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Yes, see centeroflift.org :)

No. I'm 6' 2" and have a long reach + I like having better roll control than having my hands higher up on the downtubes. I do tend to have my hands higher up landings when I fly a higher performing glider though. In this LZ on a thermic day the wind direction can change quickly. I've even landed E towards the trees here. You can be coming in to land SW (as I do in this flight) and have the wind switch N. It's wise to get to the LZ with a bit of altitude when flying here + you can find lift near the LZ.

Our home is 35 miles from Chewelah. Most of the flying is done at Inklers Point, Parker and Eagle. We're very fortunate to have welcoming land owners for both LZs and launches. We're gradually opening up new sites to fly. 1 new one this year and 2 more kinda new ones but they've yet to garner long term status for continued regular use. There's also Tekoa Man and Steptoe Butte further S in eastern WA. I enjoy flying new sites and have been privileged to open new sites I've pioneered. The more places to fly the better!

Contact Arjun Heimsath through AZHPA.org. View as many Mingus Mountain videos as you can. That really helped me learn what to expect. Especially the time of day to fly. You'd best get there no later than 0900 for a firs time visit. You'll learn why as you investigate the site. PS - I'll be 73 in April. I hope to fly into my 80s. Fingers crossed!

Welcome! My pleasure! Glad you and Kim can fly often!

Not sure actually. It was saved as 4K (when exporting from Mac Photos). I'll check my GoPro's settings.

What do you normally fly?

@@ChattaroyMan a Gecko 170

@@williamw1332 If we know when you're coming this way I'll bet someone would let you borrow a glider. I have a Falcon 4-195 I'd loan out. There might be a Falcon 3-170 available. I'd have to do a bit of a survey of the area pilots before you arrived.

@@ChattaroyMan when I can come out that way for flying, I will let you know 👍 Always great to fly with others! 😊✈️

Thanks, just tried that - much better!

Dang nice place to fly. Learned bunches during the flight and from locals (+ watching Mingus vids before going). Hope you're still getting a bit of cliff diving in (much flying in winter?).

@@ChattaroyMan nice to see you flying 😀 Winter flying depends on how much snow is covering roads and launch sites. Much like in your part of the woods I guess 😉 cheers

You'll also have to try Eagle Mountain. Eagle's launch is at 4400'. The top launch (Jimmy's Launch) on Parker is 3333'. Pioneer Launch on Parker (the one in this video) is 2950'. Eagle is just NE of Chewelah. Parker is SE. Eagle's a bit closer to Chewelah than Parker. On a flat glide you can make Chewelah from Eagle (th-cam.com/video/D0TMbK-XjZ8/w-d-xo.html).

Bomstad has had some nice flights from Parker :) Up to the Canadian border a few times and this one: th-cam.com/video/5vJ4frgOSRE/w-d-xo.html

Ha! It's a great way to learn hang gliding. It's a rather daunting task to put together a system though. Parts for it are not readily available. I wanted to have the system up here for demos during the 2022 Inklers Point Fly-In but USHPA would not provide event insurance if I included it. Sad move by USHPA.

Early bird gets the worm :)

Thanks! I'd love to fly in Brazil! Maybe someday!

Sorry, I don’t understand your comment “t/o the top 85” ???

Muito obrigado! Very sad now about all the fires on Maui :( I believe one of the fires was near this flight park.

6 miles S of Chewelah, WA USA. A couple miles off US Hwy 395 on WA Hwy 231 (1 mi N of Valley, WA).

@@ChattaroyMan thx

@@u171098atgmail You can read more about Inklers Point in these two USHPA Magazine stories: issuu.com/us_hang_gliding_paragliding/docs/hgpg1507_issuu And issuu.com/us_hang_gliding_paragliding/docs/hgpg1705_issuu Scroll to appropriate pages ….

Now it'd be nice if USFS improved the road :) It's a great place to tent camp & fly. I've found that the best way to fly Eagle is to get off and go W as soon as you can clear the trees to the W. For stronger winds it's best that they be SSE to SSW. Anymore cross up the S launch and it'll have some turbulence.

