Brian and Glenn’s First Flights!

Glenn began his training right before the Covid pandemic started. We completed ground school, wing control and even made a couple trips to the sledding hill all within a week or so. He commented on how quickly training was progressing. With everything in place we just needed the right weather conditions to get him flying. That’s when the country shut down to “flatten the curve”.
Months passed before we were able to meet again. Glenn’s skills had admittedly gotten a little rusty during the long break. We spent a few sessions getting him back up to speed with wing handling and a refresher in the simulator. Then it was waiting on the weather again, like we were months ago. We didn’t have to wait anywhere near as long this time fortunately. Thursday evening proved to be perfect. We met at Bigfoot airfield by Lake Geneva because the winds were forecast to be favorable there.
We set up for a reverse launch in the steady breeze. Glenn did great! With his girlfriend Shell watching from the side of the field, he brought the wing up perfectly, turned, added throttle and in just a few steps, found himself in the sky on his own for the first time. After about 10 minutes in the sky performing the skills we rehearsed in the simulator earlier he set it down safely in the middle of the field. Congratulations Glenn!!
The next morning was Brian’s turn. Gifted with a flexible work schedule he was able to take the morning off and meet at the airport. The grass was pretty wet from dew so we were in no hurry to give it a go. After the grass dried a bit we rigged him up and went for it. He was a natural. His launch was textbook, his flying was well controlled and his landing was midfield and safe. More than anyone could hope to do on their first flight. Way to go Brian!
Other happenings this week at Madcity Paragliding include:
There were a couple of impromptu gathering of pilots this week. First was at Syvrud airport with Sean coming up from Illinois, as well as Jeff, Alex and Greg.
Friday evening a good size group flew from Sauk. Cody, Dave, Jade, Eric, Matt, Jeff, David and myself all were airborne. Mariyan took a lucky young lady on a tandem flight with Cody tagging along by his side.
Jade was back and made several flights with the trike. She has sorted out her landings now and is setting the machine down softly after each flight.
Jade’s husband Eric, has decided to add wheel launch to his skill set so we began training him for that.
Eric J “saw the picture” or experienced a well timed flare and is now working on making that routine.
Keith wore out his Top80 with over 500 flights. Rather that continuing to maintain it decided to swap motors to an Atom80.
Curt stopped by for some help tuning his Moster 185+. A carb rebuild and adjustments to the low jet got it purring again.
Jae and Andy were out to the hanger for an orientation. Sounds like they are both in. Who can blame them?