[crickets calling] WILLEM: Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

We're presenting a series of programs that record the beauty, diversity, and character of northern New England's natural world.

Today, we're in a unique location.

We're at the Morningside Flight Park on Route 12, just south of Claremont, New Hampshire, in the Connecticut River Valley.

And we're going to take a little ride in a tandem ultralight to see how hawks do it in the thermals.

It's a beautiful day for it.

The air is rising off the fields, and we ought to be able to stay in the air for quite a while.

So, come on along, because the next half hour is an adventure you won't want to miss.

♪ Well, we're in for a real treat today.

And we're going to take a flight up here to see how hawks fly the thermals on hot days like today.

And we're very fortunate to be here with Steve Prepost, who's the assistant manager and chief flight instructor of Morningside, right?

STEVE: Pleasure to me you!

WILLEM: Oh, the pleasure, I hope, will be all mine.

[chuckling] Now, you've been here a while?

STEVE: I've been here a while.

I grew up in the area.

I started flying when I turned 19.

That’s about 14-15 years ago now.

WILLEM: And you're still with it?

STEVE: Still with it.

Flying every day, seven days a week.

WILLEM: Is that right?

STEVE: I love it.

WILLEM: You must love it.

Now, we're going to try to do today what hawks do, right?

STEVE: Yeah.

So, we're going to try to catch a thermal, and I'll explain to you how thermals work.

And, hopefully, we'll gain some altitude and show you how they migrate.

WILLEM: Okay.

Hawks need thermals to migrate?

STEVE: Well, they can flap and use all their energy.

They don't need thermals, but if they want to conserve energy, they use that rising air to circle in and climb and they can travel clear across country using very minimal energy.

WILLEM: Isn’t that neat.

Okay.

We're going to try to do the same thing?

STEVE: Exactly because we can't flap our wings.

So, we're just like a bird.

[chuckling] WILLEM: I can but it won’t help!

But we're going to get towed to altitude by an ultralight and then STEVE: We're going to release from the ultralight and then on our descent down we're going to try to find thermals.

And I'll show you how to work the thermal just like a red-tailed hawk or a broad-winged hawk of any kind, and we'll see if we can go up.

WILLEM: That's great.

Okay, so why don't we do it?

STEVE: Let's do it!

WILLEM: Okay!

STEVE: Are you ready to go?

WILLEM: Yeah.

Are you?

STEVE: I'm ready.

[chuckling] WILLEM: That's more important.

STEVE: Okay.

We're ready.

Let's do it.

Here we go, sir.

Off we go.

♪ [propeller whines] Once we get enough airspeed, we take off.

Here we go.

♪ [wheels cutting through grass] WILLEM: This is great.

STEVE: Just like that.

Heeheehee.

♪ [propeller whines] And now, I gently keep his wheels on the horizon line and his rudder in the middle.

Off we go.

WILLEM: Very nice.

♪ [propeller whines] STEVE: You'll feel those thermals as we get pulled through them.

WILLEM: Yeah?

STEVE: And you'll feel little bumps like that.

That's a thermal.

And as he pulls us through the lift, we go up, and then wherever there's lift, there’s sinking air.

And so, we go down immediately after that.

WILLEM: Beauty!

♪ I always wondered how it felt to be a bird!

♪ [Willem chuckling] STEVE: It's a great time to be alive because this is the only time in history where we can actually be a bird.

WILLEM: I used to watch the barn swallows.

When there were thunderstorms, they'd come out on the fly just for fun.

They’d get tossed all around the sky.

This is great.

We’re gaining altitude here in good shape.

STEVE: That's another thermal.

You can really feel how the wind changes.

It lifts our wing up.

WILLEM: Yep.

♪ STEVE: There's actually a hawk right there.

He's in a thermal.

WILLEM: Oh, yeah!

I see him.

STEVE: And he's thermaling just like we're going to later.

Beautiful.

WILLEM: There’s a bunch of cow down there relaxing in the sun.

♪ [chuckling] ♪ STEVE: Now, being aerotowed is a fairly new invention being pulled by a plane.

It's only been in the last probably 10 to 15 years that we've been pulled aloft.

