We all have a story about getting into HandLaunch Gliders. What's yours?

Here's mine.

I'm a self-employed architect who loves to sail and more recently to fly handlaunch gliders. I stumbled upon the handlaunch scene by accident. Back in college I built a few freeflight gliders and although radio control was around the components were too big and too pricey for a guy in college. So I went away from it although my interest remained.

I have some in-laws from Switzerland and on one trip over there I saw sailplanes flying in the vicinity of Gstaad. To make a long story short, I ended up thermaling in a high performance german-made glider over the Alps for several hours at the hands of a pilot whose name I recall was Sperben Marcus.

Then in 2010 I decided to do a search on his name and on glider clubs in Switzerland, and that's when I came upon RC gliders. Wow, I said, look what I've been missing all these years.

As a sailor who races a Thistle, I avoid motors, so no engines for me. I only was interested in handlaunch. Let me at it! My first plane was a Swyft, not a plane for a novice I have been told, but for me a great way to be introduced to dlg and side arm launching. I learned a lot about build methods (thanks Scobie and Liftworx, great build info! The best how to manual on constructing a kit that I have come across). My son Derek got into it with a DL50 from Mountain Models and on we went. I used to have a couple versions of the Mimi scratch built from...Continue Reading