Cloud Base addict

Forgot my video camera but JT had a neat little contraption built with a HERO (sp?) camera mounted on it.  He wasn’t going to fly so I got to take it up.  It had a super wide angle lens.  We’re not posing, we’re figuring out how the heck to get it mounted so I can deploy it in flight and retract it w/o causing myself any trouble.

Neat shot of me’new Matrix Race harness.  Wonder if there are ways to clean up the zipper pull, zippers, and the buckle bulge on my under side?  Slick tho!  So far, I love it, super comfy.  Need to work on packing stuff better b/c zipping up has been tough.  I have yet to use the storage spaces on the outside of my calves, which currently have lots of “filler” in them.  Will remove that this w/e and put glider pads, harness bag, etc in those and that should make her easy to zip again.

Wish the bottom of my basetube looked this shiney!

This sucker takes pictures every 2 seconds

Am I crazy, or does the blue sky look like the earth from outer space?

ATOS’N’ORBIT!

Aaanyway, it was a fun day Aerotowing with Colorado Airsports.  I adjusted the sail on one wing and then made some adjustments that made the Atos drive like a 50 year old truck.  It had about 1ft of play in the control bar before actuating either spoileron.  Pretty stupid on my part.  Landed, fixed it, got other things ironed out too like moving the microphone to the side in my helmet so I didn’t blow out everyone’s ears when I speak.  My 2nd of 3 landings was the 2nd worst pile in I’ve ever had.  Glider and me are fine though…  I had a half brained approach, landed downhill in no wind on a hot day and just tried to flare too early, pulled it back and on my second try, not enough speed to get’r’dun.  Just pushed the glider in front of me and hoped that there weren’t any earthquake alarms.

Flights: 3

Airtime:  1.5 hours

We drove up to launch, watched it blow NW hard and then Steve treated me to the best breakfast burritos I’ve ever had at Twisters on Simms and Colfax. 

And I consider myself a breakfast burrito connoisseur.  So, the NNE wind came and we set up our gliders with overfull stomachs.  Hardest hike up I’ve ever had after that gut bomb.  The NNE wind turned E so I went for it in a super liftoff with it blowing 10-15mph.  I Dove at launch once and figured I shouldn’t play around since this potential virga induced wind even could very well end.  It also could have been the frontal push too, but lots was going on.

It might have only taken 15 minutes to get to the other side of the towers.  Some virga lines were out there and with the dry low level air, the microburst potential was in our heads.  Since a bigger virga wall divided Steve and I, he opted to play around Golden in what sounded like a fun flight.  Thermals and Rain?

Right off the bat I started to get low over Dakota ridge, but hooked a nice thermal.  Today, almost every thermal turned into Mr. Hyde at about 8700ft.  The 5 second averager got 950 fpm lift, and I know that’s b/c I got a full circle in part of Hyde’s rump but I was banked up wicked.  The flip side was 1350fpm sink and I’m convinced these extremes all happened right by each other.  I’ll post a video clip showing some of that sometime!

Since down low the wind seemed strong East and up high it was strong N, I think the shear level maybe was at 8700 causing the ruckus.  Once, heading south I had a 20mph tailwind, another time I had a 1mph tailwind.  The thermals were like vacuum cleaners to quote Steve.

Flying over our neighborhood bike trails that I rode this morning was kinda cool.  I didn’t want to land on the golf course by my house b/c the strong NE wind would have made it too rotory back there so I figured I’d carry on and keep burning in my new harness.

Martin Marietta high security place… They’re watching me…

A hidden Quarry behind Martin Marietta.

Here’s the big picture.

Looking back NE.  I came from the left of these beauts.  And looking ahead to the S in the below picture.

I worried that the nice flat bottomed stuff had been there too long so it would either OD or fall apart so I dilly dallied in some lift wondering what to do.  The picture above shows it after it’s disorganized a good bit.  It didn’t OD but by the time I decided to head around to the upwind edge of it, it flushed me to the ground from 10.5kft for being wishy washy.  I think I just missed a highway all the way over the palmer divide.  Not complaining b/c it was tons of fun and new territory.   

I landed in a super ritzy area and NOBODY would give me a ride.  I always use to pick up hitch hikers, what’s up with these people?  But I realized my shirt had paint stains and holes in it so I’ll give them some slack.  I’m going to make a sign for next time “Hang Glider Pilot needs ride” or something. 

Lots of people got to fly today in the smoother late day boaty air over lookout so we finally got a good day! 

Flights:  1

Max Alt:  10.5

Airtime:  2:15

Distance:  24.6 miles

The picture above is of Andy and I sharing the same elevator up.  Highlights today were sharing those turns with Andy, getting my first flight on the Matrix Race, joining 2 PG’s (Kiernan and Chris?) in a late day boomer over the Coors plant (smelled great), getting a first flight in a cocoon harness. 

