[Flyers] Flying at Chumpon, Thailand.

[Ross Golder]

On Saturday, I managed to achieve an ambition I've had for quite a while 
now – to hang-glide in Thailand. A couple of weeks ago, I was scanning 
the web board of the Thailand Gliding Club and saw some paragliders 
announcing that they were planning to fly at Khao Pang near Chumpon on 
5th to 7th December. I was surprised, as I'd previously tried to drive 
up that hill and the road had been washed away. Also, some local monks 
had told when we were there before that nobody had flown there for a few 
years, so I'd assumed the site had become disused. However, on 
contacting the group, it appears that the road had been made accessible 
and they were indeed planning to fly that weekend.

So, on the Friday, Chai and I loaded up the hang-glider and headed out 
on the hour-and-a-half journey south. Unfortunately, within about 20km 
of the hill, the truck seemed to slip out of gear into neutral and 
wouldn't go back into gear, so we had to pull over. Luckily, there was a 
garage only a few hundred yards up the road, and they towed it in and 
examined it. It turned out that the transmission part of the gearbox was 
dry as a bone, and that the teeth on two of the cogs had ground off 
completely. It probably had been that way since the Mitsubishi garage 
did some work on it a few weeks prior! So, we spent all day Friday at 
some garage arranging a new gearbox and waiting for the mechanics to fit 
it etc. Eventually, we rolled out of the garage at 9pm, and went and 
found a cheap hotel in Chumpon.

Saturday morning, we checked out and headed to the hill. A couple of 
locals pointed us to the landing field, where we found Tim, the owner of 
the landing field. It turns out he bought the land, had a part of it 
which had been excavated filled in and flattened and turned it into a 
paraglider landing field, with a small training hill at the back. A very 
nice job too. He was shocked to see a hang-glider, as he said there was 
only about four other people he knew of that either flew them or had 
them in Thailand. Unfortunately, we were both a little unsure if there 
was enough run-off to get a hang-glider in, as he sometimes has to use 
the full length of it to land his paraglider. Except for this field the 
rest of the area around the bottom of the hill is palm and rubber trees, 
with a few rice paddies which still quite wet – nowhere else really to 
land. Anyway, I figured that, given the wind speed and direction, it 
would be good for making as short a landing as possible along the 
longest part of the field. The worse case scenario would be that I'd 
risk a light brush with the palm trees at the end of the landing strip 
if it wasn't long enough!

So, we went up to examine take-off. The track up the hill requires a 
fairly sturdy 4x4 with some good ground clearance, as it's very rocky in 
places. I found that low-ratio 4WD was required, especially on the 
hairpin bends. Take-off was a slightly sloped grass edge, with rockier 
ground towards the front, fairly good clearance of the trees below, but 
some power lines coming up the dirt track to the right which suggested I 
needed to get well clear of the hill before turning after take-off. The 
wind was coming slightly to the left of take-off anyway, so I'd be 
turning left into wind as soon as I was away anyway. It was a 
north-easterly, mostly around 15km/h, gusting to 25km/h from time to 
time. Tim mentioned that he didn't think that anyone had every flown a 
hang-glider on this hill before, which didn't help my nerves as I was 
getting myself together and figuring out 'what could go wrong?!'. 
Take-off and soaring wouldn't be a problem, but I was still considering 
the adjustments I could make to my landing technique to get safely into 
the fairly tight landing field. I had an idea, but I figured I'd go over 
it again during a few passes over the field as I was preparing to land.

A good, slow rig of the glider and pre-flight check later I was good to 
go. Tim was noseman, while Chai did camera duties. When I was ready, the 
wings level and the upcoming wind looking steady, I started bringing on 
speed and running as fast as I could, but I let the nose glide up a 
touch, so it mushed a bit and dived, but I got away cleanly, and once 
clear got tucked in and turned left along the ridge. Needless to say, I 
had a fantastic hour or so soaring up and down in fairly good conditions 
– not too bumpy a ride given it was nearly mid-day. The view was pretty 
awesome, including features such as the television transmitting station 
and it's huge antenna on top of the ridge, behind you, a river 
stretching off to the north-east to the horizon, a variety of smaller 
mountains dotted along the horizon, a beautifully neat patchwork of tree 
plantations directly beneath you, the main Bangkok-to-the-south road 
(Petchagasem Rd) running along behind the ridge, with a sprinkling of 
petrol stations and other buildings dotted along it, and a few 
articulated trucks moving along it. I was listening to activity on the 
CB radio that I was using to keep in touch with Chai on the ground – it 
seems some people on the ground had overheard us on the radio and were 
trying to contact me in the air. I didn't have time to strike up a 
conversation, and carried on flying and further up and down the ridge in 
each direction, working the hot-spots to get a fairly measly 700ft above 
launch, but it was reliable. The rare thermals were weak and seemed to 
be getting blown out pretty quickly, so other than the odd 360 here and 
there, it was largely about exploring the ridge and it's features during 
a north-easterly, doing a few out-and-backs within sight of the landing 
area.

Anyway, I had my fun and saw Chai and Tim arriving at the landing field, 
so headed down. The landing field is almost directly at the foot of the 
hill, and the land around it still produces a fair amount of lift, so 
descent was slow and a did a few circuits of the field coming down. I 
came down over the last trees downwind of landing as low and slow as 
possible without stalling, then dived in to get some extra speed through 
the ground effect. In the excitement I pulled on a little bit more speed 
than I wanted and on levelling out near the ground, I popped back up 
again, which lost me a few appearance points and caused me to veer 
slightly left, shorting my run-off a little. My feet found contact with 
the ground and I straightened up my legs, dug my new pair of trainers 
(3quid from the local market) into the grass below, and put the anchors 
down for a safe and sound, if not very visually impressive landing about 
20m from the line of palm trees marking the end of the runway!

The wind died off shortly after that. Tim flew down on his paraglider 
later in the afternoon, but the others that had arranged to come via the 
website didn't turn up on Saturday or Sunday, as the weather on Friday 
(while we were stuck in the garage) was a little strong for them 
(probably perfect for me!) and it looked to be the same on Saturday and 
Sunday. I saw them drive into the landing field from the air, and Chai 
apparently met them briefly, but they'd disappeared by the time I 
landed. However, it looks like there's another get together up on a hill 
somewhere near Udon Thani next weekend, so I'm currently making plans to 
go there and then on to Mee's parents the following week, then stop by 
at another hill near Nakhon Ratchasima if possible the weekend after on 
the way back. Apparently, there are only about five flyable months in 
the year here, so I guess I'd better make the most of it!

Some pictures and video clips (inc take-off and landing) here:

http://www.chilternflyers.org/pictures/main.php?g2_itemId=361266

--
Ross