Let's explore a little of what makes various air sports tick. You'll never know what might be tailor-made for you until you take a look. Regardless of what types of air sports you pursue, the tremendous airmanship skills that you will gain can make your "regular" flying even better.
Hot Air Ballooning
Balloonists face special challenges when it comes to steering their aircraft. They can change direction only by climbing or descending into air currents that flow in the direction in which the balloonist wants to travel. Altitude changes are made by activating burners to heat air inside the balloon envelope or by allowing the air to cool naturally. Since the temperature and density differential between the air inside and outside of the balloon determine whether the balloon climbs or descends, the ability to control temperature inside the balloon is critical to flight. The typical dual-propane-burner installation on a hot air balloon is mounted on a frame above the pilot?s head and generates approximately 30,000 BTU of heat.
The average weight of a basket, pilot, passengers, two fully fueled propane tanks, a colorful balloon, and the roughly 50,000 to 100,000 cubic feet of heated air that it contains totals approximately 6,000 pounds. Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) Parts 61 and 91 apply to its operation and pilot certification.
After hooking together all the pieces of a hot air balloon, the balloon itself is laid out on the ground and "cold-air" inflated by a large gas-driven fan. After "cold-air packing" the envelope, the burners are lit and flame is shot into the inside to heat the cold air. Buoyancy increases and the balloon stands upright. Balloons are not normally inflated or flown in surface winds stronger than about 10 to 12 mph. After standup, equilibrium is obtained by heating the air further (to about 200 degrees F) until the balloon remains suspended a few inches above the ground. Applying more heat will cause the balloon to fly. Once at the desired altitude, the pilot again attains equilibrium and visually maintains level flight.
The launch point for a balloon flight is generally determined by selecting a landing site and "backing up" along the wind line the distance of the intended flight. Expert pilots with thorough knowledge of local weather conditions can sometimes fly for an hour or more along a circuitous path and end up back near the takeoff point.
Landing is accomplished by allowing the air inside the balloon to cool and establishing a controlled descent to an area free of obstructions.
Ultralights
Ultralight aircraft, often called microlights outside of the United States, run the gamut from triangular kites with tubular structures to fully instrumented, sleek-looking two-seat "cruisers." Exactly what constitutes an ultralight is defined in FAR Part 103. The quality control and reliability of modern ultralights is infinitely better than at the inception of the sport.
There are five classes of ultralights today: single-seaters, two-seaters, trikes, powered parachutes, and powered paragliders. There are even float-equipped ultralights and some with integral internal parachutes.
Recreational Ultralights Are Limited To Day VFR Operations.
In the United States, a single-seat ultralight can weigh no more than 254 pounds empty and 662 pounds loaded. They are limited to a level flight, full-power maximum speed of 64 mph. Two-seaters cannot exceed 496 pounds empty and 992 pounds fully loaded.
To fly a single-seater you do not need an FAA pilot certificate or aircraft registration (N number). And, in the case of single-seat ultralights, compliance with FAR specifications and operating parameters is the sole responsibility of the pilot, not the manufacturer. Each class of ultralight is subject to varying pilot certification and configuration rules. One advertisement recently offered a kit for a new single-engine ultralight taildragger with a 40 horsepower engine (at 6,500 rpm) that would climb at 800 feet per minute, land in 150 feet, and take off in a distance of about 100 feet. The price was set at about $8,600, and time to completely build it was estimated at 75 to 100 hours. The aircraft had a five-gallon fuel tank, the standard limitation for ultralights in the United States.
Parachuting
Parachutists literally "fly" their bodies to maintain a stable free fall while plummeting toward the earth at about 110 mph. Major competitions in sport parachuting include judging on individual style, relative work, canopy relative work, and target accuracy. Individual style competition, the aerobatics of parachuting, involves difficult timed precise loops, turns, and blended maneuvers during free fall. Relative work, akin to close formation for airplanes, involves carefully planned, close positioning relative to other jumpers in a formation during free fall.
Both are planned to the split second, executed to precise degrees of heading change, and graded from the ground according to precision, form, and speed of execution by judges with high-powered observation devices.
Moving one open-palmed hand even a few inches in a terminal velocity free fall is akin to deflecting an aileron. Ask any jumper you know about the "snap roll" that can easily result.
After the parachute is opened, the nominal rate of descent drops to about 15 feet per second, and complex canopy control formations involving other team jumpers are possible. That's yet another form of competition. Carefully planned progress toward a touchdown point with a bulls-eye only 1.5 inches wide and precise canopy control in shifting winds are the final challenges of parachute competition.
After appropriate ground training, a student's first jump is either on a static line attached to the airplane (a tether that opens the parachute shortly after the student leaves the aircraft), firmly attached to the same harness as the instructor for a 30-second free fall, or an accelerated free fall jump with two qualified parachute instructors manually holding on to either side of the student jumper.
Gliding Galore
A key thought to remember about the gliding sports is that you are always going down. Even though you may be climbing in an environment of rising air, your glider is descending in that air. The only way to climb, in fact, is to find a parcel of air rising at a greater speed than you are descending. Conventional sailplanes (gliders), hang gliders, and paragliders are not powered and, although the pilot can control both direction and airspeed, the aircraft is always descending relative to surrounding air. The practical exception to that statement occurs when gliding turns into prolonged soaring.
