Scooter, wire, open doors for hang-gliding

PALMER — When the farm equipment moves off of a local field, colorful canvas triangles begin to appear, and float like clouds over the ground.

The triangles are hang gliders. The person behind them is instructor Lyndon Thomas, for now the Valley’s only certified hang-gliding instructor. Interest in hang gliding as a sport has waned in recent years, in part because access to instruction time has often proven difficult, and beginning hang gliders require a set of specific low- or zero-wind conditions, which are frequently available at lower altitudes, but can sometimes be elusive at higher elevations, according to Lyndon.

“With high performance wings, I’ve launched in 55-mile-per-hour winds,” he said. “For beginners, you don’t want that. It’s kind of like a beginning swimmer. You wouldn’t want to throw them in a fast river. The sky is kind of like a river. The less wind you have, the less airflow is pushing you around, and the easier it is for them to learn.”

That’s where the scooter comes in.

Using a long, high-strength cable and a tackle box, along with a motor scooter whose back wheel has been replaced with a winch, Thomas is able to shave years off preliminary certification times. Instead of waiting for the correct combination of weather and altitude, Thomas can certify would-be gliders in about a year.

Add in gliders that are trimmed to stay in the air, and what had been confined to higher elevations and summer months can now be a year-round training sessions, and much less dangerous for beginners. Thomas and his just-started Fly Alaska Hang Gliding instruction, draws customers (lessons are $60 per session) from as far away as Northway, which is just on the Alaska side of the Alaska-Canada border. Using his method, he’s trained four new H2, or novice-level, pilots in the last six months.

“The nice thing about this, they get a lot of take-off and landing practice in, and that’s what people need the most of,” he said. “Flying’s actually easy in any kind of aircraft.”

Thomas has been in and out of the skies since he was 9 years old. He was a founding member of the defunct Alaska SkySail Club, which dates back to the 1970s. Over the years, participation in Anchorage and the Valley has dwindled, in part because of the difficulties for beginners.

“I just started teaching again because I saw the need for it,” he said. “I’ve been an instructor for other airplanes and stuff. It’s going away. All the people are getting old or moving on.”

While interest in the sport — which started in about 1895 in Germany — may have dwindled, it hasn’t disappeared altogether. About a half-dozen enthusiasts turned out on a particularly nice Sunday morning for practice in an early November cross-breeze.

Erin Carter has been flying since May, and hopes to be hang gliding in Hatcher Pass next summer. Under Thomas’s guidance, she hooks the nose of the glider up to the cable, picks up the glider, and then waits. Thomas revs the scooter’s engine, and Carter starts to run. After about a half-dozen paces, the glider begins to lift, and she kicks up and away from the ground and soars about 20 or 30 feet in the air before descending.

“There’s always … adrenaline, every time you pick up the glider,” she said. “I always have to kind of like, find my breath and talk myself down from the pitter-patter. Then it’s all just (expletive) excitement. When you’re in the air and you feel the feeling of being weightless, there’s nothing like it. All of the fear goes away and the excitement takes over.”

She discovered the sport after buying a used Subaru from Thomas. She’s an H1, or beginning hang glider, according to the rating system established by the United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association.

“I haven’t ever launched in a foot launch,” she said. “I’d like to know what it feels like to just launch.”

Traeger Anderson showed up for his first lesson a few minutes before Carter took the air. Thomas helped him lift the glider, and they ran through the best practices.

Minutes later he was soaring through the air, then he and Thomas hauled the hang-glider back to the start position. For Thomas, it was a teachable moment.

“It was very fun,” he said. “I learned a lot, and just even learned more on the walk back about what happened.”