Welcome

Hi, this is where I store my various articles that I have written for the NZ Hang Gliding and Paragliding magazine. Unfortunately I had a fatal hard drive crash and lost all my pre-2010 photos, so the earlier stories are unfortunately lacking illustration. If you have any approrpriate photos you would like to donate, please send them to me at nzhgpa.admins@clear.net.nz

To read a story click on the label on the right.

Year 1 Hang Gliding

A year ago I embarked on learning to hang glide with Chris “Cowboy” Shaw, under the expert (if remote) guidance of Matt Barlow. He was so handsome; hair neatly parted, shorts pulled up to regulation height. I won’t bore you with the real early days, as the only thing interesting about those lessons was that we were joined by two saucy lesbians. For some reason they seemed to get the lion’s share of Matt’s attention. The order of the day was often “You boys do some glides down here, be safe, I’m taking the girls for a tandem experience.”

Anyway, after a few lessons Matt disappeared overseas. Our training began in earnest from that moment. Chris was so excited he immediately ordered a brand new Fun 190 skyfloater which arrived promptly 5 months later. Luckily I procured an ancient Buzz 154 to prevent Chris from spontaneously combusting with frustration. The vehicle was my old Mitsubishi L300 van (“Elle”). Paul Newton’s hill was the centre of the universe every weekend after that. The Buzz was thrown directly onto Elle’s roof at dawn and we would charge off down the driveway four or five hours later, that being, as I am sure you all know, about the minimum amount of time it takes to assuage a typical wife‘s feelings of abandonment. We soon discovered that a ridiculously high launch speed with total commitment is the only way to get a 2WD van round some of Paul’s steeper corners as we revved our way wildly up that track eight times a day. Yes, 4 high flights each, taking turns with the Buzz while the other one drove.

Those were heady days. We made sure we were extra conservative, well, compared to Icarus anyway. To avoid any confusion we had one simple flight plan that had to be strictly adhered to: Take off, fly around randomly, land in whatever paddock you end up at. Points were awarded for extra skills exhibited like remembering to remove your legs from the pod before flaring, and pinpoint landings directly on top of fences. Matt eventually returned weeks later and caught us red-handed on top of Paul Newton’s knob. It was a steady northwester and we were soaring happily, me on the Buzz and Chris on what he had dubbed the “Gaybloater” which had finally arrived. Matt’s bronzed, chiselled frame appeared below us on launch. I’m not sure if he was waving cheerily or shaking his fist, but as usual, we ignored him. We had advanced so far from when he had last seen us that he kind of had to “let us go”. There was a certain sadness I detected that day, as he realized he would get no more money out of us. Spring arrived early (July), and with the appearance of decent thermals, merely flying for five minutes and landing was deemed a failure. Not like the early days where anything over a minute in the air was cause to whoop with triumph before extensive video footage analysis and highly technical debriefings, usually along the lines of, “Did you see me work the lift band?” “No.” Chris definitely took the honours for the first real thermal flight. It was off my newly discovered site, Mt Duncan, and Chris was having his first flight there. He casually took off in the Gaybloater and drifted a few kms back in a thermal until he was a barely visible speck somewhere high above Picton. I was thinking, “Are you supposed to do that?”, wondering if he would be blown out to sea to land somewhere around Tahiti. But no, he easily flew back upwind to the take-off to yell some sort of abuse at me before carrying on exploring the whole Linkwater area from phenomenal height, seemingly able to corkscrew back up to cloud base at will whenever he lost significant height. Just to polish it off he then flew 6km upwind and landed beside my house. Not that impressive except for the fact he only had about 2 hours airtime before that flight.

That day marked the beginning of my “Anvil” period, that being the name Chris kindly gave me to reflect my gliding abilities. It lasted a few months, and I spent a lot of time in landing paddocks watching the “Lord of the Skies” soaring effortlessly, then stoically enduring lots of “helpful feedback” and tips about how to fly better. It would have been enough to break me but the Anvil period abruptly stopped one fateful day; We swapped gliders, (a gesture by Chris to, ostensibly, give me a chance at a decent flight, but more likely an attempt to crush me for once and for all. The result, he lost height and destroyed the Buzz in a scrubby gully, while I hooked my first ever thermal for a height gain of a few thousand feet. Aaaah, redemption is so sweet… As it happened, most of the damage to the Buzz was from the post landing “debrief” Chris indulged in. He had to lend me the Gaybloater until the Buzz was fixed, and my flying successes went through the roof, while he battled away on first a Desire (“Disaster”), then a Rage (No nickname required) and now a K1 (Gay1). His season since that day is best illustrated by what has become his traditional ritual upon landing which I have viewed many times from the air: You see the wing come to a halt and two seconds later a red helmet proceeds (via drop kick impulsion) 20 to 30 metres through the air, closely followed by a pilot sprinting after it for a second kick. On such occasions I felt it was only polite to soar another hour or so to let him discover how I felt all those times.

Post-Anvil, the flying since last September has been stunning for me. Living right here in Nirvana I have managed sixty odd flights and fifty hours airtime in the Fun 190. I am constantly surprised how flights turn out totally different than you expect them to. One cloudless day that looked fairly ho-hum took me from Mt Duncan 38km over three mountain peaks and the Wairau river to land just past the Waihopai Spy station. I was wearing one cotton sweatshirt that day and my harness wasn’t zipping up properly. I swear I was shivering so violently up at 6500ftthat my whole glider was actually flapping its wings. Another memory of that flight and many others is the wonder of the “low save“. Every thermal I’ve ever found seems miraculous to me in its ability to prolong my flight. But the sheer joy of hearing that vario unexpectedly start chirping when you are low enough to see the whites of the sheep’s eyes is hard to compare with anything else. But I’ll try; It’s a bit like being bowled in cricket only to hear a late “no ball” call. Or whacking a golf ball out of bounds and having it bounce back in off a power pole. Or waking up with the terror of remembering you had pashed-up Chris Shaw’s wife the night before then being relieved to find out she was too drunk to remember anything.

It hasn’t all been beer and skittles though. I had one terrifying moment at Magic Mountain during the XC Classic. I was just standing there minding my own business, watching a few take offs when suddenly before me a hideous apparition manifested itself in front of me. An ancient decomposing corpse had some how risen and was walking around mumbling incoherently. The most frightening thing about this creature was its dress sense. It was walking around in, how would I describe it, jacketless sleeves, made of faded fluorescent pink nylon. I ran terrified to Matt Barlow for protection. He stroked my hair in a soothing manner and said, “Relax Ben, that thing always turns up here, we call him: ‘Old John O’Neill’.”

Quote of the year happened at this same event. A cute Dutch teenage cycle tourist ended up camping beside us, and Guy Williams took it upon himself to show her some real Kiwi hospitality. One morning around the coffee stove he said to her, “If you come with me in my truck today, I’ll take you right up the Ahuriri.” Chris and I collapsed to the ground, paralytic with joy at this pearler. It was quite difficult trying to explain to this poor, innocent, good Christian girl why we were laughing, without actually going into biological details.

