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The following is about my very first attempt to fly my Birdman Sports Albatross Hang Glider. I believe I might have told a few of you before how in 1973 I saw Ken Messenger on children’s television program “Magpie” Anyway I contacted Ken and his company built me my very first Hang Glider. The minute I was informed that it was ready to be picked up, I wasted no time in rushing down to Marlbough in Wiltshire to pick it up, only to be informed at the factory that Ken was attending the very first British Hang Gliding championship at Mere and that he had my glider with him. So off I went again trying to locate Ken and the place called Mere. Only to be told that he was very busy taking part in the competition, however, he did have my brand new glider and after paying him in cash, I finally took delivery of my new “Pride & Joy”. Unfortunately, nobody had time to show me how to fly it, come to think of it nobody even showed me how to put it all together. Anyway that was just a mild complication, I could work it all out for myself when I got home. At that moment all I wanted to do was rush home, put it together and jump off the nearest hill somewhere close by. Therefore after watching the Hang Glider Competition and the then very famous Wills brothers clean up all the competition prizes. I drove home at break neck speed with my imagination runny riot, as to what I was going to achieve and show the world I could do with my newly acquired piece of hardware.
All that week after I arrived home from work, I would assembled the glider on my back lawn, you would not believe how many different ways I invented to achieve this and even now I’m not sure I ever did it the correctly way. Mind you with my lateral thinking, I convinced myself that I had found a better way than all the so called experts.
The very next weekend, along with Emily my wife, and Trevor Pearce one of my friends from my country band, we all went down to Sizewell Beach to assemble this giant kite (180 squares). This took us a couple of hours, mainly because all the time I was talking to Trevor explaining something I knew absolutely nothing about, but was trying my hardest to sound like an expert. As you might have guessed I had to make a couple of changes and minor alterations when a few of the bolt holes did not line up. When it was finally constructed, I found a large rabbit hill amongst a thick gathering of Blackberry bushes, which must have been all of a meter high. This I preceded to tell Trevor would be high enough for the first test flight of the day. Trevor then shocked me by asking how far I was going to fly up the beach. Somehow, I managed to evade the question, but I hoped I’d left him believing that it was going to be in miles rather than meters. At one time he even asked if I had clearance to fly from RAF Bentwaters the local military airfield about 12 miles away. Gee this guy seems to think he knows more than me when it came to flying.
Anyway I climbed into the seated harness strapped myself in, and picked up the glider and somehow managed to position myself on the top of the rabbit warren with the nose of the glider pointing out to sea. That much I had learnt while at Mere. Where I’d seen the so called expert nose men throwing grass into the air. Although to be honest at the time I believed it was some sort of ritual, a bit like making a cross on your chest.
The nose has to always point towards the wind in order that it might pick up the kite so you can fly, or that was how I keep answering most of the questions that were being fired at me. At this stage, I must add that there was absolutely no wind, so I tried jumping up and down on the rabbit warren, but with no luck. All I could hear was the flapping of the sail being generated by my frantic jumping up and down in order that I might get airborne. I felt like Tony Hancock the comedian in a scene from one of his famous films, where he turns up at an airport dressed as a chicken and asks the booking clerk “Can I fly to France”. I heard one guy tell his little boy that I was going to fly to France. Gee that guy had more faith in my Hang Glider than I did. By this time I had secretly settled on hopefully making it to the beach just in front of my one meter high rabbit warren.
After about an hour of me jumping up and down, which I might add was all taking place in front of a very large growing crowd. All of a sudden out of nowhere a large gust of wind just picked me and my glider up and tossed me over backwards. What had happened I did not have a clue? Not understanding the principles of flying, it was a crazy thing to do. With what I know now, it is a wonder I did not kill myself that day. The eastern coast line of England can be quite treacherous at times, especially when it comes to wind. It’s nothing to see the wind suddenly whip up to around 20mph. With a wind like that instead of going to France I believe I would have ended up in Wales going backwards. I guess I should also add that most flyers who came after me, at least had the help of others to not only help them build their gliders but to also advise them on the best way to fly it.
Anyway, my antics on Sizewell beach seemed to amuse the still steadily growing crowd, leaving me to feel like Co-Co the clown. I could also see that my sudden backward somersault amused the crowd to such a point that’s by now there were tears of laughter streaming down their faces. As they watched me desperately trying to get my car keys from my trousers pocket, while all entangled up in a mass of steel wires, aluminum tubing, sail material and the seat harness. Emily and Trevor then had to race back to my car to get some spanners to release me from my imprison position, and that took them another twenty minutes. While all the time I was trussed up within the heap of scrap. I was further humiliated having to answer some of the gathered crowds silly questions. Like, “Will you be flying again today mister”, or “Is that supposed to happen”. Then there was the usual, “Did it hurt”, while one young kid said he thought the wings were going to flap. One little old lady walked away saying that she could not see what all the fuss was about with these new fangled Hang Gliders, claiming that I hadn’t gone far, she also thought I was going to whiz up and down the beach, her words not mine.
The whole event was very humiliating for me in front of all those holidaymakers. As slowly, Emily and Trevor started to undo as many nuts and bolts as they could. The whole time Trevor was wetting himself laughing at me. It took them a further fifteen minutes to extricate me from the mess that was once my pride and joy. The net result was £50 worth of damage, I had only been off the ground about a foot and that was backwards at a speed of ten mile an hour. Trevor even measured it out to a distance of around five meters. That means that the flight cost me something in the region of £10 per meter. At these rates, it would have been cheaper to fly with Freddie Laker to New York.
I then had to contact Birdman Sports to organise them to send me some spare parts. This took several weeks, as we did not have telephones in those days it was all done by letter. Needless to say, I had to answer many many questions as the factory was always interested just in case it was their workmanship that had failed. I made up some cock and bull story that I had had a great flight, but unfortunately I had landed rather hard. It seemed to satisfy them and they sent the necessary parts, but not before, I sent them the postal order for £50.
Once I had rebuilt the glider, I started worrying that I might have weakened something during the crash and at that time, I was not game to write another letter to Birdman. Therefore, I just put it all into the back of my mind and took it down to the beach once again. Only this time Emily was my only helper and I found a spot that was deserted and secluded. However, it was all to no avail as I still did not get the dam thing up off the ground, nor did I at the second and third attempts. The whole exercise was very frustrating and I really did not have any idea how I was going to progress past this point of my flying career. For some reason I strongly believed that I could run down a runway, pick up some wind and just take off and fly away. My complete conversation with anybody who would listen was always about flying. And so you can imagine how I continually bored my wife. I’m sure there were times when she wished I would just fly away.
I remembered at some time I had been told about a local guy named David Cook, who was into Hang Gliding. Unfortunately, I had never met him, even though he worked at Richard Garrets a company I had also worked for a few years earlier. Anyway after my third unsuccessful attempt at trying to fly at Sizewell I called it a day. As I was leaving the site, I caught sight of a car pulling a very long trailer with what looked like a giant Hang Glider on board. This had to be David Cook, so I sped after it, and followed it all the way to his house in Aldringham. I watched him pull into his drive and through some trees where he parked. I parked on the roadside out front of his house and ran up to introduced myself.
And the rest is history as they say.
Terry
