Pico Agudo - taking off above the layer

The 3rd Stage of the Paulista Hang-Gliding Cup 2009, was scheduled for the weekend of May 22nd, 23rd and 24th. The organizers wanted many FAI registered pilots to attend in order to obtain the status of FAI event for this stage. The main reason was to validate the 2009 World Hang Gliding Championship participation of São Paulo pilot Michel Louzada and Rio de Janeiro pilot José Guilherme Lopes Lessa, since attending a FAI event was a requirement which both pilots hadn´t yet met this year.

Anyway, the spot was the Pico Agudo ramp - http://www.guia4ventos.com.br/det_rampa.php?id=39 - on the city of Santo Antônio do Pinhal - http://www.santoantoniopinhal.com.br/ - on the State of São Paulo. It´s also not too far away from Rio, only a 5 hour drive. This city sits very near the well know city of Campos do Jordão - http://www.camposdojordao.com.br/ - with only 15 Km separating the two.

Campos is a major weekend destination of the wealthy paulistans and not without a good reason: with both cities sitting above 1600mts asl, the weather is very cool, and makes for a alpine scene of sorts for us heat-stuck brazilians. Temperature at nightime was only 5 degrees Celsius which called for pasta, wine, fondues. Nice!

The weather was bright and one should expect good flying conditions, but I soon learned that this particular spot on the Mantiqueira range, is not very consistent, I wonder why that is, since it is actually pretty close to wonderful flying sites like the Pico do Gavião, in Andradas - http://www.guia4ventos.com.br/det_rampa.php?id=69 ; Atibaia - http://www.guia4ventos.com.br/det_rampa.php?id=27; etc.

On Friday morning, the first day, the condition looked very nice, but once we drove to the top of launch, we discovered that the ceiling, on the direction of flight, was very low, much below take off... Looking towards the interior though, conditions seemed much nicer, with a higher base and a drier look.

I wonder why the Pico Agudo ramp doesn´t share this inland condition with its neighbouring launches. Maybe influence of the sea? But its still a long ways from shore, maybe 80Km or so. On the good days though, specially when the North wind brings the inland conditions all the way to Pico Agudo and beyond, really great flights can be made, like flying all the way to the coast. Local Marcelo Menin once flew all the way to Ilha Bela and back to the mainland, a flight well above 120Km!

The track log for this flight is at: http://www.xcbrasil.org/leonardo/flight/15864

Anyway, I made a little movie of the launch on Friday. The interesting point is that we were launching above the ceiling, waiting for the cycles to clear so as to allow take-offs, and then gliding down to the thermic layer below. The lift was weak and the task was called for only 33Km, and even then no pilot was able to make goal. I finished 8th having been able to make the first turnpoint, not without a lot of struggle. Landed at the official LZ. It was to be my only flight there this weekend, since some family issues forced me to go back to Rio on the next day.

The Rio de Janeiro Scene - 3

After a near two month flying hyatus, caused by my accident on the beggining of March, I finally took to the air again today. It was a beautiful post-frontal day in Rio, and the wind was coming from the Southwestern quadrant. The conditions looked great but in fact weren´t so for quite a while.

The early birds were greeted with a lot of work to stay up and only the best pilots, who were also patient, were rewarded with great flights. In seeing their struggle I decided to wait for a better window.

The problem was that I waited a lot, but not long enough. My flight was really hard to keep up, I fought for 40 minutes getting progressively lower.

About one hour after my take-off, when I had already landed, conditions finally, and suddenly too, improved a lot, and the guys who were still waiting had better flights with many of them visiting the Christ.

I was just really glad for being back on the air again! And I was very happy too for using succesfully my new camera mount on the leading edge, which rewarded me with many many great pics!

Some of them are below:

 

 

 

 

São Conrado Night Clouds

Some pictures taken at night, showing the amazingly beautiful São Conrado Valley and clouds calling for a good flight tomorrow. I was trying to keep my camera from shaking as I was using long exposure while holding the camera with my hands.

Guess the first could be called "The Battle of the Giant against the Cyclop with the Moonlight Head".