On my own gliders I hang lower - or seems to me anyway. I used to hang higher but went lower exactly due to what you say about easier/better handling. I usually fly a U2-160 (at mainland sites). Also, if I hang too low I tend to rotate my upper body upwards and then have less an aerodynamic profile. For some reason my neck has never tired from flying. I will ‘feel it’ in my lower back after longer flights with a bit of a workout it may take to work Ts to stay up.

​@@ChattaroyManmy alpha has quite short hang loops, I use extender loops. Always have them in my harness.

@@ericoschmitt I’m headed back in January. Might take a pg. I do have a short pack Falcon now. Considering taking it to Hawaii but need to know more about costs of airline transport of sporting gear. If I just take my hg harness I’ll take some hang loops. I totally spaced that on this trip. Thanks for the reminder!

Ha! It's pretty exciting living on the face of a planet with lots going on.

Nope. Found some of Aaron's bourbon though :) brownefamilyvineyards.com/visit/spokane/

Hi Mike. I like the Alpha fine excepting that it can be very difficult to turn into a strong thermal. This is the Alpha 235. Handling in pretty good but when one wing is lifting from a thermal on the right or left about all I can do is to keep the glider level. I can't weightshift it enough to counter the thermal side wing lift.

Only in smooth air!

Easy except when trying to enter a thermal on my right or left. Takes lots of control input when one wing is lifting. Otherwise I do like its handling for a beginner’s glider. Just requires stronger control inputs in stronger conditions. I should have my U2 back in the air before July. It is lots better suited for thermals and L/D at medium to higher speeds. We have some newer pilots flying Inklers. This one and my last vid at Inklers are geared for them to learn more about flying the site :)

@@ChattaroyMan Thanks Steve 👍

It was :) I'm itching to go back there. It's a great area to visit even if the weather isn't good for flying. Great vacation spot!

The webcam we put up we took down last year as State Parks put up their own webcam :)

At the time I flew it I weighed -220. I felt it handled well. I’ve own a Sport 2 175 in the past. I much prefer the 155. I did not feel heavy on the S3-155. I did not like the handling of the S2-175. I weigh 205 now and would get a 155 over a 170. I hear though that the S3 has good handling compared to the S2. I have not flown a S2-155.

That was a fun day :) Just might fly Steptoe on 9/19. There's a talk in Colfax about Cashup who built the old hotel on top of the butte that day. Thought I'd try to fly and make the talk.

The setup area is right next to the guard rail in the pullout area of the road.

It'll be fun to try in more thermic conditions.

It’s steep enough a 12-14 mph N wind ought to be soarable. Hawks & the resident pair of Golden Eagles ought to be out flying in a N wind.

And I was recording @ 1080 not 4K. Will have to set it at 4K next time. The lighting was very nice with a bit of polarization with Sun so low. I paid about 70% attention to views and 30% to flying. It was a fairly mellow afternoon. Better for an old fart! ;)

I do not see Leon putting his feet into his harness before moving his hands to the basetube.

I believe they are ChromeMoly steel. The ones on this glider were obtained 2nd hand. They may have been made by Paradise Airsports in Florida. I recently emailed Paradise asking about their availability but they have yet to reply. Once we begin putting together our own Quad-tow system we will publish our suppliers and/or fully describe how we constructed the items used. Currently I only know of 3 Quad-tow Alphas being tested or that have been used in instruction: 1 at Lookout Mountain Flight Park, one at Kitty Hawk Kites and this one at Sacramento Hang Gliding. All we have currently is a WW Alpha 235 and we're looking into acquiring a set of main wheels. The downtubes and basetube of the Alpha shown in the video are not stock. They have a larger wall thickness of the tubing. Otherwise they are of the same dimensions as stock control bar tubing.

@@ChattaroyMan Thanks much for your reply. I'm a, fairly, old guy with numb feet, due to peripheral neuropathy, enjoying balance problems, so my interest in landing on wheels is strong. I am confident I can construct wheel supports of adequate strength, using aluminum tubes.

@@Patriottoo2 I think Aluminum might work well. I"m a towing newb though - definitely not someone to recommend anything that has not been time tested. In many applications of the steel frame wheels tandem flights are involved (more weight). We'll only be using a single occupant configuration on a non-tandem glider. The WW Alpha 235 weighs 52 pounds. With the towing items that likely increases the weight by maybe 20 lbs.

