Category: Sports Bar
Hi,
I wrote this out when someone asked about it and decided that someone else here might be interested.
Well, I ended up spending a week in hang gliding camp. I was ready to just get up in a tandem glider but couldnt' find anyone locally who wanted to teach a blind person. A sighted friend of mine had learned first at Kitty Hawk - Nag's Head Island in the outer banks of North Carolina and when I called them they said they'd taught blind people before and had an instructor who has low vision and I was welcome. It was a big deal to get there because I assumed that being a tourist spot there would be local hotels with knowledge of where one could bus or train or fly to and get a taxi but no such. I am a persistent bugger when I want to be and finally, after a lot of work, figured out I could get a bus to norfolk virginia and then take a cab to the local airfield and get a ride in a little commuter plane which was fun in and of itself and then got someone to meet me on the other end. If I hadn't brought too much stuff with me I could have gotten a motor cycle ride back but, well, can't have everything. It was so wonderful because they ran these weekk long camps, I assume they still do - look up kitty hawk kites on--line - and you get to stay in a house someone rents out where you wake up mornings to the ocean right outside your window. Then you learn the basics really from the ground up. You get classes in ground school and take an exam that you need to get the first level of certification, learn to set up and take down a glider hands on and when I wasn't getting enough hands on just being one participant someone worked it out to give me a one-on-one. Then you shlep up these dunes that they also use to give tourists a taste for the thing and teach you take offs and landings. The dunes are this great place because you dont' go too high and if you land hard you land in soft soft powdery sand. there was something about it I just didn't get well enough during the week though, I think I figured it out but too late to get the practical side of that initial certification. However, it seems, if I ever manage to go back, that my week included the guarantee that if I didn't get my "hang 1" as they call it, I was entitled to go back and take lessons for free whenever there's an opening until I do. Maybe I will sometime. I had to figure something out about how I held my body, that people were actually doing something to push their legs out horizontally and hold their head face forwards that works with the design of the kites and I wasn't doing it because it didn't naturally happen and I didn't see what others were doing. The instructors would tell me not to look at the ground and I couldn't see the gground so it made no sense but how to hold your head so it isn't like looking at the ground is the issue, not what you can or can't see and I didn't get that right away. I'd need to lose a llittle weight to go back because I think the basic kites are designed for a 200 pound weight limit and I'm sometimes over that and would need to be consistently under.
Anyway, at the end of the weekk, to give you a taste for the future, they take you to an airfield, put you in a tandem kite and hook you to the end of an ultralight plane, fly you to 3,000 feet and detach it. I can see enough to have seen the sun glinting off the clouds all around me and that was awesome. Since I knew how to fly the thing by then, I was allowed to steer it down and the instructor did the landing. It really felt like - well, - I was thinking this is what birds must experience. It felt totally natural to be in the air without a motor and that the air had the substance to hold you up and I kept thinking that birds must think we're really stupid stuck on the ground.
After that I was able to go with my friend to a little airfield in New Jersey where a group of men owned a couple of gliders and did the ultralight tow routine and were willing to take me up and teach me a little but that was where the money to do it ran out.
I had images at the time of how to get more blind people into it - I imagined using ski for light and creating "fly for light" which sounds just as corny and came up with the name "the Iccarus Brigade" Illusions to greek mythology aside, I thought Kitty hawk was the perfect place because of their attitude. We could run a blind week where the manual and exam would be transcribed into whatever people needed, the ground school would be better especially if we could get some models or other tactual materials, instruction would be a bit more tailored, the horrible street crossing I had to make many times daily that had nothing to protect you except how fast you can run, and the issue of transportation would be dealt with as well as having guides for people who didn't feel as comfortable as I was just casually following others around. I was mulling over ways to adapt the instrumentation people use for independent and cross country flying and some system for obstacle detection - for people who want to fly with someone else the radio headsets - forget what they're called would work to a degree but if you're going any distance there's no way to guarantee you stay with the same wind currents and getting separated would not be fun if you were counting on them.
Anyway, I was thinking this all out but life got busy and I forgot about it. Maybe all this time I'm writing this out will push me to un-forget. Maybe with someone else to work on it with me if anyone is intrigued by reading this. I did the above mentioned somewhere around 1997 so the technology for indepedent flight would be even easier to wrok out now. It's not like the issue of independent car driving - the skies are much less occupied. The hardest part would be working out landings in unfamiliar places. Familiar places shouldnt' be so bad. OK, so people do fly off of mountains where the terrain could be more problematic but I picture laying out radio beacons before you climb up.
There's also a sport that was brand new at the time called para gliding where you use something that's like a combination between a hang glider and a paracheutte. Hang gliders are large and expensive and you only transport them on a rack on a car. Paragliders can fold up into a backpack. If someone got into it you wouldn't have the added expense or hastle of not being able to do it without someone with a car. I think it's not so good in the American Northwest where I am because you have less control and the problem of mountains with trees but would work in places where hills or mountains are more bare. But I haven't followed any of this so there may be a plethora of other opportunities I have no idea about.