Above pic, catching the first climb out from launch for my second flight.  Might be Kiernan in the background (middle right).

There’s 3 pg’s in this picture..

2 in this one…  Chris on the red Maverick and Kiernan on Chris’ wing? 

It’s cool to look at this harness where my eyes can’t see. 

The Sport 2 is so nice to try new harnesses with.  In the Matrix Race (new harness), once I rocked up to come into final and land, I didn’t notice my helmet hitting the harness backplate at all.  I thought I rocked up as much as possible but when I flared, I didn’t have the arm length quite as good as I’m used to with my old single point so I’m going to lower the leg loops an inch and see how that changes things. 

This was an iterative process with the previous single point harness too.  Leg loop length, and making sure you rock up then “schimy” down a bit so the leg loops are snugged up were the first steps last time.  Then, fine tuning leg loop length until it’s just right.  Longer loops lets you sink down in the harness a bit and doing that puts more weight on the feet end of the hang point.  More weight in the back helps create the best head up position possible.  Also makes it easier for the arms to be up where they should be. 

After sweating so much in fleece and bala clava etc for the first flight, I just wore a T-shirt and speed sleeves on the second flight.  Naturally, that’s the flight I got way high on and I froze my fricking tail off.  Ain’t complaining tho and used the altitude to play around with wing overs coming down to 7-8kft to warm up.  The adrenaline also helped push the shivers back.  There were a couple thermals that were noticeably warmer air than the surrounding which kept inviting me to go up again.  Late for poker night in Boulder, I boated around down low waiting for launch to go back to SE wind for toplanding and doing away with truck retrieval but it had locked in N so I opted to cruise over the main LZ to see what the deal was.  Tried to hang out watching for a while but it was pretty solid N-NW so I landed in the miners given that I was landing a foriegn harness.  Rocking up in the cocoon took me by surprise at how head-up I was.  Man was that cool.

Always clear the power lines!

1 minute video, Launch, great footage circling w/Andy, and landing.  Adobe won’t let me have sound today.

http://www.vimeo.com/4592897

Looks like the week is shaping up to give us some flying finally!

Like sailplane and paraglider pilots, hang glider pilots use the sun’s energy to stay aloft and cover sometimes great distances.  All without any means of traditional “power”.  It’s an amazing “free lunch” and what I want to know is how many kWh’s are involved in free flight?

So here’s what I think is the answer:

I used the Potential Energy of Gravity equation because that’s what gives us our ‘power’.  As long as we can find air that’s rising faster than I’m sinking, then the rising air is lifting me, giving extra altitude for gravity to do it’s work on.  The flight in this example was 235 miles and a bit over 7 hours in the air with total altitude gain in thermals of 57,526 ft (almost 11 miles straight up!).

Potential Energy (PE) = m x g x h = mass x gravity x height

mass (Glider, Harness, misc and me) = 300 lbs = 136 kg

gravity = 9.8 m/s/s

height (gained by thermals during the flight) = 57,526 ft = 17,534m

PE = 136 kg x 9.8 m/s/s x 17,534 m = 23,369 kJoule = 6.5 kWh

FREE ENERGY from thermals = 6.5 kWh

———————————————————————–

So, How much power is 6.5 kWh?:

If you hook up a generator to a stationary bike, a healthy person could produce about 100 Watts as they pedal and illuminate one 100 Watt light bulb.

http://scienceshareware.com/bicycle-generator-faq.htm#money

Watts are an instantaneous measurement, so as long as they’re pedaling, there’s 100 Watts but when they stop there’s no Watts.  If the cyclist pedaled for 1 hour, that’s the equivalent of saying 100 Watt-hours.  Or .1 kilo-Watt-hours….  That’s not much power, but a lot of hard work.  

To put that in perspective, an average U.S. home used about 31 kWh per day in 2006.  That’s 310 people pedaling for an hour.  At the national average of .11 cents per kWh, it’s pretty cheap but at the same time, interesting to put a human level of effort to it.  It’s also part of the problem with much of the energy coming from burning coal.  Here’s an interesting chart of how the average home uses their 31 kWh’s:

U.S. household energy:

Source: 2007 Buildings Energy Data Book, Table 4.2.1., 2005 energy cost data.

Another reference point, and something very interesting is that gasoline has about 11 kilo-Watt-Hours (kWh) of potential energy per gallon.  The average person drives 15,000 miles per year or 41 miles per day.  For a car getting 20mpg, the math shows that 41 miles is equivalent to about 23 kWh/Day.

So, the Solar/Thermal energy that carried me for 7 hours on that flight was enough to power the average home for 20% of one day or drive a car 10 miles or so. 

Considering how much energy is expended by traditional flight, soaring flight really is a free lunch. 

The views from 17,000 ft are priceless and silent and you don’t have to burn any dinosaurs to get there, again and again!