Soar Points : Southland Is Ideal Setup for Getting Up, Up and Away From It All

Southern California, the home of the Space Shuttle, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Edwards Air Force Base, the X-15, “Top Gun,” Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager and some of the most ferociously fast and hair-raising flying ever witnessed by man, regresses each sunny weekend into aviation dreamland.

While high-performance jet aircraft scorch the deep blue skies high above the Southland’s more remote areas, somewhere in the air below amateur birdmen and birdwomen are taking silent flight.

Each weekend, hundreds of Southland pilots climb not into airplanes but into the harnesses of hang gliders and parachute packs, or into the baskets of hot-air balloons or the tiny cockpits of gliders. To them, the air is not something to rocket through, but rather to be ridden on--an ocean to float through without the help of an engine.

In the sparsely populated areas of the Southland--principally in and around the Perris and Antelope valleys and in desert areas--these fliers are in their natural element. For Southern California is one of the most ideal places in America for man to play at being a bird. And to learn how.

Hang Gliding The air is brisk and the sky overcast as Marine Sgt. Jay White takes a deep breath and runs off the side of Marshall Peak into the air. He is instantly swept up by the cool breeze, wheels once over the mountaintop near Crestline and soars off toward the landing zone nearly 2,000 feet below.

A fledgling hang glider pilot, White, 25, has been taking lessons for nearly three months from Dan Skadal of Hang Flight Systems, a hang gliding school based in Santa Ana.

“When I first did it, I thought it was incredible,” said the jet engine mechanic from Tustin. “I’ll never forget the view. There are no windows and you’re completely unencumbered. And I was a lot more relaxed than I expected to be.”

White likely will become one of an estimated 1,700 certified hang glider pilots in Southern California, about 1,300 of whom belong to the United States Hang Gliding Assn., headquartered in the Antelope Valley town of Pearblossom. As the governing body for the sport, the USHGA has established a certification program for instructors and five rating levels for pilots, from beginner to master, according to association executive director Cindy Brickner.

Pilot training, said Skadal, generally begins on a low, gently sloping hill, where students are taught basic control of the glider and the technique for launching it. If students prefer, they can almost immediately make a tandem flight with a qualified instructor, during which the student and instructor are suspended together in separate harnesses beneath an oversized hang glider. These flights begin from higher peaks and can last for about 15 minutes.

Skadal said it takes between 15 and 20 lessons for a person to become proficient enough to launch from a high hillside. It also takes an average of $850 in lesson fees to become proficient enough to solo, he added.

The gliders themselves, made from Dacron and supported by aluminum aircraft-type tubing, can cost from about $1,800 to $3,000, said Skadal. They can also be purchased used from dealers for between $600 and $700, he said. A helmet, harness and parachute also are needed, and go, all together, for $600 and up, Skadal said.

Modern hang gliders, said Brickner, are substantially safer than those used when the sport began nearly 20 years ago, the result of uniform design regulation by the Hang Glider Manufacturers Assn., a nationwide regulatory body.

“Also,” said Skadal, “the difference is professional instruction. Today you have knowledgeable people with you all the way. To the people who say ‘It’s crazy, it’s dangerous,’ I’d say that if a person wasn’t experienced or knowledgeable about it and did it anyway, yeah, it’s crazy and dangerous. But with good instruction and equipment, it’s a whole lot safer than driving the freeway. And it’s the closest thing to being a bird there is.”

More information on schools, gliding sites and equipment is available from the USHGA at (805) 944-5333.

Soaring Soaring is the sport of glider flying, and rising air is the name of the game. Pilots of gliders--or sailplanes, as they’re also called--are constantly on the lookout for cumulus clouds, ridge lines of hills, dust devils on the ground and other indications that a column of rising air--called a thermal--is present that will lift them and their craft higher into the sky.

Gliders are controlled in much the same way a powered airplane is, with stick and rudder pedals, and the instrument panel in the cockpit includes several of the same instruments.

However, learning to fly one is generally cheaper than learning to fly a powered craft. Still, for those who want to own their own gliders, it can be the most expensive of all the means of unpowered flight.

Bill Bartell, a Long Beach resident and a glider pilot since 1976, said craft like his sleek German competition glider can cost as much as $100,000 new. Lesser models begin at about $35,000 new and yearly insurance can cost more than $1,000, he added. The price of each plane usually includes a trailer to transport the glider to places like Hemet Ryan Airport in Hemet--where many glider pilots congregate in winter when the glider ports in desert areas become too cold to provide good thermals. Once there, it takes from five to 15 minutes to attach the wings and make the glider airworthy.

Sufficient lessons to qualify a fledgling pilot to solo cost about $2,000 and involve nearly 20 flights, said Bartell.

Pilots also must pay tow fees, since gliders must be towed to altitude by a powered craft. At Hemet, tow fees are $11 for the first thousand feet and an additional 60 cents for every 100 feet thereafter.

Gliders also are for rent at between $20 and $36 an hour.

Racing or competition gliders generally have only one seat, but all training is done in two-seat craft, with room for student and instructor.

The distinction between powered and unpowered flight is stark, said Bartell.

