Flatland creativity

You know what? Everything is possible if you have friends... after over a year of owning my own glider without seeing any opportunity to even try it out, I was pretty discouraged and sort of ready to give up trying to fly in Sweden. Especially last week - until about 1/5th of the Swedish hang gliding community became involved and determined to get me into the air during the annual meeting of the Swedish hang gliding club in Örebro.

The problem with flat land flying is that there's so many different ways of getting in the air - and for each of them you need a separate license. In the general anticipation before last weekends fly-in in Örebro, I somehow managed to repress the knowledge that I actually did not have a license for ground towing yet, only aerotowing. I also managed to "forget" that I still hadn't flown my glider and that I therefore had no idea how it would behave in towing, flying and landing. So on thursday evening I got a call from one of the guys in the Stockholm club when HE remembered my lack of license and he carefully proposed the possibility that I would not be able to fly this weekend. That's it, I thought, if I can't fly this weekend, I'll give up. They must have understod this, cause the guy who called me started calling around and organizing an instructor who could teach me ground towing, another German girl in the club started calling around an organizing an early departure for the weekend so that we would be able to be on the field very early on saturday morning in case the weather would be good enough for towing lessons and I was just trying to keep up the pace and fit in somehow.

We did get away on friday night, we did get up early saturday morning, the instructor was there - but the wind was far too strong. Well, another instructor showed up and in lack of flying conditions, we just set up the glider, they tied a string to it's nose and let me fly on the spot. Whohoo! My first experience of my own glider. After eight months of flying abstinence, that was quite exciting. And actually really instructive!

Anyways, no-one flew that day. Instead we piled ourselves into a meeting room and discussed the near future of our club. Especially the fact that there's only 114 left of us, numbers falling rapidly!

After a short night, we girls got up at 5am on sunday, drove out to the field again and started setting up our gliders until our instructors arrived a little later. I got some practice pulls without glider, a lot of introductory talk and practice in preparation for my very first quad-tow at about 8:30am. By then, the wind had picked up again and it was just in time that I was able to start before it got to strong and thermally.

Six flights later, I finally got an ok feel for my glider and managed to land on my feet. I got to fly a few minutes of very week thermals, I got to practice flying fast and slow, turning and stalling, crash-landed twice and collected a considerable amount of bruises and sore muscels. I didn't feel anything during the day of course - my adrenaline level was far too high and I was just jumping around the field in flight-induced ecstasy. This morning I woke up in pain, wishing I could stay in bed forever. But who really cares if the reward is being able to fly? And from now on being able to fly in Sweden - whichever way they come up with for getting in the air, whichever place they go to, whatever the conditions as long as they are flyable. I finally have all the licenses there are in Sweden (except for tandem and instructor), I know my wing (at least a little bit), and I know most of the active pilots... I'm eternally grateful for the supportiveness of the hang gliding community! Must be something special with those weird types with wings... :)