story and photos by Derek Doeffinger
Up there, it’s liberating. Up there, you can see for miles. Up there, everything down below becomes small and insignificant. Up there, frustrations fade, worries fall away.
Up there, you are flying. All on your own, dangling under 10 pounds of fabric.
Up there, thousands of feet high, searching and seeking the right wind. Up there, it’s a thrill. And it’s all up to you to get back down there. It’s an adventure unlike any other.
“As a child, I marveled as I watched hawks soar in slow rising circles above our farm in Pennsylvania,” said paraglider Bob Slebodnik, recalling why he became a paraglider. “I wanted to do that. Now I get to fly alongside hawks and other soaring birds as I look down upon the shining lakes. Talk about a dream come true.”
To become a hang glider or paraglider and enjoy the freedom of sailing through the skies is not terribly difficult. It will cost a few thousand dollars and take a month or two of training to get you started – it may take years to become accomplished.
Prepping for takeoff
What’s the biggest issue in soaring the skies of the Finger Lakes? Probably the weather. It can be problematic.
Pilots take off only when the wind is right. And the window for the right wind is fairly small. The right wind comes in at a steady 5 to 10 mph stream blowing slightly upward but directly at the face of the launch area. The design of a paraglider demands a nearly head-on wind to power its wind-catching pockets. Hang gliders, with their fabric wing stretched over a stiff metal frame, offer a bit more tolerance for wind direction and can launch in higher winds.
To compensate for the need of head-on winds at launch, area flying groups, including Rochester Area Fliers and Free Spirit Flight Hang Gliding Club, maintain several different hilltop launch areas, each facing a different direction.
Today, the wind is out of the west, so Stid Hill in Bristol is the site of choice. It faces west and overlooks the ski resort.
At a parking area at the base of the ski resort, the fliers pile into two vehicles and drive up to the remote launch site. A 10-minute walk through the woods leads us to a steep half-acre opening looking down at the Bristol Mountain Ski Resort. I put down my camera gear while the others shrug off their paraglider rucksacks and began evaluating the wind.
The forecast called for diminishing afternoon winds. It was now noon and they weren’t diminishing. It took a few more hours for the right wind to arrive.
Around 3 p.m. the winds slow and the pilots begin flight preparations. The pilot first in line begins spreading out his all-fabric paraglider wing. It has no supports. Shaped like a slightly squashed banana, he carefully arranges it so all the surfaces are smoothly extended and the leading edge is partially open. He then checks the support and control lines connecting him to the wing.
With the wing ready, he moves downhill, stretching out his lines. He is poised for launch. The wind now has to cooperate.
Waiting, anxious, he stands and watches the wing. He watches for the slight fabric ruffles that would arise from a tickling wind. He turns and looks down the precipice. He feels the wind refreshing, and when he looks back at the wing, it almost seems to be quivering in anticipation. When a series of puffs become a steady stream, inflating the front edge wing openings, he leans downhill into the wind and tug on the lines to lift the wing overhead.
Almost before I can put the camera to my eye, the pilot has raised his wing straight overhead to the takeoff position, pushed forward, taken a few steps downhill and sprung skyward into the wild blue yonder. Away from the stubble of the ground, over the shrubs, away from the mountain top, over the trees, and, although still only a few hundred feet from us, a simple shift of his body position turns the glider to catch a ridge wind that lifts him to 1,000 feet above the valley below.
Technology makes flying possible
Soaring in the air, zooming upward on a strong thermal – modern technology makes all these thrills possible.
Paragliding began from crude predecessors created from 1960s parachutes. Burgeoning space research included developing new types of parachutes that led to more modifications of the infant paragliders. By the mid-1980s, designs for powerless, open-air flight using just fabric had turned into paragliders being flown around the world but especially in Europe.
As our paraglider pilot circles around us and becomes a distant speck headed northwest, he knows that the materials, design and construction of his craft could keep him aloft for hours – if he found the right wind.