The second quote of the year was in a Linkwater landing paddock. I was de-rigging and this guy bikes up and says (and I swear I am not making this up), “Hang gliding eh? I prefer doing paragliding myself.” After a pregnant pause he then said, “So have you just landed or are you just about to take off?” Okaaaaaay…

Another great memory of that Omarama trip is being offered, after an earlier bombout, a second-chance flight by Tom Knewstubb and Hagen. Hagen’s son Jonas was in the van, he looked about nine, and I assumed he was tagging along to watch. Couldn’t believe my eyes when he starts rigging up a glider. It was extremely cool to see him take off and to follow behind him. Even cooler when he found a large area of lift where there shouldn’t have been any. I cruised that mother till sunset, thinking I was extremely skilled until the time came to descend: I couldn’t get down! I was throwing in tight slipping death spirals with one leg dangling out for drag, and the vario was still saying “up”. I had to fly about 500m away from the landing field to get out of the lift. As far as I could tell it was caused by two opposing winds colliding and going upwards. Sure enough, my eventual landing spot had wind 180° different from the windsock where I wanted to land. But the flight wasn’t the coolest thing about that night. No, it was in fact something far more special that I witnessed that night which will remain with me forever. While we were driving up Magic in the back of the van, Tom produced a sacred relic from under the seat, a treasure so holy that we all fell silent in reverence. It was a sort of tweed covered suitcase, custom made to fit two old style flagons of beer and six matching glass tumblers. Those Japanese tea ceremony masters have nothing on Tom when it come to creating a spiritually overwhelming experience. Each glass was lovingly delivered from its felt lined womb, polished on Tom’s Swandri, and held for filling by his highly trained assistant. Waves of nostalgia poured through me when I saw Tom tilt the glass to stop the head getting too big, just like Dad did in the old days. Thank you Tom for letting me witness such a moving event. You are indeed the Great Man.

As far as I can tell, there is only one thing wrong with this sport(and I think you all know what I

am going to say), where are all the chicks? Why do those paragliding guys get them all? It’s not as if we aren’t a fabulous looking bunch of studs! And virile! Look at John O’Neill, he’s still semi- erect and he’s dead! OK, I will admit that Tish is punching above her weight to raise the babe factor in our sport but she’s still only human. Maybe there are some in the North Island or something but I’ve never seen them. Even those saucy lesbians we learnt with disappeared shortly after Matt gave them their oral exam. But anyway, roll on Spring. Chris Shaw now lives next door after selling his vineyard for the sole purpose of catching up with the ‘Anvil’s’ airtime. I have bought a sleek racing glider for $200 with which I will exploit all that abundant Marlborough lift to explore distant mountains and valleys. I will also be developing some more take-offs right beside my house. I mean Mt Duncan is fabulous (NZ XC record) but for God’s sake it’s eight minutes drive away!

2011 New Zealand Hang Gliding Nationals Wanaka

Hang Gliding Nationals Wanaka 2011

By Ben McAlpine

Matt Barlow volunteered to organise this event because nobody else would. This meant it was “strictly no frills”. All you got was a superbly organised competition, using spectacular launch sites in a stunning flying location with daily cash prizes and a free BBQ. I’m not sure how this differed from past events I have attended apart from the fact the entry fee was only $50 as opposed to amounts that definitely need hiding from my chief financial officer (You paid HOW MUCH to have 2 bombouts and a #$%@ sausage in bread!!!??!!) .

I couldn’t attend the whole event but the chance to fly in such a beautiful place was too good to pass up. Not only that, the fact there would be literally hundreds (OK…35) of other gliders all screaming around the same piece of sky would be something pretty novel for me. Here in Marlborough the closest we get to flying in a gaggle is when we fly over the local rubbish dump and scare up a couple of mangy seagulls.

Day 0 Saturday

A practise day that was meant to be turned into a competition day but a couple of pilots didn’t get the email explaining this, so it remained a practise day. A bit of a shame because it saw many pilots complete over 40km of a challenging task in great conditions. Local PG legend Grant Middendorf was good to have in the air showing local hotspots of lift but he embarrassed a few HG losers here and there. Dave Austin was first into goal, Bill Degen trundled in after 4 hours in the air. It all counted for nothing though.

DAY 1 Sunday. Long Gully launch

A beautiful sunny day, most competitors got up and away from launch, and the first turnpoint was on the other side of the lake. The task committee probably thought this would make a challenging crossing. Matt Barlow was probably hoping a few would perish in the water to make his BBQ budget get close to balancing. In the end, pilots reported getting lift over the lake. Yes, that’s right. The elusive lake thermals were there in abundance. For those more sensible pilots, the option of flying over the Hawea village flatlands at the end of the lake proved just as fruitful, with huge gentle thermals available at regular intervals to top up the fuel tank with gravitational potential energy (that’s height for those of you from Dunedin). I wasn’t there myself, but apparently this great flying day whetted the appetites of all pilots… if this was Wanaka flying then a great week was surely to eventuate.

DAY 2 Monday. Breast Hill launch

The drive to launch above Lake Hawea was spectacular, and seeing the deep south laid out in front of us like a ridiculously beautiful photoshopped postcard made the whole trip worthwhile. I was committed to activating my new flying strategy, this being essentially: Launch late. My theory is it’s more fun sitting around on launch for an extra hour than it is to sit fuming in a bombout paddock for an hour, waiting for a ride. This theory is easier said than done though: if I see a single pilot get up and away I am physically unable to not launch. So these days I need to back up my intentions with a supplementary strategy: BEN: DO NOT RIG YOUR GLIDER. STEP AWAY FROM THE GLIDER! So I leave it packed up, at least 30m from launch so I’m not tempted. So anyway, Reece Fisher played his customary role of launching first of everyone (apart from an inspiring gentlemen of advancing years who was thrown off the hill by his instructor on a skyfloater.) and struggled to maintain any height. As always though, after a bit of sniffing around he began gracefully and profitably spiralling his state-of-the-art Moyes Xtralite in a sizeable thermal until he was a tiny but triumphant speck in the heavens. You could almost read the minds of every observer changing from “Nup, she’s dead mate” to “Holy crap, it’s practically the Owens Valley out there! Launch immediately!” Cris Lawry put his money where his mouth was, took off and spent half an hour looking for Reece’s thermal. His flight never really got going, and an hour or 2 later he was on the deck about 10km from launch. But gradually everyone bit the bullet… for every pilot that got up there was one that didn’t. I took off about 5^th to last once I was sure there would be vehicles nearly at the bombout paddock. I had carefully observed the first 30 pilots and devised a cunning plan to maximise my chances. The plan was… fly around and hope I got lucky. As it happened, I just started rising the second I took off and never stopped until I got about 1000 feet above launch. It was a novel feeling for me to be near the top of the stack watching everyone else struggle.

It turned out I could never burst through the 6500 feet barrier, although I tried over about four different peaks in ten different thermals for an hour and a half. Each time I got to that height I was tumbled around in turbulence and sort of lost the strong lift. Talking to the good pilots later, many of them got to 8500feet that day, but only occasionally. A lot of pilots also hit the 6500ft wall like me. I figured in hindsight I was hitting an inversion layer that was slowing/halting most of the thermals. I vowed that in the future I would hang in there and try and burst through in a strong thermal no matter how long it took.

