Advanced training with some of the country's most successful instructor/competition pilots, including Bo Hagewood and Kevin Carter.

Kevin is the top ranked US pilot and Bo is a World Team member and the 2000 U.S. National Champion.

Advanced lessons are by appointment and should be reserved well in advance. To ensure complete one-on-one attention, each instructor will work with only one to two students at a time. They combine detailed ground-school instruction with intensive flight training and are designed to help you reach your goals as quickly and as safely as possible. The format of the advanced hang gliding instruction will allow for as much flexibility and individuality as possible. There are two possible routes to take. Half-day and full-day custom lessons are available if you simply want to hone your skills in one or more specific avenues of advanced hang gliding. These lessons will be custom-tailored to work with your specific skills and experience level and take you quickly and safely in any direction you want to go - perfecting landing approaches and flare technique; pursuing advanced maneuvers and smooth controlled freestyle; mastering the art of thermaling; expanding your horizons with cross country flying; or pushing the limits of technical cross country racing.

If, on the other hand, you're looking for a more structured program, the New Horizons program is just the thing. New Horizons is broken up into three levels, each level designed to blend smoothly into the next. In this way, you will have the opportunity to push your skills all the way to the level of extreme cross-country racing in an individually paced program. Less experienced pilots will most likely find that they need to begin with the instruction offered in the first level, and more experienced pilots may find that they can jump right into the second or third level.

The first level deals specifically with the mastery of flying technique, and to optimize this type of training, we take full advantage of the benefits offered in tandem hang gliding. There is no faster and safer method of sharpening your skills than with an instructor right beside you.

Step One: There are some basic skills every pilot should have before continuing on to more advanced levels, and the first step is ensuring that you fully understand and can execute the following:

Smooth, confident control at very high speeds and very low speeds.

Well-coordinated turns (can maintain a minimum sink rate while varying through all bank attitudes)

Smooth, coordinated roll reversals

Snap turns (aggressive changes in heading while maintaining smooth, coordinated control)

Pitch turns (fully understanding the role of pitch in executing turns and being able to adjust and even reverse bank attitudes by pitch inputs alone)

S-turn and Aircraft landing approaches.

Consistent landings on your feet and reasonably close to a target

The appropriate ground-schools will also accompany this step.

Step Two: If you plan to pursue cross-country, there are some basic skills (beyond the above) that you will need to master; and to get you there, the best tool available anywhere will be used - a tandem Exxtacy rigid wing. With the tandem Exxtacy, you can receive side by side instruction while learning how to center lift, find the core of a thermal, and maximize the climb rate of a thermal. Again, the appropriate ground-school will be included.

Step Three (optional): This portion of advanced maneuvers training is geared more towards those who are interested in pursuing freestyle and is not necessary to pursue cross country (though it can certainly help to solidify your flying skills and prepare you for the often unusual attitudes that strong thermals can put you in). We'll take advantage of the tandem glider to work on a technique that will allow you to safely pace yourself until you can smoothly and comfortably achieve bank attitudes of ninety degrees or more. For the purpose of becoming comfortable in strong thermals, there is really no need to go beyond ninety degrees, but if you'd like to go on to pursue more serious freestyle, we can explore the less forgiving world beyond ninety degrees.

The second level is designed to give you all the knowledge and skills you need to break the tether and head out across the countryside.

Step One: In the first stages, we'll take advantage of the tandem Exxtacy to provide side by side instruction on the following:

Finding and staying in lift

Identifying and maximizing the core of a thermal

Identifying good clouds and good lift

Judging glides (distance and timing to lift, and glides to safe landing zones)

Identifying and choosing optimal lift lines

In this step, we'll also provide ground-school covering the following topics:

Micrometeorology (visualizing thermals, lapse rates, inversions, convergence, lift/sink streets, etc.)

Recognizing good landing fields as well as potential hazards, obstacles & slopes

Setting up and executing good RLF (restricted landing field) approaches

Judging glides

Step Two: At this point, we'll leave the tandem instruction and set you up with a radio on your own glider. This is where we polish up the last of the skills needed to start heading out away from the nest. If you still need help with thermaling skills, we'll continue to work on them; otherwise, we'll only need to ensure that you're comfortable with restricted landings at this point.

Step Three: This is where the fun really begins. You and the instructor will each be on separate gliders with radio contact. You'll discuss a flight plan, either a specific task, a specific goal, or just a direction. The instructor will initially act as a guide, picking the best lines, deciding when to leave lift, etc. The instructor will then gradually ask you to make more and more of the decisions until you're doing everything on your own. With this approach, your confidence grows quickly, and you'll quickly become a solid cross-country pilot.

At this stage, we go in-depth into the strategies of cross-country racing and competition flying. When the element of time is added to a cross-country flight, the required skills and strategic thinking jump to a whole new level.

You will begin by learning how to make the most effective use of our flight instruments. This includes using the GPS for start gates, turn points, and navigation; understanding the theory of speed-to-fly and using it to optimize flight time; and calculating final glide.

Then you will learn the strategies behind minimizing your time to goal. This includes choosing the optimum start gate, deciding the best lines to take, realizing when to race and when to "survive," choosing when to leave lift, when to stop for it, and when to skip it. There's a fine line between flying fast and ensuring that you make goal, and this is the line we'll learn to identify and to fly.

The strategies behind flying at the competition level are endless and dynamic, and our ultimate aim at this level is to develop awareness and the right attitude for being successful in cross country competition.

The following equipment will be necessary to participate in the advanced training.

Intermediate (minimum) hang glider

Harness

Helmet

Variometer and GPS (level II & III)

Primary and secondary AT releases

In-flight drinking water system (level II & III)

Retrieval driver/ vehicle (level II & III)