That's one way to get aloft.

And that's the easiest.

And it's a really great thing because now we can tow right to where the lift is.

He can place us right in the center of the thermal at whatever altitude and we can stay up for hours.

My longest flight is 6.5 hours.

WILLEM: Wow!

That's great.

STEVE: The other way to get aloft, of course, is by running off a mountain.

You foot-launch into the wind, walking, jogging, and running until the glider supports your weight, and you go on your descent.

And it's the hill that falls away from you.

[Willem chuckling] WILLEM: You hope.

You hope.

STEVE: It always will!

It always will.

The science of hang gliding is proven.

That's a strong thermal right there.

Very strong!

WILLEM: Now, this all started with Leonardo da Vinci?

STEVE: That's correct.

One of the founders of flight.

WILLEM: What did he say about flying?

STEVE: He had a quote beautiful quote and he said, Once you have tasted flight, you will then forever turn your eyes skyward.

For there you have been, and there you long to return.

[Willem laughing] WILLEM: Did he ever get a glider going in good shape?

STEVE: Actually, Leonardo da Vinci had lots of plans, and he had helicopter plans as well.

WILLEM: Wow.

STEVE: The first gentleman that really ended up taking off, literally, and hang gliding was Otto Lilienthal.

WILLEM: Ah, yeah?

STEVE: I believe it was in the 1800s, he built a hill.

And he had a few hundred I'm not sure exactly how many a few hundred good consecutive safe flights.

And then, Francis Rogallo ended up being the modern founder of hang gliding.

WILLEM: Yep.

The Rogallo wing; I remember seeing it in Popular Science.

STEVE: Yeah!

Yeah, that was very, very popular.

A lot of people got their start in hang gliding back then.

WILLEM: How high are we here?

STEVE: Right now?

We're about, I would say, a thousand feet, maybe even 1,200.

WILLEM: Oh, is that all?

STEVE: That’s all!

Morningside’s right over there in front of us.

♪ [propeller whines] Now, he has caught a thermal.

That's why the air’s so bumpy over here.

But we're actually climbing at a pretty good speed with this lift on my right wing.

From up here, we can see all of the Green Mountain chain in front of us.

We're towing out towards that's Bromley.

And over here is Okemo.

And that's Killington over on that side down there.

WILLEM: Oh, yeah.

That mountain there in front of us now, that’s Mount Monadnock in Keene.

WILLEM: Yep.

Yep.

♪ [propeller whines] Beautiful river.

STEVE: Oh, it's gorgeous.

I see canoers canoe down it all the time.

WILLEM: I've been on it myself about a dozen times.

[Willem chuckling] Right beneath where we are and I didn't know where I was at the time.

STEVE: I'd say we're now about 2,000 feet.

WILLEM: Yeah?

♪ [propeller whines] STEVE: So, from up here, they say an eagle would be able to see a mouse in the field.

WILLEM: That's what I hear.

STEVE: Absolutely incredible.

They must have telescopic vision.

WILLEM: Pretty good eyes.

STEVE: You see the way the shadows are moving below us on the ground?

WILLEM: Yeah.

STEVE: That's a clue as a hand glider pilot to what's happening with the air above.

We can't really look up at the clouds and see them, but we can see the shadows.

So, the shadows tell me three things.

It tells me first how large the cloud is.

That's really important because the larger the cloud, sometimes the more lift there is.

We wouldn't want to get sucked up into a cloud.

WILLEM: Uh no!

[chuckling] STEVE: The second thing it tells me is how fast the wind is blowing.

And the direction is the third thing.

So, with those clues, I can calculate in my mind where the thermals might drift to.

And that helps me guide into the center of the lift just like a hawk would and fly downwind with it while staying aloft.

♪ [wind rushing by] We're at about 3,000 feet now.

If you look on your right wing, you'll see we're pretty much level with Mount Ascutney.

WILLEM: Oh, yeah.

Straight on.

♪ [wind rushing by] Great mountain!

That’s the middle of a volcano that never erupted.

STEVE: Beautiful.

WILLEM: We're over the interstate.

Interstate 91, north and south.