The day was not nearly as flyable as it was beautiful. Nobody made goal. Matt Barlow and Ian Clark did best, and I was thrilled to hear 3^rd place was snaffled by that delightfully jovial journeyman from the Wairarapa, Grant Tatham. Bill Degen was an ever-present malevolent menace. Not that many guys got over the 10km Hawea flats to Mt Maude. Those who did had to try and cruise the mountain range toward the Makarora turnpoint, but the lift was a bit scarce, and the low ceiling (for most of the thermals) meant some crossings were intimidating to say the least. Matt Barlow attempted one more on faith than science, and ended up landing fly-on-the-wall at a place miles from any road on the eastern shores of Wanaka. He cheerfully ”visited” us at our camp late that night “just wanting to hang out with the boys and hear how your flights went”. My antennae were twitching, sensing danger… I immediately began faking advanced drunkenness (not a hard act to pull off flawlessly at the time) in an innate self-preservation reflex. As Matt’s predicament became clearer, the fireside emptied instantly of all but the most newbie pilots. Shortly afterwards one of these poor defenceless weaklings was lead away (smiling gormlessly) for a 6 hour retrieval mission by torchlight.

DAY 3 Tuesday

Wind and rain made their customary appearance at any serious flying comp. However, Cris and Tish Lawry dragged a bunch of pilots to the shoreline of Lake Hawea to “Dune Goon” over a steep grassy bank. Soaring was compulsory as there was no landing, what with the tide being in. But there were reports of one pilot gaining his “Water Wings”. Well done that man….I spent the day fruitlessly driving 300km looking for a windsurfing spot at various Southern Lakes. It was interesting how such a windy, unhangglideable day could be almost calm at ground level. Lake Ruataniwha was dead clam, while overhead was row upon row of lenticular clouds. As it happened, it was 15-20 knots on the shore of lake Hawea where the goon gang was flying… perfect windsurfing conditions 10 minutes drive from camp. I think I deserved the Most Impressive Carbon Footprint award for the day…

Day 4 Wednesday Grandview Launch

This was the epic day, the one that sorted the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, and from Tish. An 86km task was set from Lake Hawea, down towards Tarras, then back north over the Lindis Pass to Omarama. “Yes!”, I thought… these poor fools have unwittingly played right into my hands. I know most of that terrain like the back of my hand, I’ve flown it more times than you could count (as long as you only have three fingers). So yes, I was quietly confident of taking first place that day. I was even more confident when I came up with a stunning pre-emptive strike plan. I noticed a rather large mountain above launch, so proceeded to carry my glider to the top. The other so-called competitors were shaking their head with derision… But I was staunch: “huh, who’ll be laughing when I’m above you for 30 seconds longer than normal? …so, IN YOUR FACE!, rest of the field…” Surprisingly, Gavin Tweedie actually liked my plan and carried his glider halfway up. He is not very bright that one, not realising I was actually just desperately trying to find a way to delay rigging so I would avoid taking off early. He further promoted his chances at achieving a Darwin award by launching in a tail wind and slicing his entire face off with a nose wire after tripping up at terminal running velocity. (It was stirring stuff indeed to see him back on launch the next day looking more like an Egyptian mummy than an Ice cool aerial warrior.)

The launch sequence settled into a well formed pattern. If a pilot got up, wave upon wave would follow until one started scratching, then a ten minute hiatus would occur until someone else could no longer resist the call to aviate. It reminded me of watching penguins trying to avoid jumping first into leopard seal infested water until they see one survive, then there is a mad rush of launching until a flurry of blood, teeth and whitewater signals that launching right now is sub-optimal.

My plan to launch late gave me time to see the most reliable spots for lift, and one spot stood out like dog’s balls. Strangely enough, my idiotic higher launch site actually paid off, as I alone could glide directly to that spot (let’s call it “Dog’s balls knob”) above a sharp ridge 500m away, whereas everyone else needed some form of lift to get there. Quite a few pilots thus met their doom. I just flew there and Bang, away we go! For the second day in a row I had the strange experience of seeing other gliders below me, scurrying to get under my thermal.

The first turnpoint was sort of out-and-return to Breast Hill along a series of craggy Barren peaks. This was really cool because you saw all the early guys come back past you, and it felt really “populated” and busy. Much better than flying along with only one or 2 gliders in range. Not to mention the great thermal marking for everyone. I used the get-high-stay-high method and found it fairly non-problematic. I just stayed above the peaks and every second one produced big strong thermals. Others chose the I-can’t-be-bothered-taking-this-thermal-all-the-way-to-the-top-I’ll-just-head-to-the-next-one-from-here method. It was so relaxing seeing them far below scratching away in some God-forsaken little gullies. I must admit though, some of those who used the second method made ground a lot faster than me. I got a bit impatient just before getting back to takeoff and ended up below a ridge in strange territory. When I found a thermal to save me I vowed to stay high from then on. I took the thermal to 7000 ft (like every other thermal that day) and was pleased it was a strong one. I realised then that 1 or 2 other pilots had clearly been getting way higher than my 7000ft, and I remembered my inversion vows. So I hung in there when it got rough at 7000 and to my delight I surged into another smooth zone that took me to over 9000ft. I was all alone, the other gliders were pathetic dots below. I even saw a tiny helicopter scooting along miles below me. I was so high I did a direct glide to Long Gully, the next turnpoint about 15km away. There was a gorgeous dark-based puffy cloud over the hill, the best cloud of the day by a mile. It was my ticket to victory. It looked so awesome I ignored a couple of perfectly good thermals on my way. I got to the cloud and prepared myself for some serious g-forces, and inserted my earplugs to protect me from the extreme beeping my vario was about to make. 10 minutes later I was feeling foolish, packing my glider up by the road. The cloud had been awesome, just not when I got there. It had “decayed” as they say. Its own huge shadow meant it was going to be a long time before it “recayed” too I think. I explored that whole huge cloud with nary a beep.

7 Pilots made goal, awesome for such a long (for NZ) task. Niall Mueller smoked the field to get in 30 minutes ahead of second place (Ian Clark), in about 2 hours 20. It took me about 2 and a half to cover my 30km or so. So Niall covered ground at about 40km an hour compared to my 15km/h. Aaah… now I see what separates the men from the boys….

Day 5 Thursday Blown out.

Halfway up to Grandview Launch the “Safety Committee” met and decided the forecast and current upper windspeeds were too much and called off the day. Cris Lawry and Steve Bankier hastily convened a “Danger Committee” and launched into super smooth lift. The flight was going nicely until Cris inadvertently discovered the evil twin of wave lift: wave sink, which sucked him quickly into that most diabolical foe: wave rotor. He bolted towards the flats from above Grandview peak but was a tad disappointed to find his glide ratio had suddenly become 1:1. Steve Bankier described seeing radical wingovers all the way down. We retrieved him looking slightly worse for wear in a tiny 20m paddock up a God forsaken valley. The fact that he completely missed a 4 acre grass airstrip that he was aiming for (and flew over) gives us some idea of the roughness of the air as he set up his landing approach. Landing approach is probably too strong a term… let’s just say he arrived.

Day 6 Friday Blown/Rained out.

Day 7 Saturday Long Gully launch

The Task Committee were desperate to get a valid task to validate the whole comp. they decided on a short course of just over 20km, which was described by one pilot as “a bit gay”. Matt Barlow was one of many who could still take the comp with a strong performance and he described his day for me: “I saw Steve Bankier and Rod Stuart climb out so I launched to try and get a jump on the field. Ian Clark hung back and watched as I struggled for ages. When I finally latched onto a decent thermal Ian launched and dropped straight into it… good tactics by him. More annoyingly though, he climbed straight through me. To really top it off he started drifting back with it and when I tried to follow I dropped out the back of the thermal and found myself flying back upwind to start again scratching at launch. All was not lost though, I could use a later start gate and leave higher than Ian did hopefully. In the end I got hammered by some rough air, and spent so much height avoiding it I ended up too low to hook a decent thermal and bombed out. The day was really weak, and it was a great effort by Ian to win that task and he showed he deserved to win the comp.”

