Nova Iguaçu - Clube CEU

No dia 19 Maio de 2006 eu o Armando Pires e o Enio Wilson fomos conferir um vento Norte na Rampa de Nova Iguacu. Armando já vinha cheio de maldade para tentarmos a travessia para a Barra da Tijuca!

10 da manhã, asas na Ranger, no posto de gasolina em Nova Iguacu, conferindo com os gaioleiros para saber como estava a estrada!



Os aventureiros adrenalizados chegando na rampa!!



O vento estava forte e lateral pela esquerda, ou seja, mais de NW do que de Norte, que seria o vento preferencial para decolar. Sendo assim aguardamos até que o vento endireitasse um pouco mais!



Nesta foto podemos observar a vista da rampa e as fumaças mostram o vento NW lá embaixo!



Não tiramos fotos do vôo mas logo após a decolagem alcançamos 1600 a 1800 mts sobre o vulcão e olhávamos para a Barra que agora parecia um objetivo alcançável. Após 45 minutos de vôo local em Nova, chegou a turma dos voadores Dinossauros, nos chamaram no rádio, chegaram até nossa altura e tiraram para a Barra! Não íamos ficar fora dessa, então tiramos junto! Após a primeira sobre o Gericinó, ganhamos altura novamente sobre o Campo de pólo do exército na Av. Brasil, e atravessamos alto e rapidamente o alinhamento com a pista do Campo dos Afonsos, mas a 4.500 pés naquele ponto estávamos fora das rotas. Depois dali o vento forte nos empurrava rapidamente em direção à Barra, nova tirada nos levou a ficar sobre a Serra da Pedra Branca, sobrevoando o PROJAC. Finalmente uma última tirada garantiu o pouso no CLUBE CEU ao lado do autódromo. Foram mais ou menos 35 Km de vôo em 2 horas, descontando uns 45 minutos em vôo local sobre o vulcão!! Abaixo o tracklog do vôo:



O tracklog do vôo mostra o início do vôo com permanência sobre a Serra de Nova Iguacu, também chamada de Serra do Mendanha ou Serra do Vulcão. De lá para a Barra, atravessa-se as aprazíveis localidades de Sulacap e Realengo, depois dessa selva de pedra é um alívio alcançar a Serra da Pedra Branca. De lá após uma térmica fraca ficou fácil alcançar o Rio 2, o CEU e até a praia da Barra, mas optamos por pousar no CEU devidoo ao conforto!! Em que outro lugar a gente poderia pousar, estacionar as asas como num aeroporto, só que na grama, comer um sanduíche tomando uma água-de-coco geladíssima enquanto esperávamos o resgate chegar!! ?? Show!!!

Nova Iguaçu - Clube CEU crossing

(for the pictures please refer to the portuguese version of this text at http://flyingfab.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html)

On May 19th, 2006, me Armando Pires and Enio WIlson decided to check-out a North wind day at the Nova Iguaçu ramp. Armando was already badly intended on crossing back to the South Zone of Rio and try and land at the Barra da Tijuca beach.

So it´s 10 am and we are already parked at the gas station trying to figure out whether to climb the steep and muddy road to the ramp on my car or ride the gaiolas, which are amazing little buggies that climb the road to the ramp better than most 4x4 vehicles. We end up riding my Ford Ranger which doesn´t let us down and makes the ramp without much difficulty, I was impressed by the dangerous conditions of the road, (at that time I still didn´t know that I would have a lot of trouble with that road in the future).

photo 1

The adrenalized advernturers arrive on the ramp, the day is still clear blue.

photo 2

The wind was strong and sidewise from the left, more Northwesterly than North. North would be the best wind direction to take off from. We decided to wait for a while to see if the wind was gonna hit it more straight, but it didn´t happen.

photo 3

On the next picture we can see the view from the ramp, overlooking the suburban city of Nova Iguaçu, the smoke on the deck shows Northwest. The bomb-out lading options are at the foot of the hill, If you clear Nova Iguaçu to most directions you fly over nice landing zones. Maybe not very nice neighbourhoods though...