 

 

The Rio de Janeiro Scene

Rio is a wonderful venue for outdoor sports. Bicycling, surfing, wind-surfing, kite-surfing, rock-climbing, trekking, etc. But I think it is fair to say that the most beneffited of all outdoor sports here has to be hang-gliding.

We are so fortunate to be able to live inside a very nice hang-gliding site. Where else can you enjoy gliding over a major city and count on many nice landing options?

Without being (much) disturbed by the aeronautical administration, you can enjoy fabulous views, count on generous and frequent smooth coastal lift just to stretch those gliding muscles any day, and perhaps the greatest bonus: there´s a smart cross-country challenge to hone those thermall finding skills and test your mettle as you fly over your home!

I am talking about the ever present desire to make it to the Christ Statue and back. This flight flight is somewhat like a rite of passage for the carioca pilot. After that it becomes your permanent goal while flying in Rio. You try to pick the days with more chances to make it as we well know that the crossing is just not possible more than maybe two days a month on an yearly average. Maybe four a month on the best times of the year.

Well, that being said I post a few pictures of the Rio flying and outdoors scene.

Take-off, circa 1992, showing the Pedra da Gávea on the background. This picture was taken by Chico Santos and shows me on a Keller Hi-Tech harness flying a Moyes GTR.



This next picture I took while mountain biking on the mountains, and shows the Christ agains a backdrop of building thinderstorms, on a North wind day, not possible to take off at Rio´s ramp with that kind of wind.



This next image is a panoramic drawing of Rio´s landscape. Notice the mountain ranges surrounding the South Zone. This is where we mostly fly.



Besides the excellent Nova Iguaçu mountain, the so-called Volcano Sierra, which lies only a 50 minute drive away from São Conrado, but may take another 50 to climb the muddy and slliperry ramp road, and offer the possibility of flying back to Rio, like I did a few times. (check http://flyingfab.blogspot.com/2006/05/nova-iguau-clube-ceu.html)

Also the mountain ranges around Rio are only a 2 hour drive and offer great cross-countrying opportunities. Among these a natural challenge is flying all the way back to Rio and landing on the beach. It´s been done quite a few times. It´s a critical cross because you overfly no-land areas and necessarily break quite a few airspace restrictions too. This is the view from the Petropolis Parque Sao Vicente ramp on a comp day.



These next pics show the getting to the Christ cross.









The fresh formations of a Christ promising day:



This next picture by pilot Nader Couri show a wonderful afternoon base on a excellent Christ day:



I plan to keep adding Rio hang-gliding scene pictures on this post in the future, so check it again sometime!


Below, flying over the Rio ramp on smooth lift.

Flight Academy with Mike Barber in Andradas – Part 2

(Please refer to the pictures below in the portuguese version of this post.)

Thursday greeted us with a blue sky, a beautiful day promising a classic flight! We decided to change our “base-camp” to the Pousada Pico do Gavião, a much more bucolic environment at the foot of the ridge, and, upon getting settled, we were soon driving to the ramp, where we set-up while a consistent South-Southwest Wind exerted pressure on our faces and gave the tone of what seemed to be a nice flying day. Notice the hand-painted Sky waiting for us!

We decided to come up with a task just so we could fly with an objective and the task comitee called for a triangulation between the launch, the city of São João da Boa Vista, the city of Aguaí and back to the launch at the official South LZ; making up a total 75Km.

Even though the sky looked real nice we stayed for a good while at the ramp waiting for some positive sign of sure lift.

Fabinho on a low-performance Quero-Quero glider, single surface, king-posted wing took-off first and lost a lot of height as he sinked towards the South LZ. I thought his flight would be over then, but the kid is very talented and held on, scratching real low.

Meanwhile at the ramp some signs of lift started to show: swallows diving at the ramp and a giant buzzard turning lazily on the middle of the valley.

Still a little unsure, Mike decided it was time to take-off and went next, clinging to a weak thermal really close to the terrain to the left of the ramp. I asked him on the radio if he thought the thermal would hold and he said I might as well give it a try. So I took off next and, in a good oportunistic move, turned really tight to catch the end of the thermal, a little lower.