All in all it was a great comp. Another good task would have been nice… but hey. Big ups to the intermediate pilots who joined in with their own class. Max Gebhardt was one of these who punched above his weight by coming 10^th ahead of some vary experienced pilots. Local pilot and ex-paragliding champ Angus Tapper was a constant threat to Ian too, in spite of being on a kingposted U2 glider. Thanks to all the dedicated drivers and to the long suffering WAGs. (That’s not you by the way Jude Tarr, you are something far more lowly: a WAPG …but it was very nice to have you there regardless of the way you polluted the pristine skyscape with that silly plastic bag you dangled under).

If you’re thinking of attending next year I highly recommend it, even if you are of moderate skills. Even the camping by the river with likeminded nutters for a week makes for a memorable holiday. But if the weather means you score a few epic aerial battles, it’ll be the greatest week of your life, I promise.

Final Top Ten Results after 4 tasks:

1 Ian Clark M 895 712 898 383 2888
2 Angus Tapper M 733 768 631 344 2476
3 Matt Barlow M 928 715 618 141 2402
4 Grant Tatham M 827 684 633 141 2285
5 Bill Degen M 627 603 595 358 2183
6 Geoff Christophers M 235 666 852 212 1965
7 Niall Mueller M 640 1000 278 1918 (Missed first task)
8 Gavin Tweedie M 519 647 336 141 1643
9 Dave Austin M 400 369 513 223 1505
10 Max Gebhardt M 524 360 245 141 1270 (Intermediate)

Don't mix the bloods

In my year and a half of flying, one curious fact is how rarely I have flown with or talked to paraglider pilots. They just seem to avoid us around here for some reason. The first time was a full year into my hang gliding career, at the Marlborough Hang Gliding Nationals. There was this laid back dude that got a lift up the hill one day. I thought he was just some guy coming up for a look. But no, he was an infiltrator from the dark side. The thing that alerted me to the fact that we would be sharing airspace with a paraglider was when I noticed Shane McKay fixing razor blades to his leading edge. He explained it was a traditional custom amongst hang glider pilots and suggested I do the same. He also briefed me on the alternative version of the Rules of the Air that come into effect when paragliders are around. It was pretty much assumed we would be dining on this interloper's chai-infused flesh that night at the BBQ, but in the end, the guy proved remarkably adept at surviving the angry gaggle, mainly because he seemed to outclimb everyone. The closest he came to a premature demise was when he foolishly barged into a tiny wee thermal that Chris Shaw was desperately trying to stay in at the same time. Chris stupidly put safety first on this occasion and exited to the bombout paddock, but the debrief wasn’t pretty. I believe the term Fatwah would not be improper to describe his resolution that night.

So you can imagine my surprise when Shane said the Nelson paragliding community had invited three of us to join their league for a long weekend at the Nelson Lakes. Were they mad? Didn’t they know hang gliders and paragliders hated each other? Obviously not. It sounded like an intriguing opportunity to see this species up close, so I shot down to Mitre 10 and bought a fifty-pack of razor blades, chucked the glider on the car and headed down early Saturday morning.

I shuffled into the briefing room behind Shane who had apparently survived close contact with such people on previous occasions. I decided to take my cues off him rather than make any horrendous gaffes. Shane’s first gesture of goodwill upon entering the room was to enquire as to the whereabouts of the toilet, which he utilised to stunning effect. The only person I recognized in the room was Tim Percival. Actually it was his Peter Ellis glasses I recognised, to tell the truth. The image of his face grinning through those glasses was burned into my brain from the many times I had read his article about his awesome flight from the Nelson Lakes through to Lewis Pass or somewhere like that. As I introduced myself to him I realised I had subconsciously bestowed on him all my other preconceived notions of Peter Ellis. He may have wondered why I was backing up to the wall and why my hand was trembling and sweating as I shook his. I soon snapped out of it though, and Tim proved himself instantly to be very pleasant guy, full of good stories, and very open about sharing his vast flying knowledge and skills. In a nutshell he was a brilliant, normal human being. What were the odds of that? Amazing. Waaaaait a miiinute… maybe he was just acting normal to try and lure me away from the One True Sport. Yes, that must have been it. I did my best to avoid him from then on in case I was weakened by his smoothly seductive lines and pert little bottom. I ran back to Shane, who was grunting and poking at someone’s neatly glad-wrapped sandwiches. Aaaaah, someone I could trust…

It turned out that every one of these paraglider pilots seemed to be in cahoots with Tim Percival’s devious plan. Yes, they were all acting like perfectly nice, reasonably sane people, and if I wasn’t so onto it I could easily have been lost to the Dark Side. There were a few glaring flaws in their act though. For instance, every so often one of them would speak openly and honestly about their feelings. And no one would laugh at them. What’s that all about? Also, at one point a distinctly hot female walked into the gas station while we were there, and not one of the males made a boorish comment or started humping the biscuit stand. Apart from Shane, that is. And the biggest giveaway of all: at the end of the first days flying it was decided we should all to the lake for a swim and a nice cold, wait for it… Sauvignon Blanc!!! Out Satan, OUT!!! I say!

Under the inviolable edicts passed down to us by the Dunedin Flying Club we all know you drink beer after flying, or at least something undeniably manly. So it was inevitable things would get ugly, and they did. Clint Fraser produced a huge plastic flagon of industrial strength home brew out of the Holden and with Shane’s help proceeded to enthusiastically uphold all decent standards of post-flight protocol.

Shane and Clint discussing strategy

It was a brave and determined effort, but I was beginning to fear it was all for nothing as the paragliders started edging nervously away to their own cars, laughing weakly and averting their eyes. I could sense that as a pack they were about to scatter into the forest. But at the last minute one of them weakened. Fittingly, he was from neutral Switzerland. Recognising the obscenity of his own group’s conduct, he boldly walked up to Clint and asked for a swig of beer. It was emotional for me to watch, I must admit. The enormity of the moment was, just maybe, matched by the first time Diane Fossey managed to touch a wild gorilla (and the parallels do not escape me, rest assured), but I doubt it. I coughed in a manly manner to disguise my trembling bottom lip, and wiped the moisture from my eye under the pretence of scratching a sandfly bite. The beauty of this genuine, deep attempt at inter-species contact was somewhat lessened when this brave fellow spat the entire swig of beer all over Clint’s feet, exclaiming “faaaaarrk, zees stuff taste like sheeeeet!”

This time I was one of the ones shuffling nervously away. If aliens ever do land on earth I hope that guy doesn’t get the job of meet and greet. I saw the telltale glint of highly polished steel as Clint began to open a pack of razor blades, with a chilling little smile on his lips, and a confused, slightly sad look in his eyes. I could see the cogs turning in the paraglider’s tiny little mind as firstly he realised his actions were sub-optimal in a diplomatic sense, and then that he would have to atone for this error in the next ten seconds or be subjected to a bit of amateur vasectomising by Clint. There didn’t seem any hope of rescuing the situation, but I had underestimated our Swiss friend’s genius. He cracked the only possible solution within half a second, and implemented it to stunning effect. Yes, he ran to his van and came back with a bottle of fifteen year old single malt whiskey, took the top off and (please, do not try this at home) offered Clint a drink. Unbelievable I know. He obviously did not know who he was dealing with.

