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crazy”—but even this presents more of a challenge than a danger, according to the enthusiastic pilot. “I deliberately stall it when I have the altitude so I’ll know what to do if it happens accidently...A stall is puppy stuff.”
To demonstrate, he taxied the hang glider down the runway at James W. Fletcher’s F. T. Valley airstrip, climbed to about 70 feet and cut - the. engine. Silence replaced the put-put of the engine as Lane droped sharply for a few feet and then settled into a glide down to a perfect three point landing on rubber wheels that hardly even gave a bounce as they hit the grass.
It’s the higher, the better for engine trouble. “Anything over 50 feet,” Nelson said. “You can have an engine stall and still make a perfecl landing. But if it happened a< 20 feet, you’l probably drop like a rock. The only problem in landing after the engine stalls is ground turbulence. II could force you back up intc the air and into another stall just a few feet off the ground.”
Nelson keeps his black and yellow machine in Fletcher’s hanger. He said, however, that the entire apparatus can be broken4 down in about an hour and loaded into a trailer for the ride home to Eldon Farms. But handling it that way would probably shorten the life of the hang glider, he added.
As it stands—or rather flies—now, Quicksilver requires little maintenance. Nelson checks out the aluminum tubing and struts prior to each flight just to be on the safe side and before the innaugural airborn adventure, he brought in a consulting mechanic. “Tom Massie—he’s very well known in the two-cycle world,” Lane quipped.
The $4,000 machine is practical as well as fun, according to Nelson. “I can check on the cattle, check on the com, see what’s happening on the farm. It sure beats the hell out of a pickup for getting over rough country. I can see the whole place in about an hour.”
But Lane isn’t out to
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