the base bar, or put your feet on the base bar (like I sometimes do) and pull in from down low, not up high.  Your hands don't need to be at your shoulder height until you are ready to flare.

A back plate harness will naturally rotate you forward and down and you can stay down with it.  Maybe rotate up half way to get your feet down a bit and your hands on the lower ends of the down tubes.  You can just hang there as your harness will support you in this configuration.

Thanks to Rob Kells and to Zippy.

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Go faster

(This topic is in: May 2 Jan.31 )

Shaving off a few turns here and there.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11760

There comes a time that you want to fly a little bit faster.  Maybe you’ve been to a contest or two and you’ve seen what amazing speeds the top pilots achieve – and often in surprisingly bad conditions.  Maybe you want to go for a badge, or just cover a little more territory in your cross-country flying.  We are glued to this sport by obsessive self-improvement, and a little more speed soon becomes the focus of that obsession.

A better pilot or a better glider?

Many pilots think that the key to going faster is to spend a lot of money on new gliders.  They don’t go to contests because “I won’t be competitive in this old thing.” In fact, small differences in pilot technique outweigh huge differences in expensive fiberglass.  You usually see new gliders at the top of the score sheet only because great pilots tend to put the money and effort into flying the latest gliders.  The top pilots would sill win if they had to fly 20 year old gliders.

To see what a little thinking and practicing can do, let’s set a goal of cutting down 3 circles per hour.  This doesn’t seem like much, maybe one circle every other thermal.  How many of us do not, three times per hour, take a circle that gains nothing; maybe searching for a thermal that isn’t there, indecisive about leaving, or centering poorly?  That seems like an achievable goal for a season’s practice.

Thanks to Ron Gleason.

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Confidence keeps you up

Fly with the big boys, stay with the big boys (Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, Arizona)

Derrick Turner <derreck> writes:

As you have recently posted on the Oz Report, I pulled off a very fortunate 5th place finish in the recent Santa Cruz Flats competition.  So was it glider performance?

The first day was my 2nd flight on this brand new out of the box glider with no special comp tuning.  My only adjustment was to turn down the tip-wands a notch So why did i do so unexpectedly good?

Well, part was luck (a big part) and part was confidence.  After the 2nd day and flying with Andre Wolf for more than hour, side by side and finally winning the day by maybe 100ft, I realized something.  I could at least keep up with top pilots (in certain conditions).  The equipment that I had at hand (Moyes Litespeed S5) was every bit as good as theirs and that gave me a big boost in confidence.

I was now determined to show that my win was not a fluke, day after day I was able keep up and sometimes beat the best in the world in the end it was glider performance.  My glider gave me confidence that my hefty 280lb hook-in weekend pilot abilities could keep pushing and reaching for the horizon.

So what is the best glider out there?  The one that gives you confidence to fly your best.  Be that a Falcon or a Litespeed.  I would like to thank Moyes for my great glider and Mike Barber for his mentoring and sharing some of his great wisdom.

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The new high cost of freight to Europe

The Europeans are buying from America (France)

You might have noticed that the dollar is not worth so much compared to the Euro.  I've mentioned this a few times in the Oz Report.  Well, now we find out that it is having another effect other than just sending us Americans to the poor house.  Europeans are buying the comparatively inexpensive American goods (like Wills Wing hang gliders) and the airlines (that are always losing money) have realized that they can recover some of those loses by jacking up the freight rates to Europe.  So they have tripled them.

This comes at an inopportune moment as I want to take or ship my glider to Nice, France and to the pre-Worlds.  It appears to be much cheaper to take it with me in a Nene Rotor travel bag, but it is unclear if it will fit short packed on a Canadair Regional Jet 900.  Linda at Wills Wing is checking on that.

I assume that the opposite is also true, that air freight rates going back to the US from Europe are the same or cheaper than before.  We'll see.

Discuss Freight at the Oz Report forum   link»

David Glover's Video from the Santa Cruz Flats Race

People (Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, Arizona)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOWTfTaUh0s

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Air bags for your helmet

An extra cushion for those hard landings

http://blogs.motorbiker.org/blogs.nsf/dx/airbag-motorcycle-helmet.htm

Thanks to Carlos Rizo

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Willie's birthday at the Montessori school

His dad embarrasses him with a clown (Knoxville, TN)

It was fourteen years ago that Willie was in the cradle at the Road house near Dog Mountain in Washington state, as hang glider pilots had dinner after a day of flying.

As Willie knows, his dad, Bob Reich, has a twisted sense of humor, that had him send a clown to Willie's school for Willie's birthday.  The clown frighten some kids and made one cry (this is an all ages class).  But Bob heard that he thought that it was great.

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