That it was the end of the thermal was soon proved as Armando took off third and went to the same spot not finding anything. While our climb rate only improved, we could only watch Armando sinking along the ridge, while Fabinho still scratched at a height that, from our p.o.v. seemed like 1 meter above the terrain.

While we waited for armando to do something me and Mike drifted over the back reaching 2.500m amsl with comfortable lift.

I got distracted for a while, and was surprised to see Armando higher than I was, closer to the city of Andradas on the left, I thought he should have caught a real good one, Mike cheered him up through the radio “Good job Armando!”.
While I admired the view and Armando´s quick climb I got a call from Mike “Fabiano where do you think you´re going? You´ve just lost 100 mts in this last couple turns, get back NOW! Ashamed of myself I tried to recover, losing even more height but quickly relocated the core and continued climbing.

The thermal centering techniques were already beggining to work out.
Mike calls this technique the “clover leaf pattern”. If you´ve read the book “Secrets of Champinos” by Dennis Pagen, you know that this technique consists of extending the turns always alittle bit on the direction of stronger lift, continually relocating.

At this time I heard Mike telling Armando to slow down, I looked for him where I had last seen him but the slippery Armando was already at the right end of the ridge gliding towards the first turnpoint. Meanwhile Fabinho had slowly climbed and was starting to move in our direction. This was the last I would see of him during this flight though his single surface unable to stand the long glides in descending air.

While Mike tried to hold Armando back a little bit, so that we could fly together, he told me to fly faster. I am more of a contemplative pilot, or at least I was, truth is that I wasn´t prepared for the speed and intensity that mikes teaches us to put into the XC flight.

Armando, already more used to that, took the lead and glided ahead, glued to a dark cloud base. Mike came on the radio and told Armando to get closer to the edge of the cloud and not to fly so close to the base on the middle of it. A few seconds go by without an answer from Armando and Mike calls again: “Armando you´re in too deep, get out now!”. Again Armando was silent. I was gliding towards Armando´s base getting there a little lower than him. I tried to locate him looking up, until I saw him, his Aeros Combat glowing bright orange against that dark grey base. I thought “What an amazing view, too bad I don´t have a camera in my hands right now!”. Mike came in a third time: “Armando you´re getting whited-out, get outta there now!”. I was starting to get nervous and came in the frequency in portuguese and told Armando that Mike wanted him to leave that base immediately. Armando finally answered quite calmly saying “Oh ok, I wasn´t hearing what he was saying.”

Soon I was starting to grasp the speed of the glides and the quick analysing of the conditions of a high level XC flight. I had the privilege of following Armando and Mike and take advantage of their lines. Mike was now leading and explaining his decisions real time. The first leg towards São João was crosswind and it was fast.

Between São João and Aguaí the leg was upwind and we had our pace greatly reduced as we took on a piece of blue skies. A lot of work was put into the upwind leg! I started to get a little behind the “main gaggle” but still kept on pushing. When I finally had Aguaí within glide they were both high over there and starting to come back. I decided to give up the turnpoint and stick along to them.

On the way back, the formations over the ramp had darkened considerably and we could see some rain showers on the horizon. As we got back over the São João airport we had close to two hours of flight and, on my third straight flying day, with six accumulated hours , I was feeling my arms quite tired. With some 32Km away from launch and some 50 Km flown total, I reasoned that my fatigue and the general strengthening of the condition closer to the ridge wouldn´t make a nice combination and I decided to land at the airport, where the wind was blowing hard and variable.

Landing wasn´t so smooth, I came down vertically against the wind but on short final the wind stopped and I didn´t get much lift on flare and did a classic nose “caboiiing” and scratched my knee. No further damage! Looking back I should have had some VG on and should have come way faster than I did. Anyway I was stoked!

Then I was quicly retrieved and we went to retrieve the other two, who had made goal with height to spare, and even took a quick leg to the city of Espírito Santo do Pinhal before coming in to a comfortable landing.

End of third day, everybody with a “big head” (brazilian slang for “satisfied”)

This flight data is published on the brazilian Leonardo server at:
http://xc.ciclone.com.br/modules.php?name=leonardo&op=show_flight&flightID=894

The most important thing was that the condition kept improving. We went to sleep early with real bad-intentions for the next day!

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.