[Frank Colver]

Nov 20 is our regular 3rd Sunday "Sunday Funday" at Dockweiler Beach. The NE wind conditions are predicted to wind down early this week and a return to the sea breeze is in store.

Come on out for a relaxing afternoon of flying the Windsports WW Condor 330 or your own glider (some restrictions apply).

This time of year the beach is deserted so lots of landing and launch room prevails.

Frank C.
FDGS

[Bob Kuczewski]

Thanks Frank!!!!

The current forecast looks pretty good.

The prediction currently shows 230 degrees at 13mph from 10am through sunset. That's a little cross for the west slopes but perfect for the southwest slope. Of course that may change.

See you there!!

Bob

[Frank Colver]

I'll depend on flying the Condor since I forgot and left my bumper mount HG rack at my desert place.

Frank

[Frank Colver]

Well, weather not looking good for Dockweiler this morning. Wind starting out SW and then swinging S with chances for rain increasing through the afternoon.

The 3 FDGS "regulars", JoeF, BobK, & myself will not be there today.

JoeF is having some medical problems, please mentally picture him in his usual activity of flying himself plus his innovative string kites and helping with the HG site.

Full good health recovery to you Joe

Frank C.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Thanks for the post, Frank.

I called and left a message with Greg that we wouldn't be there.   

Maybe we'll get an early Christmas present with a better forecast in December.   

[Frank Colver]

Buried deep in my subconscious, placed there by history, is always a feeling that I should be on the SoCal coast with a hang glider, during the month of November.

In the year of 1971, with the Lilienthal meet in May kicking off the worldwide sport of hang gliding, there was a lot of enthusiasm and HG activity through the summer and by fall a number of people had built new and better gliders. A couple of weeks ago, November 5th marked the 45th anniversary of the day I started construction of my rigid wing "Skysail". So, by the time November rolled around there were gliders being built and new hang gliding enthusiasts wanting to get together for flying their new wings and talking about designs. This resulted in gatherings every weekend at a couple of beach flying sites. We had the site at Torrance Beach (Now closed) and Dockweiler was being called Playa del Rey back then.

Just like today, it wasn't the best time of year for good flying conditions but lots of flying took place that month. All of this activity in November fixed deep within my mind an association of this month, November, with hang gliding at those two beach sites so it's too bad that it didn't work out, weatherwise, for me today, November 20, 2016, the regular 3rd Sunday Funday at Dockweiler.

In that 1st November of "year one" I took a one half wing structure to a gathering at Torrance Beach to show what I had designed and constructed so far. It was just an open structure without covering. The second half of the wing hadn't even been constructed yet. That's an illustration of how excited we all were to share all things hang gliding with each other. It was like a rebirth of aviation!

Frank Colver

Original wing plan for the Colver Skysail developed in summer of 1971

Skysail frame plan reduced.jpg (516.34 KiB) Viewed 3430 times