WILLEM: Yep.

♪ [wind rushing by] STEVE: There's another little thermal that we just felt.

WILLEM: Yep.

[wind rushing by] Those are the beauties that make airline passengers nervous.

STEVE: That's correct.

We love those as hang glider pilots because that means there's lift.

♪ [propeller whines] On multiple occasions, I have flown with eagles and red-tailed hawks and vultures when I'm thermaling and trying to stay aloft.

If you're very quiet and you don't do any radical movements in the air, they'll think you're just another bird and they'll come up right to you and thermal with you.

There's a beautiful cloud here up in front of us that Rhett is towing us to.

We should be able to find a nice thermal underneath it.

How are you doing?

WILLEM: I'm okay!

STEVE: Excellent.

WILLEM: So far.

[chuckling] STEVE: There's the thermal he found on our left wing.

♪ [propeller whines] WILLEM: Woah.

You feel youself going up.

STEVE: Oh, yeah!

Like an elevator going straight up.

WILLEM: Yep.

Now, when he lets us go, do we fly more slowly on our own?

STEVE: Yes.

When we release from him, we will slow down by about 5 to 10 miles an hour.

And then, we will fly with the air instead of through it.

It won't be so bumpy because we'll be flying in the air just like a bird.

It should be a lot smoother transitioning in between the lifting and sinking air.

WILLEM: Yeah.

STEVE: What a view!

WILLEM: It is lovely, yep.

♪ [wind rushing by] STEVE: There's that thermal again as we start to climb and rise with it.

WILLEM: And the altitude now is?

STEVE: We're very close to cloud base, which is probably 5,000 feet.

I would say we're running 4,500.

There it is again.

[wind rushing by] ♪ [wind rushing by] So, this is where the birds will climb to, right up underneath the cloud, and they'll try to sit here in the cloud.

We just released from the ultralight.

WILLEM: I wondered what that was.

[Willem chuckling relievedly] STEVE: And we’re going to try to find that thermal.

STEVE: Haha.

We're free as a bird now, Willem.

WILLEM: You’re right.

That was a shock.

♪ [Willem chuckling relievedly] ♪ STEVE: So, birds end up soaring to save energy.

WILLEM: Yeah.

STEVE: They don't have to flap because the air is rising faster than they’re descending.

Right now, I could feel lift on my right wing.

So, as we move our feet and hips to the right, we can fly in it.

And this is how they circle and stay in the rising air.

Just like this.

WILLEM: Yep.

Fantastic.

♪ You suppose if we behave we can come back as birds?

[Willem chuckling] STEVE: I sure hope so.

WILLEM: Most writers come back as cockroaches.

So, I've got to mend my ways.

This is lovely.

STEVE: So, now, the air is a lot smoother, a lot gentler.

We're not being pulled or forced through the air.

We're flying with the air.

Beautiful.

There's that lifting force again.

WILLEM: Yep.

STEVE: That's the thermal.

As we turn into it, we can start to climb with it.

But as you see, we're already at cloud base.

This is where the moisture condenses and forms a cloud.

WILLEM: Yep.

STEVE: We're not going to go much higher because we would go into it the whiteout.

Birds do go into clouds, by the way.

WILLEM: They do, huh?

STEVE: And they have incredible sense of direction.

So, they don't need to see where they're going.

That's the thermal again right there.

♪ [wind rushing by] There is a little bit of rising air right there.

WILLEM: Yeah.

Well, I guess so.

You feel it.

Who needs a barometer?

Not us!

Oh, yeah.

Then you get a soft spot.

STEVE: That’s a little sinking air now.

WILLEM: Yep.

I felt that.

STEVE: You’ll really feel that as we leave the lifting air.

We're going to head back towards the center where this thermal was.

The thermal’s left us because we didn't fall in with the drift.

As we get into the air, you'll feel a little choppiness... WILLEM: Yeah?

STEVE: and then the suction of the thermal as it starts to lift us aloft.

[wind rushing by] WILLEM: It almost seems as though we're standing still, but I can see we’re not.

STEVE: From this altitude, everything being so far away, it's very hard to tell the distance over the ground.