The results were too horrible to ethically describe in print, but the whiskey was fatally depleted within a short time. Shane was ever loyal, right by Clint’s side to helpfully take this holy communion and heal the rift. The Swiss guy was deliriously happy with his narrow escape and eagerly celebrated with a few dangerously deep pulls from the bottle when he could prise it from Clint’s vice-like grip. As the three of them began to behave more and more laddishly, the savvy-sipping fraternity began to compensate in the opposite direction. They started picking up rubbish, and talking about who was going to be the designated driver for the 200m trip along the beach to the campsite. I think I even saw one guy braiding another man’s hair. (I told you it was too horrible to describe in print.)

I don’t know where Shane and Clint slept that night, and I suspect they don’t either. But the Swiss guy did appear groggily from a beat up van at my campsite next morning. I was, at the time, in a high state of excitement, as I was about to ride one the paraglider’s mountain bikes (why are their cars always festooned with these dreadful contraptions?) to town for a latte or three. Before I could mount up though, the Swiss guy very generously offered me a coffee from his van. Why not, I thought. He’s Swiss, he’s probably got one of those stovetop espresso percolators. I could do with a shot of good black oil.

I began to regret accepting his offer when he opened the side door of his van. A dubious looking pair of undies was lying on an unwashed weetbix bowl. There was clutter and junk all over the place, too much horror to mention in this short space, but it was meaningless anyway, because in less than one nano second my eyes had fixated on a truly hideous sight: a torn open packet of, (and I can barely bring myself to write it) Greggs… Red… Ribbon… Roast… Surely not!

I was paralysed with grief, I couldn’t move my eyes from this ghastly sight, the more so because I knew what was about to unfold. My terror redoubled with his casually mentioned words, “You don’t mind milk powder do you?” No words in the English language could fully do justice to my honest answer to that question, and anyway, I couldn’t physically move my mouth to answer, as it was firmly locked in a deathly rictus. Stuck in a sort of silly grin, juxtaposed with my bulging, terrified eyes. If I thought things couldn‘t get any worse I was sorely mistaken.

It turned out the water was only lukewarm which meant the milk powder congealed in stinky lumps around the rim. I am finding it altogether too painful to recall anything more about this coffee. And my shame at letting it pass my lips will haunt me for the rest of my life. I have, however, included a photo to give you some idea of the culinary atrocity that man committed that day. Click on it for an extreme close-up if you dare. It was more than just a bad coffee too, because it shook me so badly I didn’t listen properly on the phone to Shane’s directions to the bottom of Mt Blowhard, and after waiting for an hour and a half at the wrong place I forlornly drove home to mow the lawns while everyone else was flying up to 70kms over majestic alpine wilderness on a day so clear you could see Mt Cook.

So my conclusion is yes, paragliders are evil bastards. The war is far from over. So be vigilant, my fellow stiffies, for the enemy is fiendishly clever and all around us. They speak in tongues, usually English Lake District tongues for some reason. I survived an assassination attempt (thanks be to God for mysuper sensitive gag-reflex) but I know I won‘t be so lucky next time. I have looked the devil in the eye and it is not something I want to ever do again. If you ever find yourself in my predicament do not, I repeat do not, ever get separated from Shane or Clint, or someone similarly battle hardened who can protect you in these truly dark days.

Charlies Hangels

In possibly the worst-named article of all time, Ben McAlpine finds himself star struck by a new breed of hang glider pilots.

The first thing I noticed about Charlotte (AKA Charlie) were her huge, impossibly beautiful, dark brown eyes. They were like bottomless pools of… brown stuff, that I felt inexorably drawn into and where I would happily drown. As I stared longingly into them, my heart began palpitating as she held my gaze unwaveringly. She was penetrating my very soul with a look of uncontrollable desire that couldn’t be mistaken. I arranged my lips to be attractively pouted and constructed my best “come-hither” eyebrow pose. Then to my horror I realised she was actually looking right past me at a little cumulus cloud budding out of the blue over Magic Mountain. She hadn’t noticed me at all… in a nanosecond my face went from being Antonio Banderas in Zorro to Ricky Gervais in The Office. I shuffled off and beat up a young pilot for not being able to produce his NZHGPA membership card on demand, and felt a lot better…

In the Deep South there is a small revolution happening in the sport of hang gliding. In a sport dominated by men “of a certain age”, one club has produced a new crop of pilots that are not only young, but predominantly female. This is down to 3 years of dedication of two Dunedin instructors (Hagen Bruggermann and Lisa Bradley) spending huge amounts of time and energy (and a fair bit of their own money) to get these youngsters airworthy. After some intense negotiations I managed to secure an interview with these fledglings to see what made them break the mould so radically. Girls their age should be hanging at the mall and gossiping evilly about their peers rather than heaving hang gliders up training slopes and making life-or death decisions on the wing…

Technical note: As you all know, young females are incapable of comprehendible vocal communication and these ones demanded to be interviewed by text instead… As I am obviously too old to be able to text fast enough to hold their attention, a compromise was reached and the interviews were completed in Facebook chatrooms.

Marlina as a 13 year old about to launch

Marlina age 15

(Marlina is the little sister of Jonas our 17 year old prodigy who took second at last year’s HG nats and has been tearing up the men’s field in Australia under the tutelage of world number 2 Johnny Durand.)

BM: Thanks for the interview, I’ve never met you in person, but you can see from my profile photo I’m pretty cool…

Ben's Facebook profile photo

ML: W8eva

BM: Ok, moving right along… so what age did you first fly a hang glider?

ML: 13

BM: That is actually amazing. Your parents must have been very proud of you.

ML: w8eva

BM: Do you ever communicate in complete sentences?

ML: ?

BM: Have you ever got to cloudbase? If so, where was it and were you scared?

ML: no

BM: I can see I’m keeping you from watching something on TV aren’t I…

ML: L8ta

BM: Thanks alot Marlina, you’re my hero. But you might want to take some PR lessons if you ever get famous… just a suggestion.

“Kelly"

Kelly age 20

BM: I met you at Omarama but I must confess I don’t know your last name

K: …let’s just keep it that way shall we?

BM: When you met me, did you think I looked quite young for a 30 year old?

K: yeah, right…

BM: Do you think Jonas is gorgeous?

K: Why, do you?

BM: This interview is not about me, but now you ask, I suppose he does have a certain unspoilt choirboy sort of appeal…

K: You’re kind of freaking me out…

BM: Sorry about that… where were we? May I say I am extremely impressed you have got through the training phase of hang gliding. Was it tough?

K: You mean because I’m a girl?

BM: ummm… yes, I suppose I do…

K: You know they actually have smaller gliders for smaller people? So no Ben, I didn’t find it as tough as if I was, say, a middle aged man…

BM: Ouch baby!

K: Don’t call me baby.

BM: … sorry about that. I was trying to be hip to the groove…

K: ???

BM: Well, I hope you keep flying hang gliders. If we ever meet again, please believe me when I tell you I am actually extremely cool. We could hang out and everything…

K: I don’t think so.

Charlotte pretending to check her glider

Charlotte age 21

BM: I met you and Kelly at Omarama, and may I say you two are the most glamorous thing to happen in Hang Gliding since John O’Neill got a new pair of polyester slacks.

CM: Well thank you Ben… I guess that’s a compliment.

Charlotte and Kelly pretending they aren't posing

BM: You’re much friendlier than those other 2, and you write proper sentences.

