I want to learn to fly a hang glider

This is the original url I used for my hang gliding web log in Jan 2005, but it got hi-jacked in Sept 2006, so I had to move my hang gliding blog to

Shola 's Hang Glider Blog about flying across Britain.

The support dept at blogger.com helped me reclaim it, but I've decided not to move it back. Below is a summary of my hang gliding challenge. You can find more details at Hang Glider flying across Britain.


My name is Shola Ogunlokun and I'm about to embark on the flying challenge of my lifetime.

I was born in London, but left the UK when I was young, growing up and studying for my GCSE's in Nigeria. I returned to London in 1991 and since then I have been confined to the rigours of metropolitan living.

Recently I decided that I would like to fly across the UK in a hang glider, meeting the local people along the way. The only quirk being I've never flown a hang glider before!

So here is my hang gliding: Learn to fly a hang glider and then fly from Land's End to John O'Groats!


Why?
1. This will be the achivement of a life long flying dream, having always wanted to fly. I even thought of going to pilot training school in Zaria, Nigeria.

2. I want to encourage people from my ethnic background (Afro-Carribean) to take a risk and pursue their dreams no matter what it might be.

3. I want to travel across Britain, and meet the local people along the way and understand a bit more of the culture.

Am I mad?

No. I have done some research into hang gliding, and I believe that this fly challenge is possible. I am not trying to break any records, will not do anything stupid and will only attempt to make the journey once the required training has been completed. The good thing is that I don't need a provisional licence to start learning to fly a hang glider.

My hang glider flight website will chart my progress through various milestones of the challenge, and a detailed hang glider diary show all the various things I get up while preparing for the hang glider adventure.

If you have any questions or comments, please make contact by leaving a comment on my hang glider blog.

If you would like to know more about hang gliding, then visit The British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association.

Hang Glider Flying Video in the US

My hang gliding video was featured on US TV Current, it later also got shown in the UK as well. A similar hang gliding video was also sent to the BBC and featured on their website.

Hang Gliding Video BBC

My last hang glider flight was on Saturday the 14th October 2006. The forecast for the day was light winds straight down the runway, with clear skies overhead. I was thus looking forward to increasing my number of flights, so far I had 10, 7 from my independance day visit, and 3 from a visit a week later.

I also was planning to take some hang glider video footage of me flying, so I was bringing along a cameraperson to capture the moments on video.

By the time I had got my 2 children that were going with me ready, picked up the cameraperson, it was past 1:00pm in the afternoon, thus I didn't get to the airfield till 3:30pm. On arrival at the airfield, the weather was not quite as forecast, the weather people got everything right, except it was very overcast, which meant no thermals for the advanced pilots, and there were quite a lot of pilots that turned out that day, so it was taking long for everyone to get a hang glider flight.

It was almost 4:30 pm before I finished rigging the hang glider, checked it out and it was my turn to fly. The launch was pretty un-eventul, I enjoyed the short flight but ended up landing slightly crosswind, and on the wrong side of the field, so my cameraperson missed the landing.

After waiting for another 30 minutes or so, it was time for my second hang gliding flight, I launched, as the winch pulled me up in the sky, I released one of the lines attached to the glider, so I could get higher, but both lines gave way! I wasn't high enough to do a circuit, so I just landed at the other end of the runway. It was getting dark now due to the heavy cloud cover, so I knew it was time to call it a day. I was disappointed, as I had only managed one decent flight. I just hoped I had enough video footage to put together a nice film for the BBC.

A few days later, I was able to review the footage, and put together a short film about my hang gliding activities which I submitted to the BBC, so the day was not totally wasted. I'm also putting together a different film, also about hang gliding which I will submit to a US TV station.

A copy of the video I submitted to the BBC is on YouTube, you can view it below.



For those of you that don't have access to YouTube, try the version posted to Google.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6806949829846354283