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On Monday morning I was hoping for a strong south wind in the morning to help me run with my 71 pound (32 kgs) Wills Wing T2C-144 behind the low and slow scooter tow. The forecast was for 10 mph in the morning but it didn't look that strong.

I had set the glider up the night before and covered it with my Marilyn Nichols' glider cover to keep the dew off the sail. I didn't need the extra weight and I wanted the glider to fly ASAP. It would be best if it came right off my shoulders.

 The point of this exercise was to run with my glider with my harness and get it right. I had already flown twenty three times mostly using the Wills Wing Falcon 195 (24 kg and 54 lbs). Would I be able to do the same with the T2C?

My flight plan was to not get into the air. I wanted Steve to just pull me hard enough to help me run on the flats and help get the glider flying off my shoulders but not pull me hard enough to have the glider get me off the ground. I am focusing on the launch and I'm not concerned at all about the flying, and a lot less concerned about the landing relative to the launching. I also didn't want to have to hike the glider back to the launch. There are wheels on the Falcon and you just pull it back to launch. Not true for my T2C.

I also wanted to get just a little help from the scooter tow. Just enough that made the run appear to be on a slight incline, a flat slope launch. I didn't need the rope yanking me around. I just needed it to give me a bit of help, the as close to the same help I would get from gravity as possible, but no more. I'm definitely testing Steve's methods here with my demands.

With the low power scooter is was easy for Steve to adjust the throttle for just a little pressure, a little pulling. My plan was to push out when I wanted to stop and Steve would back off on the throttle then and I wouldn't have to overrun the rope.

Billy Vaughn came out to lurk he said, but actually to help with the critiques. The first issue he noticed was my short strides. One often hears about taking long strides as the glider lifts off your shoulders and you accelerate into the run. I wasn't taking these progressively longer steps.

Also the glider wasn't coming off my shoulders early enough. I may have been holding it down with my hands, as I wasn't used to pushing back on the leading edges of these aerodynamic down tubes, as I was on the Falcon round down tubes. But it turned out that the problem was most likely not my grip (which was probably loose to begin with), but rather my low angle of attack.

I was setting the glider at would be the proper attitude for a flat slope launch, but there was no slope in front of me. This meant that the glider would have a hard time coming off my shoulders until I got quite a few steps into my run. For launching and running on flat ground I needed to set the nose up a bit more at a somewhat higher attitude (higher than I would use on a flat slope), so that the glider could come off my shoulders quickly and then I could pull back more to keep it at the correct angle of attack.

When I did this the hang straps got tight quickly and the run was much easier as the glider was flying right away. I could concentrate on lengthening my stride, rotating my hands in place on the downtubes, pulling the down tubes back and then stopping the run after I was just about ready to come off the ground.

I got five runs in before my crotch muscles began feeling the effort. I had strained them a couple of days previously when the glider got away from me when I held it down too much. They didn't bother me on Sunday at all, but with the extra weight I could begin to feel them, and I didn't want to strain them again. Maybe the twenty miles on the bike on Sunday evening was an issue also.

What have I learned (actually, what has my body and muscles had a chance to learn or relearn through repeated practice) through this exercise?

1. Hold the glider with your shoulders and just use the palms of your hands to push back on the leading edges of the down tubes. Don't hold the glider up with your hands.

2. Rotate your hands on the downtubes at the same location where you had them with the grapevine "grip," not up the downtubes. Don't rotate with the elbows, but with the wrists. Pull back after rotating with my fingers on the leading edge of the down tubes.

3. You can keep the glider on the ground have it is ready to fly just by easily pulling in, if you have kept your hands where they started.

Of course, I have heard all these things for years, but it is different actually practicing these things over and over again and getting your body to actually listen and do the right thing and then do it again.

Later with all the south winds, I got the T2C out and just ran with it into the wind concentrating on my hand placement and use.