CM: Kelly told me you’re a creep.

BM: We got off on the wrong foot. I’m not used to these online chat rooms. I thought you were supposed to flirt...

CM: yes I got that impression…

BM: can I flirt with you?

CM: I don’t think so Ben…

BM: what are you wearing?

CM: GET TO THE POINT!!!

BM: sorry… righto… um, what made you take up Hang Gliding?

CM: This sucks Ben. It was a dumb idea.

BM: Hey, have you finished with that muffin?

CM: Yeah, help yourself.

(With this, we both closed our laptops and continued the interview by normal talking.)

Ok, I admit that maybe I made up one or two tiny details up to now, but from here on you can believe me, this all totally true stuff about Charlotte. I actually did a proper interview, honest. Once Charlotte got used to being in the presence of my overpowering (not in an olfactory sense) masculinity she really opened up and I am ashamed to say she totally “outpassions” me in hang gliding. Here is her story:

Charlotte was a gormless teenager (actually that’s a lie, she was a passionate ballet dancer until she suffered an injury) who saw her two brothers tearing up the local Dunedin hill every weekend with hang gliders on their roof racks. She went along and watched every so often and couldn’t for the life of her understand what the attraction was of “throwing grass around for half an hour and driving home again.” A few years drifted by with her giving little thought to the sport, but found herself stuck in a Dunedin rut (is there ever any other outcome?) and wondering what could give her back the spark she felt was missing. After some elaborate acts of deception to hide the fact from their mother, Charlotte found herself on the road to the big O with her brother Andrew and the usual DFC suspects. Yes, Omarama, here we come. She was not without fear as she set off on this new adventure, but strangely enough the fear was “that she would let her brothers down by trying it and not liking it.” (This same point came up 3 or 4 times in the interview). Omarama turned out to be five days in a row of getting up at 5.30 am to beat the strong winds to do some ground skims and low flights, and on the last day she had a 1500m high flight: “I came home from that trip just absolutely buzzing, grinning from ear to ear. When I came back to work everyone was asking me how I was and I was just saying FAN-TAS-TIC! I’m awesome, how are you? …I was annoyingly happy for quite a while…” One of the unexpected after effects was hours of sleeplessness every night for weeks, caused by being so utterly excited about her flying. (Even now, years after starting, she confesses to losing sleep regularly for the same reason.) She told me, looking back on those early days, it had been a long time since she had felt that amazing joy of having a genuine passion for something. It wasn’t until she started hang gliding she realised that her life had become a ho-hum routine. “I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, but now I have hang gliding, life would suck without it.…”

Charlie launching with a good strong run near Queenstown

At this point the interview takes an ugly turn as I interrogate Charlotte on her hideous, treasonous act of learning to paraglide and achieving her PG2 rating. After bullying her for a few minutes and twisting her mind with leading questions, it turns out she loves hang gliding the most. So there: incontrovertible proof that paragliding is a complete waste of time. (I think I fell asleep at one point but she probably did say lots of nice things about paragliding. But there is no space here to mention them so we’d best move along.)

Has she ever got to cloudbase thermalling? “Yes, but it’s not like I’ve ever got to 10,000ft.” With this I choked on my beer and changed the subject before she found out I haven’t even made it to 9000ft. Has she ever gone cross country? “Yes, but not very successfully.” (thank God, I can still beat someone ….) How does she handle bombing out? “After seeing other pilots whining around the campfire, I made a decision early on not to cry about spilt milk. When I’m down in the bombout paddock I just think: Wow, I just flew off that huge hill and it was really lovely. Guys that land and have a temper tantrum, well, if you’re putting that much pressure on yourself you’re probably not going to enjoy your flying.”

I asked her how do guys handle it, romantically speaking, when they find out she’s a hang glider pilot? Did they feel intimidated and a tad emasculated when they find out she’s doing stuff ten times as brave as what they’ve ever done? “I’ve definitely had some strange reactions… and yes, believe it or not some guys have said exactly that…. townies mainly.”

I asked about the other DFC girls, Kelly and Marlina. (Please note that they were all much younger back then, hence my use of the dodgy term “girls”.) She started gushing, but not in a girly way...she has great memories of the whole gang spending days on the training hills together. (Footage of these heady days can be seen online. Go to YouTube and search: “omarama girls” to find it) I then attempted to delicately ask if it was harder to learn as a female than if she were male. After an appropriate amount of indignant protesting she settled down and gave me an interesting answer: “I had to sort of know myself quite well. There were points when I was learning where you might want to freak out, and subconsciously you kind of know in your head that because you’re a girl it’s almost OK for you to freak out… but I didn’t want to perpetuate any sexist stereotypes. Also, I didn’t want to be just ‘good for a girl’, I wanted to be good, full stop.… I think that girls make good pilots actually.” When pressed on why she thought this, she mentioned the well known (albeit mythical) female prowess in multi-tasking, the possibility that a certain precision is required of your input when you can’t rely on brute strength to fix any errors, and also the fact that female pilots aren’t so macho (funny, that…) means they may be less prone to making silly decisions based on ego rather than facts. I told her to stop dribbling such sissy nonsense.

I suggested to Charlotte that she could easily get in the NZ hang gliding team (with there being only about 5 female pilots active in hang gliding in NZ) if she got good at XC flying. This could give her the chance to compete at the Worlds. She again gushed, this time about the competition scene she witnessed in Aussie this year. “It was so cool being in that scene, with 80 hang gliders rigging up on the hill and everyone pushing themselves to fly further and faster, and everyone was just completely focussed on the flying, above all else. And yeah, I would love to represent NZ one day but that’s a long way off. For now I just want to get good”.

What is she flying these days? “Well, I don’t really want you to print this but I’ve moved on to a Litespeed S.” I again choked on my beer, this time with jealousy. I was also furious I had missed my chance to ask the “hilarious” question about whether she had done any topless hang gliding. Anyway, I duly promised not to print her comments and she opened up about it: “It’s fantastic, it’s really easy to fly, I love it.” Landings? “Well, so far I’ve only landed it into wind, so it’s been really easy. But when the time comes for a nil wind landing, I’ve made a pledge to just go for the big flare. If I f*** it up, so be it, but I don’t want to be a pansy about it.” Why didn’t she want it known she was flying a topless glider? She got a bit squirmy about that, and said she had experienced one or two people suggesting that “girls should stay on a skyfloater”, so she wanted to stay under the radar to avoid hearing such stuff…. Well, that was a bit of a bombshell to end the interview. More tea anyone?

She finished with a heartfelt plea to me to mention the fact that her achievements so far are more of a tribute to her instructors who have gone the extra mile, and wanted to thank them and her fellow trainees for great times so far. Trust a girl to get all soppy like that….

Charlie Hamming it up for another YouTube shoot

Charlie has her hair ruined by a lenticular cloud

Charlie doublng as the DFC hairdresser

Year 2 Hang Gliding

For those of you who remember my last article (imaginatively

entitled “Year 1 Hang Gliding”), seeing this article appear in print

must be an exquisite release of anticipation. Yes, I am back to report

on my second year of flying!

