My First Time Flying 3,000 Feet High in the Air in a Hang Glider
I took a completely unplanned trip flying in the air—and I’m afraid of heights!
A few years ago, in the middle of December, I took a trip to Florida to spend an “early Christmas” with my parents and siblings. Since there are so many of us, there’s really no way we can all get together during the holidays, so some years we all go to mom and dad’s house to celebrate Christmas a week or two before the actual holiday.
On this particular trip, one of my brothers decided to give a gift to a family member that turned out to be a bit more complicated than he expected. About five miles from my parent’s house, there’s a tiny airfield where people fly ultralight planes, take flying lessons, and ride in various types of aircraft like helicopters, hang gliders, and more. My brother had decided that, for this Christmas, he would give a ride on a hang glider to one of my siblings as a Christmas present.
Flying is a Scary Experience for Some People
Of course, this was a thoughtful and generous gift, but he forgot to check with the “receiver” of the gift to see if they would appreciate going on a flight a few thousand feet in the air, riding on an aircraft that has no seat belt around your waist and no tray table in front of you. As it turned out, that person was far too afraid to accept the ride, and so, being the generous brother I am, I volunteered to take the flight instead. Both the giver and the receiver of this unusual Christmas present were generous in letting me take the ride instead, so it was a win-win for everyone.
After we drove to the airfield, we got out and looked around at the flat, green stretch of land surrounded by the thick Florida forest and watched as an ultralight plane in the sky made some loop-de-loop moves and eventually landed on the grassy landing strip. We followed the pilot of the plane into an office building, where we talked with the staff for a while about what to expect on the flight; we discussed the basic safety rules, how hang gliders work, and more. Then I filled out the paperwork in order to take the ride.
Before Flying, I Had to Become A Flight School Student (!)
I was surprised to learn that in the USA, there are only two ways you can fly on a hang glider:
- By having a pilot’s license
- By being a student enrolled in a flight school
So how was this going to work? Get this: I had to become a flight student and enroll in a flying class, and even join the US Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association. I certainly wasn’t expecting that!
The good news was that they had a “one-month” membership at the “student/affiliate” level, and it only cost $5.00. So as a newly minted flight school student, I took my one and only flying lesson, which consisted of listening to the pilot talk for about 15 minutes, then repeating back some of what he had told me. Done! Flight school was over, now it was time to fly.
I went outside and got strapped into the glider. It’s a bit awkward riding in a glider as a passenger. You have to squeeze into what looks like a big sleeping bag suspended from one of the top bars, and it hangs right above the pilot, so you’re essentially laying on top of him. It feels and looks a bit weird, but it’s not too bad.
The glider was attached by a cable to a small plane, and it slowly took off, towing us behind it. We lifted up and circled around and around, gaining altitude until we reached our maximum loft, where the pilot told me we were about 3,000 feet up in the air.
While we were being towed by the plane, it was really windy and very loud because we could hear the airplane’s propeller. But then, when we reached the 3,000-foot mark, about six and a half minutes into the ride, the pilot popped the tow line from the plane, and we were on our own power for the rest of the ride.
This was the coolest part: we floated around very quietly, smoothly, and gracefully. The pilot had a little handlebar to steer the craft with, both left and right, and up and down. I had to lean my body along with his as we tilted the glider in order to steer it in the direction we wanted.
It was fun to see just how long we could make the ride last. If we pointed down, we could gain some momentum, and then, by pulling up at the last second, we’d float weightlessly for just a second. This was a lot like riding on a roller coaster, where the car speeds down the track, down, down, down, down and then crests a hill, and just for a second, your body lifts out of your seat, and your stomach feels like it’s flying up and away.
We did some dips, dives, swirls, and more. It was neat to see the amazing number of lakes surrounding the airfield. In Lake County, Florida, where we were, there are over 1,000 lakes, and we could probably see most of them from our vantage point.
Hang Gliders are a Very Quiet Way to Fly
Since there’s no motor or propeller on a glider, it’s an amazingly quiet ride, and you really get a sense of what it feels like to be a bird. In particular, birds that soar without flapping their wings, like condors or hawks. We were flying just like they do, holding out our giant sailcloth and aluminum wings, occasionally catching thermals that took us up higher, and eventually, slowly making our way to the ground.