@@ChattaroyMan So, you're another all-nighter, too. Ha, ha. My weight is pretty steady at about 215#. I think aluminum with proper triangulation will provide more than enough strength to support the combined weight of pilot and glider .

Me too! If more fools down here wise up and get vaccinated!

We had to wait around for decent up cycles to launch on the SW path created by packing the rocks you mention into a flat-ish ramp. That gave us the time to adjust the rocks so that they had less motion when stepped on. The rocks spald similar to obsidian - only in much larger chunks with most of the surfaces being curved. Not easy to stack well. However, the top is covered with them so finding the best fits wasn't too difficult.

@@ChattaroyMan When I was up there last week I found a spot about 10 yards from the little white building where someone stacked rocks in a 3x8 rectangle about 3ft high for what I can only imagine was a wind break to camp in.

Or kids building a fort (???). They are fun to stack ... ample supply! How's the road up? I haven't flown Baldy since this video. Might have to go back this summer.

@@ChattaroyMan Going up Reeds creek road is good now all the way up. Phillip's draw rd has a few trees down across it but they can be driven under as long as your vehicle is no taller than a 3/4 ton Suburban. I bent my roof rack on one of them. They are on private property so I didn't try to cut them out of the way.

It was fun - and fortunate too. It’s not uncommon to put a bit of travel & effort to get to a launch and have good enough conditions to launch. We could just as easily had to pack the gear back up to the tram and hauled it back down. I don’t make my final decision to fly until I’m standing on launch with my glider to get the best feel for how the air is behaving. We lucked out and nailed a day with very nice weather for a flight :)

Wow, thanks :) I try to make my vids informative for pilots who have yet to fly the site and for non-pilots to learn a few things about what we do + the "awesome"-ness of the sport of hang gliding. My current goal is to get the same stories told in a shorter length video. This one is around half an hour long. I'm using a GoPro 4. I'll likely get a GoPro 9 before April. GoPro is not too friendly when it comes to making their cameras able to record for periods much longer than an hour. Earlier model GoPros were designed so that you could add an external battery that fit inside an optional larger housing. No so now. I'll have to rig up an external battery via a cable. Not an ideal situation should the cable become unattached during flight. It's not like I can park, fix things (or change a battery), then begin flying again. I'll figure out some sort of arrangement so I can still reposition the camera easily and not dislodge the cable. And figure out where best to mount the external battery so that it doesn't inhibit my handling of the glider.

Mostly photos and videos. The GoPro is limited to wide angle. I have sent texts and made calls. If going XC I might use it for maps while in the air. I suppose I could also use it during flight to broadcast my location. A FaceTime phone call might be fun. It's an iPhone 11 so it has better photo and video resolution than past iPhones. On some flights it's more of a 'hood ornament' as I'm paying close attention to my flying. I've yet to try any more specific apps while flying.

@@ChattaroyMan Glad I asked. I had no idea that kind of focusing was possible. Makes me feel old. How many people have placed a call while hang gliding? LOL ;-)

​@@Navigator777777 To dampen wind noise I'm going to try a wind screened external microphone for the iPhone. I've seen some on Amazon for around $30US. I can hear others OK but with the iPhone perched out in the wind it's own microphone creates wind noise. I'll give one a try this Spring and report on its use in a flight video. Another hurdle on using a smartphone during flight is using one with gloves on. The best method I've found using gloves is to cut a slit in a glove at the outboard knuckle of my right index finger - so that I can use a bare finger (and get the finger back into the glove). I've yet to try using Siri voice commands in flight. Basically, I'm not sure how much effort I want to put into using my iPhone during a flight. At some point it's use is going to take away from why I'm up in the air in the first place.

@@ChattaroyMan I was a tug captain for 27 years. It was excruciating approaching the dock with a huge barge in a blow and couldn't communicate due to wind noise. It was discovered wrapping plastic over the radio, mic, headset speaker with a rubber band eliminated the problem. Dry cleaner plastic works best. Cheap low tech fix. Imagine a conversation with SIRI? You: "Hey Siri? How far to Chewelah?" Siri: "Screaming..."Get this thing on the ground now!!!!!" ;-)