There's a thermal on my left wing.

So, as I ease the bar out to fly slower, we start to climb with it.

We're in a nice thermal now, circling in it.

You can really feel it as it lift us up.

This is how pilots can routinely get 2 to 3 hours of air time.

WILLEM: That's great.

STEVE: That's a common, very common timeframe in the air.

WILLEM: Yeah.

♪ [wind rushing by] So, what did you think the first time you went up on one of these things?

STEVE: Oh, boy.

I was ecstatic!

WILLEM: Was it a tandem?

STEVE: My first time I ever flew the hang glider, I did a lesson here at Morningside.

And I got my feet maybe about six inches off the ground my first flight and my first day.

And it was such an experience.

I actually achieved just a little bit of flight on my own.

I thought, That was so cool.

I’ve got to do it again.

And I've been saying that consecutively for thousands and thousands of flights now.

Every time we land, I always think, Wow, I really got to do that again.

[Willem chuckling] I love the way the Connecticut River whines through the valley down here.

Absolutely gorgeous.

♪ [wind rushing by] WILLEM: That's an old geologic fault.

The whole valley a rift in the earth that the river’s following.

♪ [wind rushing by] STEVE: So, how does it feel to be a hawk?

WILLEM: Well, I don't know STEVE: You’re a hawk right now!

WILLEM: I'm not thinking like one.

I’m thinking like a human being, like, [laughter] Yeahhh!

[laughter] We'll all be killed!

STEVE: Well, this is a treat.

WILLEM: Yep.

It is.

STEVE: And this is actually quite a nice thermal that we're staying in.

Without the thermal, we would have already been very close to landing.

WILLEM: Is that right?

STEVE: Yeah.

Yep.

We're sinking at about 300 to 400 feet a minute.

And while we're in the lift, we can climb a good 500- 1,000 feet a minute.

So, if we stay in the lift, we can stay up as long as the lift is bringing us upward.

Thermals act like bubbles that release off the ground.

And it’s possible to be in a thermal and have another hand glider pilot or bird come in underneath you and not find the lip.

They’ll sink out and have to land where you can climb all the way to the cloud.

Other times, as the thermal releases, it acts as a column.

When you're flying in the column, anything that comes in underneath you or above you will also climb.

And that's when you see the birds gaggle up.

They fly in a gaggle.

I had a flight from Mount Ascutney with kestrels migrating kestrels where I was flying and, I would say, probably 50 or 100 of them were just gaggling up and flying around us.

WILLEM: What just went by us?

STEVE: That was a tuft.

Did you see that?

That was a tuft of fuzz from either... not a dandelion, but, you know, with the the big white cotton ball things.

WILLEM: Oh, you mean like cotton grass?

STEVE: Yeah.

Some sort of particle of air.

And it came up here because it was sucked up by the thermal that we're in.

WILLEM: That so?

STEVE: You'll find all kinds of things in the air.

I actually saw a trash bag flying at 2,000 feet one day.

WILLEM: That's awful.

STEVE: Spiders.

Believe it or not, spiders.

Just like Charlotte's Web at the end of the story.

The baby lets out a thread of line and the lift takes them away.

That's how they migrate.

It's not uncommon to find lines of spiders you won't find the spider, but you'll find the line on your sidewires.

WILLEM: Hah!

♪ [wind rushing by] Yeah, isn’t this just beautiful?

♪ [wind rushing by] [wind rushing by] ♪ [wind rushing by] Feeling like a World War I fighter pilot.

♪ [wind rushing by] STEVE: So, what we're going to do now, we're going to head on over toward Morningside on the top.

And this is a good vantage point here.

As the wind blows, the wind hits the hill and gets deflected and pushed up over it.

So, that's called ridge lift The birds use that to climb as well.

If you can there's a little bit of sinking air next to a thermal.

You can feel that your stomach I'm sure.

As the thermals come through, the hill acts as a catcher's mitt.

It catches the thermal and it releases the thermal off the top of the hill.

So, that's where your best opportunity for lift is.

♪ [wind rushing by] WILLEM: So, that’s the top of your hill?

STEVE: That's the top of our hill.

