Hyner (of course!)

[brianvh]

wind direction looks good thursday and saturday. Not liking the Tstorm forecast, but they are usually short. I'll be up there by thursday afternoon.

Cute Czech grad student heard about hang gliding, got all excited and said she wanted to go. I said she should probably bring a friend or two, and suddenly it sounded like there's a couple cars of Eastern European babes going. I'm thinking 'Score!'. Then I hear it's two cars because their boyfriends are driving. Ah well.

[RedBaron]

Anybody else going???? What's up Capital boys and girls? What are your flying plans?

[DanTuck]

Hyner! I plan to head up with Olivia on Friday morning and camp thru Sunday. Hopefully, this time I'll fly instead of just watching my girlfriend take to the sky with another man!!!! Either way, it'll be fun and I'm looking forward to it.

[Zig]

I'm taking the wife and three kids up Thursday, hope to get there between 1-2pm. Very excited--I've been doing this for a little over a year now, but this is the first time they are getting around the sport. See you guys there!
Steve Ziegler

[hepcat1989]

Malina, The Dog, and I will be up friday.
Shawn.

[hepcat1989]

Also, I have Dennis Pagen's skis . I hope he shows up and gets to fly..
Shawn.

[silverwings]

Wednesday was a good flying day here. We got here around 4:30 with beautiful skys and pleasant temps and some earlier afternoon flights pilots got 4000. One person was soaring when we arrived and winds were straight in 10+ mph. Another group of pilots got flying before I was ready. I got a 55 min hg flight with some up and down air but finally lost it. Went back up around 7:30 hoping to fly my pg but winds were a little strong and shifting to the south.

[silverwings]

Some soaring on Thursday before storms and then some sleds after. I was getting ready to move to launch when we heard thunder, so decided to wait and then rain moved through. So I got a hg sled later after things had settled down. On Friday, we had light conditions with extendos and I got a couple of PG flights. Nice fireworks display in the evening.

[brianvh]

Every night before you go to bed, look in the mirror and say ten times "ignore the Hyner weather forecasts, ignore the Hyner weather forecasts...". Now back to the story.

Oh wait, before getting into the story, we discovered at Mark Dunn's bachelor breakfast party that there's a wonderful Bed and Breakfast just a few miles away in North Bend. So if you are not excited by camping, this place is for you.

Thursday was predicted to have thunderstorms, but instead we had this odd on and off drizzle starting close to sundown. But the place was packed, and we sat around campfires with umbrellas and had a good time. Friday was L+V averaging straight in, and people started punching off early. I had a Russian couple with me, and hauled them over to the field just in time to see poor Steve Zigler crash from flying too slow. It was only his second flight at Hyner, and the first time his family had seen hang gliding. Fortunately he landed right in front of LE Herrick who's an EMT, and John Middleton was there to lend his expertise as well. He had back and neck injuries, but could move his legs. He'll be in the hospital for a few days, but if you know him please give him a call: I know from my experience it what a huge difference it makes.

Despite this introduction my new Russian friend Alexander was not deterred from taking a tandem, and Margarita followed that afternoon. We were expecting two carloads of eastern block grad students to appear in the late afternoon, but it wasn't until the fireworks started flying fast and thick that they appeared through the smoke and sparks, having stopped at every flippin scenic overlook between New York and Hyner. So we immediately sporked them (a slight modification of the electric spoons) and Alexander beat the entire field. Late night jam sessions, and we went to bed.

Saturday was forecast to be over the back, but it was puffing in the whole day. Shawn turned into an incredible tandem machine, doing 8 in one day. I don't even know anyone who's done 8 solos in one day. I woke up camp Moscow to the fact that HG was happening by buzzing their camp, which is where half the tandems that day came from. That night they were nearly the last campfire going late at night, so got a number of visitors wondering around looking for action. Went to bed around 2 AM after swearing a pact with a few other pilots that we'd be up early for a cloud dive.

If I'm anticipating a cloud dive I wake up as soon as light hits my eyelids, allowing me to run around waking others. We loaded up a van including the tandem glider, then went and flushed the russians out of bed. Shawn did his first tandem cloud dive, causing his bubbly passenger to nearly explode with excitement. A swim in the river before leaving rounded out the weekend.

It was a wonderful weekend. I didn't spend as much time with old friends as I normally would, but the eastern block students brought a wonderful and very welcome energy, and plan to return.

[DanTuck]

Amen, Brian.
I considered not going because of the forecast but Hyner definitely makes its own weather. Lesson learned (the easy way). Olivia and I got up there around 4pm on Friday and stopped by the LZ just in time to see a couple pilots launch. We hung around for a few minutes to get an idea of what was going on down there and then we went straight up to launch. I got a nice evening sled ride - my first at Hyner. What a site! The fireworks that evening were very nice under a starry sky which was quite encouraging. However, the downpour that began at 3am and lasted until 8am was not encouraging at all. On top of that the forecast for the day was 5mph from the East. But given the fact that I flew the evening prior and the forecast was the same, we decided to go up to launch after breakfast. Despite the forecast, it was trickling in at 1-4 all day long, many pilots flew, and I got three more flights in - the last one being my first ramp launch. I am so glad I decided to go up there. Awesome people, awesome site. I was only able to stay a little more than 24 hours so I'll definitley be back soon. Thanks Brian for helping me out Friday, Shawn and the rest of the Hyner crew, and of course John M.
Here's some video from the weekend.

http://www.vimeo.com/1299376

[LE Herrick]

Greetings -

Point of clarification, While I do have a humongous medical trauma kit and Steve did crash right in front of me. I am not an EMT. Our son made the kit for us when he deployed to Iraq as a Army Combat Medic. I Ben and I modified the kit somewhat to augment the blood loss trauma treatment options and include more massive deceleration injury treatment options and we both took an excellent local Wilderness First Aid Course. We have lots more to learn.


LE

[brianvh]

Outstanding video Dan! I'll definitely go home and download it.

LE, with that bag and calm assurance, you're an EMT in my book. I'm so glad you were there. I think everyone wanted to rush over, but seeing you there, and other high competents like John, we mainly stayed away to avoid the extra tension produced by a crowd. Couldn't resist checking in though.

[LE Herrick]

Thank you Brian -- I thought we all seemed to know what to do on this one. I believe Steve really benefited from the care. I was so impressed by the efficiency of John and the others in carefully clearing the harness and glider. Especially the effort for minimal and repairable damage to the harness. I know in situations like this it is OK to sacrifice equipment, but "light touch" of the stabilization was remarkable.

Glad to hear that the injuries were not as extensive as we had first heard. I have e-mailed Steve find out how he is doing and to discuss the accident reporting process.

Great to see you again - Hope you are enjoying NY

LE

[brianvh]

Just out of curiousity: I downloaded Dan's amazing video, but the playback was like a bunch of still shots. May have been the PC to mac conversion, did anyone on PC have this experience?

[CraginS]

Brian,
The first one plays fine on my Mac. In fact, I can watch you look back at teh camera and wander off from launch after Dan is airborne.

[markc]

Fantastic video Dan! Great editing and audio, great flights, and great flare timing!
Thanks for sharing that, it really hit the spot!

MarkC