Strong lightweight materials put together in efficient aerodynamic designs have been combined to make flying possible for almost anyone. A paraglider pilot hangs from an all-fabric wing (no structural supports) made of nylon or another high-tech descendant. A wing typically weighs 8 to 12 pounds, about the same weight as an adult eagle, but with a wingspan of 25 to 40 feet. The width of the wing consists of 40 to 80 side-by-side cells or pockets whose ends are open at the leading (front) edge to capture the incoming breeze. The breeze inflates the cells and creates lift for flying.
A harness cocoons and connects the paragliding pilot and his controls to the wing. During flight, it becomes an aerial version of an all-purpose La-Z-Boy that serves as a comfortable and padded recliner, control center, refreshment lounge, emergency parachute holder and, should the need arise, a restroom (of course, there are how-to YouTube videos about this). Total weight of the wing, lines and harness is about 30 pounds. A hang glider with its fabric stretched out on an aluminum frame weighs two to three times as much. A hang glider pilot stretches out prone in a sack and reaches out their arms to a control bar. They tend to fly in a less comfortable, more horizontal position that requires a lot of head turning and neck stretching to chart their course.
Choosing the days with the right weather conditions can prove frustrating. Fortunately, technology also helps here. Specialized weather aviation websites provide detailed information for fliers, including most launch locations. Even better, most launch sites feature a wireless weather station (not much bigger than a football) that fliers can log onto to see the wind speed, direction, temperature and more at the actual site. Before driving an hour or two to a launch site, fliers will consult both resources for current conditions as well as those arriving in a few hours.
These gliders are designed to be operated with simple controls and simple changes in body position and posture. Learning and operating them is easy. But the controls determine how your craft will interact with the wind. Developing the finesse to use your controls to smoothly interact with the air you’re in, the air you want to be in and the air that you don’t want to be in because it might collapse your paragliding wing, is more difficult. Especially because you can’t actually see what the air is doing until it interacts with your wing.
Mastering the art of reading the air can take years.
The joy of flying
The fliers I have talked to all have stories. Several are about bird encounters. Others are about surviving wing collapses. All the pilots become animated when talking about flying.
Rick Brown recalls the day he was flying out of the Hammondsport launch site when he saw a white bird below him. “I’m thinking, wow, it’s a snowy owl, the only thing I could think of that would be white like that, right? So, I’m flying along and I look at it closely. It was a hawk flying upside down, showing me its claws saying, ‘I’m tougher than you.’ It flew upside down under me for 50 to 100 yards and then just flipped over.”
Another flier recalls the day he was flying competitively and, because he couldn’t find an uplifting thermal, he was sinking downward, heading toward a landing which would end his race. “A flock of buzzards saved me. I was on my way down, and there was a whole bunch of pilots that had just landed. Then I see there’s like six or eight turkey buzzards, just maybe 200 feet off the ground starting this lazy circle. So, I flew right over the top of them and got in with those turkey buzzards and shot up to the cloud base.”
Without a rigid structure to support it, a soaring paraglider wing can collapse from careless piloting or unexpected downdrafts and side winds.
“I’m flying at 4,000 feet, and the wing just shoots out in front of me. I’m thinking I’m going to fall into the wing and get gift wrapped,” said one flier of his experience. “I fell twice the length of the lines and had the hardest opening I ever had in my life, but it just popped open and all was good.” It’s a surprisingly safe sport. One frequently cited statistic is that it’s safer than driving a car. Wings for fun fliers are designed to reliably self-recover from a collapse.
For the fliers I encountered, the joy of solo flying and the thrill of having the skills and self-reliance to do it, is a major motivation. But not far behind is the camaraderie they share afterwards in taverns or in car conversations when they travel to distant famous gliding locations, such as the Shenandoah Mountains.
To learn more about paragliding and hang gliding, visit rochesterareafliers.com or freespiritflight.com.