The ride itself took about 13 minutes and 15 seconds. As I mentioned, the first six and a half minutes were spent being towed up into the air, and the remainder was spent just calmly soaring back to where we took off from. The glider had wheels, so when our flight was over, we softly landed like an airplane does, very gently touching down. The only difference between the hang glider and an airplane is that we had no brakes, so it just came to a stop naturally in the grassy field.
After we landed, I pulled out my phone that I had zipped into my jacket pocket and looked at the screen. Before we took off, I wanted to be able to track the route we would take, but since I didn’t have any hang gliding or aviation-specific apps on my phone, I was bummed that I wouldn’t be able to track it. But I had a last-second thought: “My running app has a GPS tracker in it… I wonder if that would work?” I quickly pressed “record” on it to track my “run” and then got into the glider.
So, after landing, I was giggling as I looked at my phone — it had worked! My running app showed that I had run almost eight and a half miles at an average pace of just 2:10 per mile! Not only that, but my route showed that I had run a bizarre, squiggly, pretzel-shaped route all over streets, forests, and on top of lakes. It was hilarious… but I couldn’t believe that it actually worked!
The only thing it didn’t quite track accurately was the change in elevation: it claimed I had only climbed 166 feet, so it was off by about 2,800. Oh well. Running apps can’t do everything.
Helpful Tips for a First-time Hang Gliding Experience
The overall experience was, for me, a total blast and very simple and easy to do. It was a delighful day excursion. Actually, it didn’t even take a day: we left around 7:00 am, and were done by lunchtime. But there are a few things I learned worth sharing for anyone interested in hang gliding.
#1: Wear a long-sleeve shirt or a light jacket.
Even if you’re flying in a warm and humid place like Florida, where I was, it’s still worth bundling up. Once you get high up in the air, with all the humidity and clouds and the wind zipping by you quickly, it’s really cold up there. That was kind of surprising to me. I may have been over-prepared, actually, but I was really glad once we were up in the air that I had a scarf wrapped around my neck to keep the wind out of my shirt.
#2: Don’t Bring or Wear Anything Loose or That Isn’t Strapped Down!
I wore a helmet, which was strapped to my head, and I emptied my pockets ahead of time, so there were no surprises with things falling out of my pants or anything like that. But one this I forgot was my sunglasses: at one point, we did a sort of corkscrew maneuver, which made my sunglasses fall off my face. It happened so fast I didn’t even have a second to respond or try to catch them: they were just gone. Poof!
In this case, I had borrowed someone else’s sunglasses because I had forgotten my own. I felt bad, but they were cheap $5 gas station sunglasses. I’m really glad that was the case, though, because even though this trip was a Christmas present and therefore free to me, if I had lost my $200 Ray-Bans, I would have been really upset. So this could have been a very expensive lesson but wasn’t in my case because I was lucky. … somewhere, my brother’s sunglasses are at the bottom of a lake in Florida to this day, and I’m glad they aren’t mine.
Pro tip: if you wear glasses, or if you have expensive sunglasses, make sure to buy some croakies to keep them on your head during the flight.
#3: If You Can, Record Your Flight
It’s really cool to be able to watch yourself on the flight, and it’s even cooler to show your friends and family who weren’t there to see it. Even if people are there with you, standing on the ground and watching as you take off, as soon as you’re in the air, you turn into a little white triangle in the sky, and it’s painful for them to try to look up into the sun and watch your flight.
So if you have the opportunity to have your flight filmed, pay the extra money and do it. It’s worth it! In my case, it only cost $25. The hang glider already had two GoPro cameras mounted on it, so I just paid them to put some new SD cards in them and press “record.” I’m glad they did: it gave me a way to remember that trip forever, and it was a great way to show the people on the ground “what it looked like from above.”
My Conclusion On Flying in a Hang Glider
When I took this flight, I had taken a ride on a hot air balloon once before, and this was a similar experience: a hang glider makes for a surprisingly smooth ride.
Also, I’m pretty afraid of heights, and even though I was thousands of feet above trees, lakes, and my friends and family members, I really wasn’t scared. Honestly, the scariest part was when the plane first took off and we started lifting off the ground. Once we actually got up in the air, everything was fine.
So, the whole flight experience was around $100 (well, it was actually free, in my case), it took almost no training at all, and it was a really fun way to spend a weekend morning during a holiday trip with my family.
My recommendation? Do it! Even if you’re afraid of heights: just tell yourself it’s going to be fine once you get up in the air. I think you’ll have a blast and you won’t regret it.
