Go Back Home(Below) Two happy boys.
Looking SW at the sound, a shallow sea 20 miles wide and 20
feet deep. Jockey's Ridge has pretty steep slopes in the
primary wind directions NE and SW which make for good lift
and close in flying. N is not so good.
The first day we met we flew
after each other, twisting, diving and chasing until dusk.
Next day was a loss- we found out later that we both
spent the day walking the beach with our wives placating
them for being abandoned on their beach vacation.
During the 5 days hundreds of
school children made the 15 minute trek from the parking lot
to the top. One other Zagi appeared, but had no interest and
walked to the other end to fly. A guy with a Slegers
electric hawk had some hair raising flights.
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It's May, and the flying in Toronto is still pretty cold. Straight into Spring comes Tim Clemens and his planes to North Carolina. His gang of flyers at home has a good cliff. I had to watch him pretty closely to figure how to do "Air combatting". My own home in central Virginia is sadly lacking in vertical cliffs although we have plenty of 2500 foot mountains. The Appalachains are so old that they're rounded off and covered with trees. So we fly far out over the trees and can't try to bash into each other- I climb enough trees as it is!These dunes are formed by wind and have pretty steep faces on NE and SW sides, the winds of Summer and Winter. Months of gently Southerlies trickle sand slowly toward the North, and then one Northerly buster moves it all back again in a few days. The North Westers will eventually win and drive these dunes the 30 miles to join the mainland- and then another set of dunes will rise up from the ocean due to water currents and the whole thing begins again- every 20,000 years. Oh yes, all the 2000 buildings now on the banks will be gone. Or a hurricane might get some of them first. (From Orrin Pilkey cited in Ribbon of Sand)Driving North on Wednesday May 22, 2002 the Norther was blowing 30 mph all day. Sand was blowing off the tops of the 30 foot high ocean dune continuously, forming a ceiling over the highway. The wind whistled past my roofrack while driving at 55+30 mph = 85 apparent wind! On the way home I was really hot with all the windows open because the apparent wind was only 25 mph. |
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(Below) Tim and his "Kid". We were adopted by 2 kids, who took it on themselves to bring back our planes after they came down. If my kid reached Tim's plane first, he would hand it to this fellow who then brought it back to Tim. Meanwhile Tim had left a screwdriver and a tiny screw on top of the sand at a different part of the dune's top. Two days later he walked over there and there they were, still sitting on top |
(Below)
The town of Nags Head and the Atlantic. At the bottom of the
hill is a collapsed hang glider from the Kitty Hawk Kites
school. I have never seen sustained flight by one of these
gliders although with wind NE at 20 or so they were able to
make two turns and make about 20 second flights.
In 1911 the by-then famous
Orville Wright came back here and set a glider endurance
record of 9:45 minutes which stood until 1938. They had made
over 1000 glides in 1902 and learned to fly in the process,
frequently catapulting themselves into 30 mph winds- brave
lads! At that time there were only 3 giant dunes, none along
the ocean as there are now. Neither were there trees, roads,
or much of a town- just 50 people in fishermen's families
and Lifesavers along 150 miles of sand bar.