Record setting procedure in Canada

 We've tried to simplify the record setting procedure in Canada, so that it doesn't mean jumping through as many hoops as you would have to with a world record claim. 

The first step was moving the requirement to hold a valid international boarding license prior to making your claim. Or even after making your claim! Just remember that you need one if you are going to participate in a world championship or want to set a world record, and you will need that ahead of time).

All the other steps are in a document on the HPAC website. If you can't find it there, here is a link to it.

Photos from Randy Haney

Well, we have a new contributor, randy Haney. Randy sent me some photos, with a promise to send more. For those of you that don't know, Randy was a serious record chaser and competitor in the 1980s and the early 1990s. He placed on the podium at three world championships and had many other competition successes both in Canada and abroad.

Randy Haney with medals at World championship at Tegelberg

In 1987, he made the then-longest Hang gliding flight in the world, with a 200 mile/321 km effort from Mount Seven in BC to Trego, Montana on an Airways Magic IV (A British competitor to the UP Comet). Launching at 12 noon from the lower launch (in the trees along the ridge at the 9-mile mark of the road), he was in the air 9.5 hours and landed well after sunset. He had to sleep in a ditch, as he was not picked up the next day. His achievement earned him An FAI World record in the open distance category, And also a Guinness record.

FAI Record details

Randy's Record in the British gliding magazine

He later moved to Europe for a decade and was a Wills Wing representative in Germany and later Italy; He also manufactured Paramotors. During that time, he astounded the European hang gliding community with a 400+ km flight in Spain, launching off a small hill in the dry western interior of the country. That sparked a rush of pilots to the area to try for similar or better flights.

RandyIn an Italian ad for wills wing 

With two young daughters at home, Randy Eventually stopped competing and moved back to Dawson Creek BC, where he still resides there today.

More from 1980 Canadian HG nationals

In a recent post, Doug Keller posted some pictures from the 1980 national championship. One of them was of me with beer poured in my hair to celebrate setting the Canadian duration record. I went back to my logbooks and found my log book entries for that flight.

At that time of that flight, there was no official Canadian log book. I used a surveyor's notebook because it was sturdy and with good quality paper. Many of us wrote at length about our flights, as each one was a huge learning adventure, and a real gift. In later years, I gradually wrote less and less, and eventually only made short entries in an online notebook. But I continued to log each and every flight, not just because it is required by our rating system, but because it was personally meaningful.

When I took up flying sailplanes in 1987, I noted carefully the soaring association's official log book design, and used it as inspiration for the first official HPAC hardcover logbook.

To the reader: did you use to keep a logbook and log every flight? Do you still use a logbook or have you given it up? If the latter, what led to that?

logbook entry for Cdn. Duration reccord

2 Electra-Flier Spirits; photo by Graydon Tranquilla

Here is an in-flight photo taken by Graydon Tranquilla. It shows two Electric-flyer Spirits, which were very popular with the Alberta team as Willi Muller sold them. You can get a good idea of how steep the cliff is below the takeoff spot. Launching in strong winds was exciting, to put it mildly.