The Heavy Blow

In the years of 1980-1981 was a time of borderline hang-gliders, powered hang-gliders, ultralights or microlights, and a lot of things that surprised you when they actually did lift off. There were pilots of unsurpassed daring, wild eyed individuals who built and flew contraptions of bamboo and plastic-wrap, all for that one brief moment of aerial bliss. Many are still around today, many are not. When you met one of these "do-anything-to-fly" guys, you had to respect his love for flying, although the mental picture you may have of him is of a burly, skull-capped man with a brown leather jacket, long white scarf blowing in the wind, handlebar mustache, and a big cigar between his teeth. More likely, he was a young college boy working on a degree in engineering with a mindset of changing the world and having some fun in the process.

During this time, ultralights were just beginning to show signs of reliability and starting to catch the eye of the more serious minded "would-be" pilots. EIPPER-FORMANCE was redesigning the Quicksilver (powered hang-glider) with a larger, better engine and tricycle gear. The EASY-RISER now had landing gear, as did a number of others. At the same time the "FEDS" were proclaiming, "they must be foot-launchable" to be unlicensed. Most manufacturers were now striving to prove that their planes were still foot launchable. What a time it was for this young sport ! Confusion, new designs sprang up almost daily, trial and error seemed to be the rule of the day. Many clones of successful designs took to the air, and a day at a popular Fly-In might resemble a flying insect zoo. "HEY, LOOK, you have this motor and I've got an old prop, let's tack on some wings and fly it !!" Oh, excuse me, I got caught up in the excitement of the time.

Much good came from those times along with some bad. Some kits were sold by mail, advertised was "BUILD YOUR OWN PLANE AND TEACH YOURSELF HOW TO FLY, with our instruction manual." So send in your money and Gooooood Luck !? Other individuals were thinking, "I'm licensed to fly 'real' airplanes, I know I can fly these 'toys'." Please, take it from real airplane practices, get checked out in any new craft before you try it for yourself, or 4-bends, 3-scratches, and a break or 2 later, you might wish you had.

By 1983 I had sold a number of planes and taught many to safely fly them. Many planes were resold or traded around, some to "real" pilots, some to novices. Although my help was offered to all that would accept, some knew how to do it for themselves, some did it "to" themselves instead. Grover had agreed to let me help him assemble his kit and test fly his shiny new toy.

The day of the test flight was extremely windy and gusty. We set out to the field early, in hopes of a calmer evening, and assembled the swing seat Quicksilver. With my wind experience, I felt comfortable in the air that day, and the test flight was a great success. With the wind so strong, foot-launch and foot-landing was a breeze. As I realized later however, I had made a terrible mistake. The fact that I loved to play in the wind, and had done so most of the day, I had made it look much too easy to Grover.

Being a licensed pilot, with no experience in U.L.'s, Grover decided it was his turn to play. No matter how much I talked, begged and pleaded, that man was going to fly. "It's my plane and I'm a pilot, so I'll fly it when I want to", he said. I finally convinced him to wear a helmet and asked him for his car keys. "I'm not going to take my van into that muddy field to pick-up your pieces", I said. Still not convinced of the dangers, Grover pushed me off the nose wheel and skyed-up. It was a very shaky flight, to say the least. Up seemed to be down and right seemed to mean stall. I know that he was terrified.

I walked over to Grover's car, found the keys inside and waited there for the inevitable, which was not long in coming. As Grover streaked downwind, he started a steep right turn on his way back to the strip. Being only 75 or so ft. up and downwind, he stalled and slid toward his appointment with the ground. A more perfectly executed "cartwheel" has never been seen. On completion of this maneuver, Grover crawled through the mud out of the heap of twisted metal and wandered off in a daze. I had driven his car as close as possible, got out and shouted for him to go back to the wreck. Still dazed and wearing the helmet, Grover just wandered on. After all, he was the wreck.

After gathering up the pieces and finding that Grover wasn't hurt, a passing friend who came to help and I took him and his pieces home. Grover kept saying over and over, "That thing don't fly, it just plain don't fly !" No Grover, not anymore! MAN, WHAT A HEAVY BLOW