Down below, that concrete pad is where we launch from.

WILLEM: Yep.

That's called the 450; it's 450 feet above our landing zone.

It'll take about a summer of learning how to fly, coming here every weekend, to get evolved up from flat ground all the way from the 150 to the 250 to the 450.

[wind rushing by] There's a little thermal that we're in as well.

WILLEM: Yeah.

Warmer air too.

You can feel it.

STEVE: Yeah, that's one of the clues you feel temperature.

Excellent.

♪ [wind rushing by] WILLEM: Oh, dear.

It's just lovely.

STEVE: It's a common misconception that hang gliding is a daredevil sport you have to have an adrenaline junkie attitude to fly.

You can see it's really not that way at all.

Very gentle, peaceful, and relaxing.

♪ [wind rushing by] WILLEM: Well, it may take a little adrenaline to just start doing it, but once you're up here [chuckling] a certain fatalism kicks in.

STEVE: There's always the thrill of flight.

WILLEM: Yep.

Leonardo.

♪ [wind rushing by] STEVE: We have a gentleman down here launching off the 450.

WILLEM: I see him, yeah.

Now, he's going to run?

Is that it?

STEVE: You can see the windsocks pointing into the hill.

He's waiting for the wind to be just right.

He can walk, jog, and run, and the glider will support his weight with enough air speed, and he'll continue on his glide.

The trick to unpowered flight is that the performance of the glider the glide ratio is actually steeper than the glide slope of the hill.

WILLEM: Really?

STEVE: If your glide ratio is 8 to 1, if you have a 9 to 1 slope, you'll never take off.

You'll just run with the ground.

If the glide slope of the terrain is 7 to 1, well, now you have a 1 to 1 glide.

And that's how that works.

♪ [wind rushing by] WILLEM: That concrete slopes downhill, does it?

STEVE: Yes it does.

It's a pretty steep slope there.

Just like our 250-foot slope here as well.

WILLEM: Oh, yeah.

Sure enough.

We have our bullseye here to our right.

That's our training hill down at the bottom.

We start students on flat ground learning how to just do that walk, jog, and run into the wind, how to steer focusing on a target.

And every step of the way, we get higher and higher until you can take your first moonwalking flight.

And that's my first thrill of flight.

WILLEM: Yeah.

STEVE: And then, your first flights come from that.

And then, along that, comes flight plan.

And then, working rising air and thermaling.

WILLEM: Now, these geese down here don't ever bother you?

STEVE: No.

They’re migratory geese.

They come in and they hang out here at the flight park until it’s time to move.

WILLEM: They don’t come and fly with you or anything?

STEVE: No they don’t.

They cannot soar like a like a broad-winged hawk.

They need to have energy to flap.

So, in order for us to land, what we do is we fly faster.

Flying faster gives us extra energy and extra ability to maneuver.

We're going to do a right-hand turn back.

And in order to land down the runway, what we do is we set up at the right place at the right time so we can come in for our landing.

So, here we go.

Lots of speed right on our final approach.

Yeeuh.

And then we gently ease the bar out until there's nothing left and we touch down.

[wheels cutting through grass] WILLEM: Oh, boy!

STEVE: How was that?

WILLEM: Not too bad for an amateur!

STEVE: Haha!

Okay, my friend.

This is the hard part.

Gravity takes over.

WILLEM: Yes.

Oh dear.

STEVE: That was a spectacular flight.

WILLEM: Steve, I can't thank you enough.

Just wonderful.

♪ That wasn't too shabby.

That was very nice.

God, I loved that.

And to see the river from the air like that and, you know, not being in a plane looking out a window.

God, that was great.

You're pretty good.

STEVE: Well, thank you.

WILLEM: I'm glad of it too!

That's what we do seven days a week.

We teach people how to fly.

Whenever you want to learn, you just come back again.

WILLEM: Well, okay.

I may be beyond the learning phase of that but God, that was just super.

Ah, well, we may do it again.

We've come once again to that part of the show I like the least: saying goodbye.

But that’s what we have to do.

I’m Willem Lange, and I hope to see you again on Windows to the Wild.

♪