That's where the real fun begins.
Sunny hillsides, ridgelines, mountainsides perpendicular to the wind, heat-soaked concrete masses, and other objects that store heat or direct air currents upward are sources of lift that serve as fuel for gliders.
Skillful pilots find these rising air currents and use them to climb en route from one place to another, thereby extending their range. When such ascending energy is found, pilots spiral into the updrafts for as long as possible to gain as much altitude as possible.
Soaring
Glider flying requires FAA pilot certification but not an FAA physical examination. Many current and former airplane pilots also fly gliders, and a private pilot certificate for powered airplanes reduces the experience requirements stated in FAR Part 61.
Most gliders launch from runways and grass strips on tow ropes (200 to 300 feet long) behind appropriately certificated towplanes. Gliders can also launch on gasoline-powered winches or behind automobiles. Motor gliders are, in effect, low-powered aircraft with high-glide ratios that launch under their own power. Once airborne, they either continue in powered flight or the engine is shut down and the airplane is flown as a glider.
Cross-country flights of greater than 1,000 miles are not uncommon in gliders. Mountain wave flights to altitudes in excess of 40,000 feet and speeds exceeding 100 mph have also been achieved. While power pilots would not think of flying steep-banked repetitive 360-degree turns only a few knots above a stall speed in rising thermal air currents, it is common practice for glider pilots. Absent thermals or ridge lift near mountains, the alternative is landing, often not on an airfield.
Competition is available at all levels from local to international. There is even world-class glider aerobatics competition.
Hang Gliding
We've all seen TV clips of hang glider pilots jumping off of cliffs in an attempt to "catch air" under the synthetic fabric wings of their flying machines. There is much more to it than that, but the basic principle still applies. The Wright Brothers used the sea breezes from the Atlantic Ocean at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to test aerodynamic theories long before they invested in the engines that eventually gave us powered flight. Hang gliding is one of the results.
Once sufficient speed is attained, a hang glider pilot, who literally hangs in a harness, controls the flight by shifting his or her weight in relation to a fixed horizontal control bar. Pushing forward on the bar shifts the pilot's weight, and thus the center of gravity, rearward tilting the wing up and increasing angle of attack and lift. Pulling the bar toward the suspended pilot shifts the weight forward, decreasing the angle of attack of the airfoil which results in a descent and increasing airspeed. Shifting body weight to the right in relation to the control bar makes the wing turn to the right, and a left turn is commanded by shifting the pilot's weight to the left. Landing is made with a landing flare in which the angle of attack is increased just before touchdown, much as in any other fixed-wing aircraft.
Ground training usually begins in a suspended harness where the student pilot learns to make the necessary control inputs. Initial aerial training might be done in a larger hang glider with a side-by-side harness (for student and instructor) and with ?training wheels? attached to the frame of the hang glider to allow for belly landings.
Paragliding
Paragliding replaces the fabric wing and rigid frame of the hang glider with a non-rigid airfoil that looks like a rectangular parachute wing. Directional control is accomplished by the use of toggle lines attached to the wing. I was flying a VFR departure around Sandia Mountain near Albuquerque one day, climbing through 10,000 feet in a Piper Arrow, when I saw a paraglider at my altitude. I had never before seen one and was impressed with the graceful maneuvering and exceptional skill of its pilot. Many paraglider pilots also practice the art of hang gliding, both truly one-with-the-eagles experiences.
Aerobatics
FAR 91.303 describes aerobatic flight as, "an intentional maneuver involving an abrupt change in an aircraft's attitude, an abnormal attitude, or abnormal acceleration, not necessary for normal flight." The regulation does not define normal, however.
For our purposes, aerobatics can be defined as maximum performance, professional-level flying "at the edge," usually under high-G loading. Although aerobatics can be a sport for non-professionals, the mental attitude and discipline required to fly aerobatics must be professional-class. Everyone has to start somewhere and that somewhere is to rent a certificated, aerobatics-capable airplane and pay a qualified aerobatics instructor to help you find out if aerobatics is for you. If you find it is, then the instructor can teach you to fly maneuvers so that you can become safe and proficient.
Aerobatics instruction is more expensive than primary pilot training, but it's well worth the extra cost. In a 10-hour aerobatics course you can learn the basics and even put together a sequence of maneuvers.
Don't try aerobatics with the light aircraft that you normally fly unless it is specifically certificated for aerobatics and you know what you are doing. Airplanes certificated for aerobatics are specially designed to withstand higher positive and negative G forces than the Normal or Utility Category airplanes most of us fly.
For well-conditioned pilots willing to put in the long hours of practice required to master the necessary skills, flying aerobatics can be a unique and rewarding challenge. Making it all look easy as you blend one precise, high-performance maneuver smoothly into another is the tough part. Unusual attitudes are the stock-in-trade of the aerobatic pilot: aileron and barrel rolls, precision spins, loops (square, inside, outside, etc.), Immelman turns, extreme stalls, and all the rest. The objective is always to be more precise and more uniform.
The Bottom Line
All this really sounds great, doesn't it? You're thinking, "I want to do it all." Bottom line, the best way to explore what's out there is to talk to people in your area who are dedicated to and are participating in the sports in which you're interested. Find out how to reach them by referring to the information in the air sports chart accompanying this article.
Now that I've shaken the stick, you've got it!
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