Year one was a fantastic adventure of establishing new sites, breaking personal bests, and fierce competitions with my nemesis, Chris Shaw. (But I don’t need to explain further, do I, what with my last article being indelibly burnt into the brains of every Airporn reader.) Year two promised much. Chris was onto a high performance glider (high performance for the eighties, that is) and I was putting the finishing touches on my skill base to make the transition too. We both had flexible work hours and both lived within a few minutes of some great cross country sites. We had visions of flying every other day, battling intensely for air superiority in our chosen theatre of war, the magnificent mountain ranges between Picton and Hanmer Springs. If I was honestly to further that analogy of a “theatre of war“, the battles that did eventuate were a bit like if the D-Day invasion force forgot to check their oil before departing, left the bung out by mistake, and finally got stranded by the tide to be left high and dry outside a Dover primary school. This was because the weather was nothing like the year before. Every time a delicious high pressure system parked itself over us we ended up with a horrible low layer of cloud that didn’t depart until after lunch, if at all. I would estimate our premium flying days were slashed by about 80%. The year before we were getting an average of 5 or 6 days a week of beautiful sunny thermal conditions. It was relentless to the point of almost wishing for bad weather so you wouldn’t have to fly again. This time around it was so bad that Chris and I resorted to learning to windsurf, as the only time the sun came out was on windy days. There is a saying I heard in America that goes: “If all God gives you is lemons, make lemonade.” That was how we viewed our windsurfing, and to be honest, we had brilliant fun. I can recommend it as a sport to complement flying. The learning curve is pretty easy if you use appropriate, well rigged gear. It is a lot more fun than it looks for some reason. The speeds you can reach are hilarious, and it is all the more fun with the amazing lack of stress that comes from knowing if you stuff it up you don’t die, unlike flying. (Actually you probably can die windsurfing but you‘d have to be a right plonker.)