“This is a sport,” he said, gesturing around the field at gliders waiting on the ground waiting for thermals to appear. “Powered flying is just a means of transportation.”

More information is available from the Soaring Society of America, P.O. Box E, Hobbs, N.M. 88241-1308.

Ballooning Ballooning is expensive, which for many pilots means offsetting the cost by going commercial. Because a new, fully equipped hot air balloon can cost roughly between $10,000 and $30,000, and insurance can cost as much or more than a policy for an automobile, many pilots offer rides in their balloons for a fee, generally between about $75 and $100 an hour.

However, balloonists who fly purely for sport continue to float through the skies above Perris, Temecula and California City, among other sites. Paul Martin, a 34-year-old auto parts manager from La Verne, and his wife, Karen, 34, are two of them.

“The learning came easy for me and for her,” he said, “but for a lot of people it never comes. The landing in particular is the hard part. It’s like docking a boat--you have power on and power off all the time and you have to get a feel for it. And it changes every time you fly. I think any idiot can fly. It’s the landing that’s tough.”

Hot air balloonists generally fly in the early morning when the air is at its most still. Around sunrise, if the sky is clear, the balloon pilot and his crew will unfurl the fabric of the balloon itself, blow it full of air with an inflater fan and finally heat the air inside the balloon with propane burners attached to the top of the wicker basket in which the passengers ride.

It is the turning on and off of the burners in flight that controls the air temperature inside the balloon, and therefore its rate of ascent or descent.

For all its size, a balloon can routinely be loaded onto a truck or trailer in about half an hour, said Martin. Inflating it takes about the same amount of time, as does repacking it later, he said.

Generally, a person interested in obtaining a ballooning license is taught by a commercially rated pilot. It takes 10 hours of flight time to qualify for a private license and 35 hours for a commercial license, said Hajnal Krieg, co-owner of Scorpion Balloons in Perris, a business that sells balloons and offers rides and lessons. A check flight, written and oral test and ground school classes also are required for each license. The prospective pilot will need about $2,500 to finance the quest for a private license, said Krieg.

The Balloon Federation of America has 232 certified private and commercial pilots on its membership rolls in California.

“It takes a lot of concentration,” said Martin, “but when you’re up there you can mentally let everything go and forget what you do for a living. You can just enjoy the beauty and wonder of flying.”

More information is available from the Balloon Federation of America, P.O. Box 400, Indianola, Iowa 50125. A self-addressed stamped envelope is requested for a reply.

Parachuting Jumping from an airplane in flight qualifies as the world’s fastest unpowered sport. Sky divers plunging head first can reach speeds in excess of 200 m.p.h. However, they say, the sensation of flight remains, the feeling that they are being borne on the air.

Today, many parachuting centers, such as the Perris Valley Skydiving School at the Perris Airport, offer the opportunity to experience that sensation in one day. While the center caters to experienced free-fall jumpers--who jump from one of four aircraft the school offers--first-timers can make a free-fall jump in one of two ways.

The first, called a tandem jump, is made by the student and instructor, harnessed together. The student receives brief instruction on how to exit the plane, hold a stable position in the air and how to pull the rip cord. The second, called accelerated free fall, involves a day of instruction, after which students jump in their own harnesses and pull their own rip cords while two instructors jump and descend on either side of the students, checking basic maneuvers in the air. A tandem jump at Perris costs $157. Accelerated free-fall training and the jump cost $323

Instruction through nine levels of free-fall training, at which point a student is qualified to jump alone, runs nearly $1,400 at Perris. New equipment, including main and reserve parachutes, altimeter, helmet and jumpsuit, runs from around $1,700 to $2,500, said Ivan Henery, an instructor and owner of an in-flight video business at the Perris center. Reliable used equipment costs about $1,000, he said.

There are about 2,000 members of the United States Parachute Assn. in the association’s Western region, which includes Southern California and southern Nevada. The USPA, the sport’s policy-making body, reported 30 fatalities out of 2.2 million jumps as a result of failed parachute jumps in 1986, but, said Mike Johnston, the association’s director of safety and training, that percentage is lower than the number of yearly deaths by accidental causes in the U.S. each year.

And, said Henery, “almost all of those were a result of multiple mistakes, not just one.”

Still, said Henery, jumping is inevitably scary.

“If they’re not scared,” Henery said of first-time students, “they’re either stupid or they don’t understand the situation.”

One student, John Enoch, 37, a chauffeur from Torrance, showed what Henery said were typical reactions to his first accelerated free-fall jump.

“It’s something I’ve wanted to do as long as I can remember,” he said as he prepared to climb into one of the school’s planes. “I didn’t tell my wife I was doing this. It’s going to be a surprise when I get home and she sees the videotape of it. But right now I’m pretty apprehensive. My heart’s beating faster than it has in some time.”

His jump was smooth and uneventful, and he was elated on the ground.

“As soon as I cleared the door, I went blank,” he said, nearly breathless on the drop zone. “Then everything was wonderful. It was even more than I expected, and I recommend it highly. I’ll definitely be back.”

More information is available from the USPA at 1440 Duke St., Alexandria, Va. 22314.