14—The Daily Collegian Tuesday, May 6, 1980
Hang gliding a dream turned
reality by expert Beckenbach
By MIKE POORMAN
Daily Collegian Staff Writer •
Just like Peter Pan, Dumbo, Timothy
Leary and Sister Betrille, Marty Beckenbach
can fly.
The difference between the four is that
Beckenbach uses a hang glider.
"I've always wanted to fly," he said. "I've
always had dreams of flying."
Those dreams got a strong push toward
realization when Beckenbach was in the
hospital and paralyzed from the waist down
due to a baseball injury.
"I was really bumming out and I saw hang
gliding on the TV and in the magazines and it
really gave me the spark of life," he said. "I
just decided to do it."
So he did. After recovering from his back
injury, he taught himself to fly. It wasn't easy
learning on his own, but once he got his feet
off the ground, Beckenbach was hooked. But
it took awhile.
"The beginning stages are very difficult,
but once you're past that you start to fly
higher," Bachenbach said. "It's just a matter
of building confidence in yourself and your
gliding.
"You just have to have it in the head. If you
want to do it, you just do it. Just let yourself
go and fly like a bird. It's very, very free and
natural. It doesn't take anything real
muscular or like that."
After reaching new heights, the Rochester,
N.Y., native spent the next few years hopping
around the East Coast, to Connecticut to
Massachusetts and back to New York, always
sporting a hang glider and giving lessons
along the way. The sport of hang gliding in
trigued him.
But last year Beckenbach left his job, and
persuaded by Dennis Pagen, a noted flyer and
hang gliding author, he came to State College.
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Marty Beckenbach soars over the Super Bowl near Lock Haven
"Dennis asked me to come down here to
hang glide and to try to get some people
around here into it," Beckenbach said. "So I
decided to come down here about this time
last year. And ever since then it has been
really good."
The State College area is one of the best in
the country because of the ridges needed for
high altitude flying and the smaller hills
needed for training beginners.
"For soaring and flying, any ridge you see
around here - Tussey Ridge, Nittany Ridge,
Bald Eagle Ridge - are excellent," said
Beckenbach, who owns four hang gliders and
has flown nearly everywhere in the United
States.
A good place in the area for taking off into
the wind - necessary because it reduces your
ground speed - is the Super Bowl, Becken
bach said.
"The Super Bowl is where the Bald Eagle
range and Nittany Mountain range meet at
one point near Lock Haven," Bechenbach
said. "It's called the Super Bowl because both
these ridges meet and form a nice, big bowl
and a lot of lift comes in there. Good for
southwest wind."
However, wind isn't always needed to hang
"When you start to fly in higher altitudes
you really don't need wind as long as there
are plenty of thermals - warm air masses
that rise from the ground - because there's
plenty of that air mass to rise," Beckenbach
explained. "To soar you do need some type of
wind. If there's thermals, you don't need wind
to fly."
But at times there can be too much wind to
hang glide, Beckenbach said. The hang glider
can't be flown over the speed it was designed
for and it's harder to penetrate the wind
needed for taking off, he said.
Photos b
NMI
Rick Graff
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Once in the air, flights sometimes last for
hours and are over a mile high, Beckenbach
said, casually speaking about three-hour
flights and reaching cloud bases of 5,000 feet
as if they were nothing special or fearful.
"Fear depends on the person. I used to be
afraid of heights, but that was before I got
into hang gliding," said the five-year veteran
of the sport.
"Once I got into hang gliding I was no
longer afraid of heights," he said. be
afraid of heights if I'm standing at the edge of
a cliff and I don't have my glider with me.
"But there has to be some fear. If there's no
fear, I would start worrying because then you
might start getting too cocky and start doing
crazy things. There's fear in everything."
But there's really nothing frightful about
the sport, he said
"It's a very peaceful sport," Beckenbach
said. "It's a feeling I've always wanted and I
can't find it in anything else. I can't equate it
with anything else I've done. I'm willing to
share it with people.
"Beginning pilots are what the sport relies
on most. The growth and success in the future
definitely relies upon instruction and
beginners bringing new people into the
sport. Letting them experience the greatest
feeling we have - just being able to fly like a
little bird."
His attitude grows out of the community
feeling of hang gliders.
"Anyone that hang glides is like family,"
Bechenbach said. "I don't know why it is, but
when I got into hang gliding I found the nicest
people I have ever met in my life. Maybe it's
because we all experienced the same thing.
"It's the closest thing to your dreams.
You're actually flying just like a bird.
"Personally, I just want to be free and
quiet, and that's really what hang gliding is
all about."
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As followers grow, •
hang gliding's safer
By MIKE POORMAN
Daily Collegian Sports Writer •
Hang gliding, a growing sport in
volving 60,000 Americans, has
matured not only in terms of par
ticipation, but in safety as well.
"We know what we're doing
today," hapg gliding instructor
Marty Beckenbach said. "Hang
gliding is safe "
The United States Hang Gliding
Association is the governing body for
hang gliding in the country and ac
cording to its statistics, deaths
resulting from the sport in the past
seven years have dropped from 40 in
1974 to 24 last year.
And in the same time, the number
of hang gliders has increased nearly
10 times.
"Hang gliding is up to date now,
we're learning so much all the
time,"said Beckenbach, a certified
USGHA instructor. "We're learning
so much all the time.
"Many years ago, it probably was
dangerous. Gliders were made out of
bamboo and plastic. How can you
expect something like that to fly
properly?"
On today's hang glider, sails are
made of heavy dacron, frames are
constructed of aluminum and guide
wires are used to maintain shape,
Beckenbach said.
"There's so much involved in
designing a sail and engineering a
glider to make it fly safe," he said.
"It's the same way as designing an
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ultra-fast aircraft like the Concorde
except that we're on the other eiti
with the ultra-slow craft.
Besides improved equipment,
better teaching techniques and a stiff
governing body have made hang
gliding a safe sport,
The USGHA governs areas in hang
gliding where the Federal AviaAtan
Administration rules areas in
powered aircrafts. The USHGA is
responsible for issuing licenses,
which assign gliders a certain class.
"Obervers give you a license or a
rating," said Beckenbach, who is also
a USHGA certified instructor. "Tc lo fly
certain sites, you have to have a
certain rating. It also determines
where you're at in some of your flying
skills."
Beckenbach said what really limits
a beginner is by whom and how he is
taught
"Learning from someone is the
only way to do it," he said. "Oben I
first learned, I taught myself. It
wasn't too safe and I didn't know
what was going on. The best way to do
it is to learn by an instructor who
knows what he's doing.
But even an enthusiast 'like
Beckenbach points out the real
dangers of hang gliding.
"It's very dangerous if you don't
know what to do," he said. "If you
have someone there to show you and
tell you, you're fine. You just have to
remember that you're flying*, an
aircraft and you're in the air."
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