photo 4

We didin´t take inflight pictures but we basically reached 1600 mts right after takeoff after battling to core a twitchy thermall, and a beautiful and fresh cloud base began forming. We eventually climbed to 1.800 mts and enjoyed the local view without really going anywhere for the first 45 minutes. Then the Rio de Janeiro bunch of older pilots, who we affectionely call the "Dinosaurs", arrived at the ramp and called us on our radios to know what was going on up there. They quickly setup, took off, climbed and briefly joined us before departinto the crossing to Barra. Well we wouldn´t miss this opportunity to learn with those that knew the way so we followed, altough we couldn´t match the glide ratios of their topless (we were flying: my litesport, Armando´s U2 and Enios Old Laminar, all king-posted, I had a slight edge with the Litesport). We found anoter climb over the Gericinó preserve, and were quickly drifting over the Av. Brazil, the vusiest downtown road in Rio and it seemed amazing that I was finally doing the crossing and right over the most hostile landing territory I could count on easy landings far away, because we were high enough and the wind drifting was helping so much. We tried to cross the final approach path over the Campo dos Afonsos military airport, but at the height we were, some 4.500 ft, we were out of the routes. Soon it was time to take options again. The Dinossaurs had gone east maybe trying to reach the São Conrado beach, we were being pushed to the Serra Branca mountains and it looked a good place to search for thermalls.

Flying over the North side of the Pedra Branca, while searching for thermalls can be quite unnerving as there are no landing options to the North and you don´t want to spend too much time there before throwing it over the back towards Barra and the open landing options. Fortunately Armando found a little climb and we guaranteed another 5 hundred feet which already had my Compeo saying that I could get to the CEU Ultralight club.

Below you can see the track log for this flight:

photo 5

Reaching CEU was already beyond my expectation for that day. I dived into CEU direction with some height to spare and enjoyed very much maneuvering to lose altitude over the grassy landing runways and over the large saltwater lake. Armando was intent on reaching the beach. For that he would need height for another 2 km flying, with the problem that he would have to cross the wall of high rising buildings that front the beach. As I said that I wouldn´t try he eventually gave uop the idea. Later he would moan about it a little bit, because he was a little higher than I was. But all in all I think it was a great decision to land at CEU with all the confort of landing in the 21-03 grass runway, perfectly aligned with the Northerly wind, taxiing to the nice ultralight grassy parking spaces, breaking down in the shade, drinking icy cold coconut water from the bar. What a way to end up a friday afternoon!

photo 6

Flying in the Brazilian Cerrado

WASP Power Unit
Moyes Sonic 190 Hang-Glider

A FLPHG is a normal hang-glider coupled to a power unit which gives it enough thrust so as to leave the ground and climb with a medium-weight individual, thus allowing that flat-landers profit from hang-gliders without having to rely on towing systems. As the majority of the world is flat and many flat sites offer excellent flying conditions it makes good sense to use such a machine to explore the free-flying possibilities.

In order to fly a FLPHG one must learn traditional hang-gliding first. Upon achieving a short level of experience (hang 2 rating or equivalent) switching to a FLPHG is not difficult at all, provided that some details are not overlooked.

April 2004 - The First Flights

Me and Phil Bradshaw arrived in Brasilia (the capital) on Monday morning, April 19th, 2004. We bought some 20 liters higher grade fuel to take with us because we were afraid that the normal brazilian gasoline which contains some 30% alcohol in it could spoil the WASP engine. We settled for a Shell V-Power gasoline that was the most expensive and supposedly unledded. We arrived at the farm late on Monday the 19th.

Tuesday morning we started setting up the whole circus! Everything was falling into place nicely, we cut the hangglider´s keel off and managed to produce a plastic PVC sleeve which was good enough to rest the glider upon, when the unit is not running.

Phil got me hanging on the unit inside the shed and I did a few simulations of zipping and unzipping and found out that only the leg clipping demanded a little more attention because of me not reaching the leg easily. This picture shows me on the left and Phil attaching the fuel tank to test the engine indoors.



After many months envying the birds of prey circling around in the abundant lift I would finally have a chance to get even !!

A typical soaring sky in the region:



On trying it out still hanging inside the shed, the thing that bothered was that the zipper wouldn´t stick when all the way up: it always slided back a little bit and so did the legs. If the zipper would stay in place then I guess I could reach the legs with my hands. But otherwise it didn´t seem all that hard to look for the cables and eventually reaching the legs. It turns out that the zipper really doesn't stay in place, i.e., it tends to slide back as you try to fully close. (Eventually I learned that the proper technique consisted of pulling the zipper partially, holding the zipper pulley with my teeth while reaching for the legs with my hands. Once the legs were locked into place no longer would the zipper slide backwards. The real catch is doing all that WITHOUT losing concentration on flying the wing!! As you look back for the zipper and for the first leg it is quite possible to get into an unwanted turn. Of course this will be more critical on a higher-performance wing like a rigid where I guess this could evolve into a spin risk situation. Practice takes care of this hurdle and reaching for the zipper and legs becomes a non-event.)

