www.flyfunston.org


While sitting around watching the crash landings in the landing zone of Lake
McClure Tim Morley and I got a former president of the Feathered Friends to
regale us with stories about how things have changed at Fort Funston especially
over the last year. Seems like the launch has expanded, that folks are mostly
landing on launch now, even though the rules say not to, and how the edge of the
launch has become smooth and the flow laminar ("you can feel the wind eight
inches off the ground").


The story, as I remember it, was that it started with a request to allow the
sharp edge of the launch at Funston to be rounded out a bit. Years ago the
launch at Fort Funston was the top of a big dune. The idea was to run down as
fast and far as possible and then push out to get a little air time before
coming back down on the dune. Over the years the dune got undercut and a cliff
developed.


Asking for permission didn't work out so apparently mysterious entities would
appear around midnight with shovels and "round" off the edge a little bit at a
time. Not so that anyone would notice that this was different than "natural"
erosion.


Around the same time the parks people offered the pilots the results of their
chipping up downed trees and bushes to be placed in the landing area. Sure the
pilots told the parks people, we'll take all the chips you can supply.


Now it seems as though the park rangers had this annoying habit of coming over
and checking out what was up with the pilots when they really just wanted to be
left alone to do their flying. To counteract this behavior the Funston pilots
came up with the bright idea of always asking the rangers, "Hey, where are those
chips?" After a while the rangers came up a lot less often as every time they
did they would get put on the spot with that annoying question, and they'd have
to go do something about this chips. (The word was never tell a ranger that the
pilots had enough chips.)


The chips kept coming in and soon they started to creep onto the launch and
cover up the scars that were being created by the midnight labors of the hard
working ... Now it turns out that to stabilize the launch/cliff there were
old telephone poles laid down horizontally below launch and by now they were
rotting away, or at least away enough to be disposed of down the face of the
cliff (hopefully when no one was below them). But this left an unsightly
residue, re-bar sticking up. Unsightly and unhealthy.


So pilots started going down the face to remove the unhealthy re-bar that had
been left behind by the untimely demise of the old rotten logs, and when they
worked on the rebar they made sure that the hole required to get the rebar out
of the sand was the size of a VW bus. The hills side was getting rounder and
smoother.


One day the former president of Feathered Friends was down the cliff/hill side
with a pick axe. Seems like there was an area that wasn't just sand but harder
stuff. As he was pick axing away, a ranger came up and said, "Spreading chips?"
"Sure enough ranger, sir," was the quick thinking pilot's answer, and that's
what the ranger repeated into the microphone of his radio.


Soon the chips were covering all the ice plant (non native species) and the
launch had expanded back to its old extent and its contours from 30 years ago
were restored. Now pilots can launch and land into laminar flow off the ocean.
If you haven't been to Funston lately, you should stop on by.


So will there be trouble for this story told out of school? Maybe, but that's my
job. And besides I have one about why paragliders were never able to crack the
Funston nut. A very funny story about human nature, but I'll keep that in
reserve until I see the fall out from repeating this story.


Thanks, of course, to the wonderful unidentified story teller for being so
loquacious. I hope that he can remain anonymous.