The big excitement for me last Spring was going from my skyfloater to an Aeros Combat topless glider that Matt Barlow sold me. That sale as an interesting one in regard to market dynamics, with there realistically being only one Combat for sale in NZ my size, and only one buyer, being me. Matt and I had a bit of a Mexican standoff for a while where I played my trump card of buying monopoly versus his trump card of selling monopoly. The outcome proved I was a) desperate to keep up with Chris Shaw in our cross country races, and b) a very inept negotiator. Before I felt safe getting on the Combat I figured I should fly something a bit less wicked, so I bought a 15 year-old “Foil Combat” (they had such cute names back then) from Steve Bankier for the very generous price of $200. Hey, maybe I am a brilliant negotiator. Anyway, I was buggered if I was going to fly a glider that cheap without some definitive proof of aerodynamic soundness, so I bullied my good friend Ben Judge into flying off Mt Duncan on it. The flight was a success with my test pilot declaring it a “beautiful machine to fly“ (idiot!). I embarked thereafter on a strictly controlled acclimatisation process whereby I would patiently put in twenty or thirty hours airtime of conservative flying before getting my skills assessed by a competent professional and then moving onto the topless glider. The programme was going well until on my third flight, when Chris Shaw out-climbed me to an embarrassing degree. I decided to accelerate the acclimat isat ion process, by abandoning it entirely. It was with some trepidation I charged into my first Aeros launch off the Mt Duncan take-off ramp. I kept the bar in for a few seconds to make sure I had plenty of airspeed then eased out. I wasn’t prepared for the lack of bar pressure and as a consequence actually kept the bar a fair way in. My speed built up to an alarming degree until I was doing a fair impression of a World Speed Gliding Champs run, a la John Smith. I was luckily aware of the term “pilot induced oscillation”so had no problem correcting it once it became obvious, but it definitely got the old pulse racing. I had a ridiculously conservative flight plan that day (and for the next 20 flights) so it wasn’t a problem, but I would not recommend getting onto a topless like mine without sound advice on how different it will feel. I’m being serious. I did get a lot of advice from all sorts of people before that flight, but none of them prepared me for the reality. It wasn’t a major problem by any stretch, but it was a complication at a time when it wasn’t welcome. The other major difference in the Aeros was how hard I had to work to correct any turn inadvertently caused by a bit of strong lift or sink on one wingtip. I would be flying along, a wingtip would kick up and then I would kind of lock into a turn for what seemed like ages before I could finally wrestle it back on course. I had made all my early flights miles away from the hillside (see, I can be sensible) so this was never a safety issue. But if I had been hugging the ridge in some of my early flights I may have come perilously close to “unintentional contact” because of this difference to my previous gliders. I believe the technical term is “roll inertia” and it is caused by the amount of weight out towards the wingtips you get with the big heavy carbon cross bar necessary when you don’t have a kingpost. Of course it could be a case of that other technical term: “crap pilot”. These small things aside, I can report great pleasure in my move up to topless technology. Those first few thermals in the Aeros were a revelation. My best attempt to describe the difference is by using kayaking terminology (oh, yes, did I forget to mention I’m an expert paddler, as in, way better than Chris Shaw?); If a thermal is a piece of moving water, the Aeros feels like dipping a beautiful carbon fibre paddle straight into it at speed, every nuance of blade angle instantly transmitted to the hands as a violent bucking energy, whereas the old Fun 190 used to feel like the same manoeuvre but using an old barnacle encrusted bit of four-by-two: you kind of got the vague feeling whether you should push out or in but it didn’t really matter either way. Landing was obviously another source of stress in my accelerated training programme, but it really wasn’t an issue. I’ve had about 40 flights on the Aeros now and even without wheels (which I‘m too tight to buy), I’m still using the same downtubes. That’s even with my patented “truncated” landing approach system; Forget about all those confusing “legs” and all that nonsense about “wind direction” just point at a paddock and if you’re going too fast just have faith there will be another one after it. (All those hours on the skyfloater did get me into the habit of starting to think about my landing approach roughly at the same time my toes were scraping the grass.) In hindsight, my anxiety about landing a topless was akin to that of paraglider pilots who write articles about learning to hang glide: “I was waking up drenched with sweat from nightmares about having to do my first landing on the skyfloater, how would I cope with the huge increase in speed!” ...Really, the whole thing is a bit like Linda Lovelace having nerves before going from holding hands to her first kiss. (An apt analogy when you think about it, because she took it all a bit lightly and ended up well and truly f----ed.) Moving right along… I love my Aeros, and after the first 6 months of flying very conservatively, I am now fully relaxed about going where the day takes me, and taking whatever landing paddock and landing winds I get. This was my mindset when I went to the Omarama Cross Country Classic this year. This is a great event that I had penciled in, nay inked in, since the year before. Sadly Chris Shaw couldn’t make it this year, being a loser and all, but this didn’t stop me. I drove all Sunday night, having to camp on the shores of Lake Pukaki before rising at daybreak to race to base camp at the Ahuriri River. It was a bit of a let down when at 9am I discovered everyone was still asleep in their tents. I had nothing to do so I stole a spoon off Tom Knewstubb. Anyway, eventually we headed up Magic Mountain. I have this wet dream that one day I will fly to Mt Cook, so when Niall Mueller asked me at launch where I thought we should fly, I declared Mt Cook without hesitation. Little did I know that the day turned out to be pretty much the best one in living memory (according to the sailplane pilots the next day), and I would end up in perfect position to give it a crack. Yes, much to my surprise, I ended up above Snowy Top at 9500ft, with an easy glide to the Ohau’s, where it should have bee a doddle to at least the head of Lake Ohau. I could scarcely believe my amazing skill as I headed out on my glide to Ohau Peak, only to get there below ridge height and unable to find usable lift. I think it was another unfortunate case of “crap pilot”. Bugger. I abandoned with plenty of height to make a safe landing approach in the light winds, and picked out a paddock beside what I thought was a well used road. Bugger… it was a private farm track on the farm of a well known hang glider hater. I had to walk about 5km over 35 degree savannah to a real road, and retrieving my glider next morning was a minor miracle of diplomacy and gall. Every day in Omarama was sensational, as in get up from takeoff to vast heights, pick a cloud and fly to it, repeat as necessary. But my best day was my third day. I took off third out of everyone, and right behind me was Chris Lawry. Very quickly he was above me (luck) and I vowed to follow him, come what may. Up into the cloud above takeoff I briefly lost sight of him, only to re-sight him as a distant dot heading toward Lindis Pass. Shit! He doesn’t muck around, so bar in and I pin my ears back to try and keep up. Chris was heading straight for Lindis Pass though, to a bit of a blue hole, which I found puzzling as there was a tempting couple of clouds about 30 degrees to his right. With the words of Dennis Pagen ringing in my ears (“If you get only one thing from this book, make it the importance of flying to clouds“), it was, I believe, my finest hang gliding moment when I chose to ignore one of the best pilots in NZ and choose what I thought was a better route. My heart was sinking 15 minutes later when I was still grovelling unsuccessfully well below the “cloud” I had chosen. Eventually I did get up, and then up to the next one a few kms further, but I was nevertheless grieving the loss of my wind dummy who had completely disappeared. Still, here I was in the middle of nowhere, wisps of cloud scuffing my flight goggles ($2 shop aviators), the odd sailplane scaring the bejesus out of me, another cloud forming within striking distance, who could ask for more on a flying holiday… Until, way below me, grovelling in the tussocks, I see the top sail of the very same Chris Lawry. I utilised my radio to abuse him with various terms such as “Loserrrrrr!” and “Lawry takes it up the...” never mind, turns out my radio wasn‘t actually working. I generously waited around at cloud base so I could show him the way forward. Amazingly, he must have decided he could do better without my guidance, and went his own foolish way. Have you ever had the experience where you’re really “coring it” and someone cruises around you in a much larger circle totally out climbing you? No? Well it happens to me all the time and Chris Lawry did it that day as he rocketed away to Alexandra. The good news was I saw the general direction he headed, which was good, because I had no idea where I was going. As I limped from cloud to cloud, two other pilots passed me, and gave me the next place to head. Then I was on my own again. I had plenty of height over a rounded-off mountain range (I discovered later they are called the Dunstans) and had to choose whether to go to the valley on the left or the right. I was totally lost. I wanted to fly a known route. Racking my brains, digging deep, salvation arrived when the geek within reared his smudged-bespectacled face; I told my GPS “find” “Alexandra”. And Lo! A large arrow appeared on the screen telling me “go right young man“! Emboldened by this success I got really carried away, and started creating routes and waypoints mid flight, measuring distance flown and distance remaining etc. I believe I even measured the total area of our home section in Marlborough while I was at it. I was indeed The Man. Up to this point my tactic had been “fly to clouds”, and every time I got to the furthest cloud a new one would miraculously form a couple of kms further along my flight path. This tactic was proving extremely successful, so like any decent pilot, I abandoned it and flew boldly into the big blue hole above the pastoral flats. It slowly dawned on me, when it was too late to return to my last cloud, that I was an idiot. Hindsight really is crystal clear. Why did I do that! Idiot! If I analyse why, I guess I was sick of seeing other pilots pass me, I was getting impatient with my painstaking eking out of the slowly expanding cloud band, a little bored with the nondescript hills below me, and, stupidly, I was hypnotized by my GPS arrow. Whatever the reasons, lift quickly became a rare commodity and I went into landing mode, trying to eke out my glide to get what seemed like endless miles to the main Lindis Pass highway. Feeling a bit dejected at my stupidity, muttering things like “Please God, just one more thermal“, I was snapped back into full battle mode when out of the blue I got a gut-wrenching, snarling, twisting, leaning-right-over, tight little (OK, enough adjectives) thermal for a low save off a ravine. After a very quick religious conversion I started thanking Jesus for this reprise, and promised I would go to church and that I would never leave a cloud ever again without another one to fly to ahead, and while I was up there I would wave at God himself if I saw him lounging on a cloud, and I would never have lustful thoughts ever again. I think Sweet Jesus must have got suspicious with this last promise, because I got spat out of that thermal very unceremoniously about 15 turns into it and couldn’t find it again for the life of me. I atheistically cruised out to the highway and landed near Tarras, 47km and a new personal best. I then employed the most useful flying innovation ever devised by a member of the Dunedin Flying Club. Yes, the landing beer. There is something disproportionately satisfying about lying there in a strange paddock, exhausted, everything brilliantly quiet from the deafness of a big descent, and reaching into your harness for a luke warm Tasman Bitter. One other truly memorable piece flying to report from Omarama this year was on my last day. People were actually struggling to get up at all, and I got above most of them, but still not away properly. My relative height gave me confidence to explore for better lift towards an overdeveloped Snowy Top, but to my disgust I lost all my height and the hill seemed to be shutting off. I was below take-off height and wondering if I would even reach the bombout paddock. Now, Omarama is supposed to be famous for its grunty thermals, and yes, I was impressed, but in eight days flying over two trips, nothing I had experienced up to that moment had been any gruntier than our run-of-the-mill Marlborough thermals. I was beginning to think all these southern men were actually just monotesticular nancy-boys. However, after my fervent praying for lift was answered in the affirmative I have revised this theory. I was flying along and my wingtip was slapped upwards for half a second. If I wasn’t so desperate I would have ignored it for something bigger, but instead flung the old girl into hopefully something usable. After a rodeo buck or two I somehow got into the core and my hang gliding universe changed forever. That thermal was so strong I found myself involuntarily making that primal screaming noise you make when you spew up a dodgy curry. My roll angle felt like about 89.5degrees. I had no idea what to do with pitch but my old “speed is your friend” mantra made me pull the bar hard in. So technically I was doing the very thing for maximum height loss and still my glider was rocketing up so fast I was screaming like a boy scout making his hide-the sausage debut in the scoutmaster‘s tent. It felt like when you hold a piece of fluff over the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner set on reverse and let it go. It wasn’t lift so much as an unplanned explosion. About that time I was wishing I had replaced my dodgy sidewire and didn’t have a 20 year old parachute with fluffy strings. I still have the GPS log on my map software and I can tell you I gained 100m in my first 360. If we assume that tight 360 took 10 seconds that’s 10m/s, or the exact speed and acceleration of an Olympic sprinter. In my memory the whole banked-up, screaming- for-my-life turn only took about 7 seconds If so, that would make it nearly 15m/s, or 54km/hr straight upwards from a standing start! I would love to analyse the log with proper software to find out the actual maximum lift but I’m not quite nerdy enough to know how you do that. I have read about 10m/s (1800f/ min to you people who can‘t see the sense of metrics) thermals in Airporn before, but didn’t realise how much more powerful they were than a normal decent thermal. I have included a screenshot of this thermal as a starting point for what I propose to be a “thermal of the month” centrefold. I’m sure there must be some real juicy ones out there that put mine to shame, that we can all share in. Omarama was definitely the highlight of both my years of hang gliding. If you haven’t been to the Classic, book yourself in for next year because it is brilliant. No person should die before they have cruised alone silently along the shingle peaks of the Ahuriri Valley. Book your tickets. The Southern Men, nay, Giants, nay, Gods of the Sky, will look after you and make sure you have a great time. I’ll be there, hopefully with the same old downtubes…