It is worth mentioning that we would be taking off from 2990 feet altitude, which would drain some power out of the engine, while at the same time making the air less dense for my wing. As we would later find out, this was no problem, as long as we had a little wind or a lot of space.

We finally took the unit outside, clipped it to the wing. It was the end of the afternoon and the air was smooth. Phil had it running for a while and finally said ok and took off in beautiful long strides. All of a sudden he was out of there! He climbed doing turns above the launch and after about 5 minutes came back for a nice landing!

We were so glad to be able to go to sleep with a success!! But I was getting so anxious during the whole ordeal! Afterwards we just had to pop a couple beers to celebrate !!

We woke up early today, Wednesday for trying a flight before the thermalls set in. BTW the weather had been perfect for the last 2 days, smooth in the morning with nil wind, very thermall during the afternoon and, according to Phil, glassy smooth in late evening.

There was a slight wind this morning as we took the WASP to the field at 7:30am. The battery had charged overnight and the engine kicked in nicely upon Phil´s third try. Soon he was taking off again for a short 5 minute flight. He came back and landed and reported that the thermalls were starting to kick in and that maybe we could wait for the afternoon for my first attempt. But I was on a GO mindset, and I knew anxiety could creep in as we waited during the day so I said I wanted to give it a go. We spent some time adjusting hang-loop height. It seems that Phils hangloop set was too short for me so that when I would pick the glider up it seemed like the unit was pulling me backwards making the whole position very uncomfortable. We tried a longer setting and Phil said I was too close to the base bar, the parachute was just scraping the bar. We finally set an intermediate position and this seemed a nice one.



So I picked the unit up, turned the engine on, had a full throttle 3 second warm up. Took a deep breath, bited the throttle and then I only have a few flashes of what went on: it was just like a normal ramp launch, in as few as 5 long strides I was walking on air. The angle of attack might semm excessive in this pic but there was a considerable amount of wind which gave me quite a strong lift, right after take-off I eased my position into a lower angle of attack.



The adrenaline was running high and I was biting the throttle like a dog clings to a bone!!! I was just trying to find the good bar position and letting the glider pick up some speed.



I started lifting then I gradually eased into position and I was flying and being rewarded with a very nice view of the surrounding areas.



The flight was very stable and I was climbing at 1,5 to 2 m/s according to the vario. Then I hit some early thermalling action and was a little worried as the wing changed direction by itself. I tried to compensate but wasn´t feeling full control maybe because of the limiting lines. Then I decided to ease the power a little bit and it helped but the main thing was to be firm in control. The wing would obey if I really commanded it. The foot throttle was a pleasure, real nice set up and soon I had spit-out the mouth-throtlle and stuck it behind the chute. I played around with different power settings trying to go for level flight and I was very happy to find out that level flight is very much noise-free. In fact even full throtlle isn´t very noisy while flying.



I tried to reach for the zipper and legs but I was having a little difficulty keeping the zipper up while reaching for the legs. The air was somewhat bumpy and I just thought that clipping the legs only to unclip them in a few minutes would be too much to handle in the 1st flight so I just let the legs there as I flew around for another 10 minutes. I was really enjoying it and this was the best part, I was so afraid I wasn´t going to enjoy it!

Then I started planning my approach. As I flew to the corner of the field I was checking all my reaches and everything seemed to be fine: choke, starting button on the left, engine killing switch on the right.



I killed the engine some 600 feet above the ground and went for a normal hang-gliding approach, had no trouble flying with the engine off I just noticed that I should pay attention to the wind on my ears more than to the bar position because of course my usual approach bar position would be too slow for my added weight.



No problem there either I just pulled in for extra speed and also noticed that I was losing height faster than usual which was to be expected, of course, but should be taken into account since we had to clear the pines on the approach. As I unclipped the first harness leg the zipper opened up automatically, that is, just the wind pressure on the dropped leg was enought to drag it backwards and cause the harness zipper to open easily.