Word: glider
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pace. Bernard Taylor, 84, was superintendent of a Boeing plant in Wichita, Kansas, making PT-17 flight trainers. One day in November 1941, Taylor noted a harried congregation of high military brass outside his plant. Then he was called in by his boss, who declared, "You're in the glider business...
Some people get their brainstorms while singing in the shower. Boris Popov had his during a death-defying plunge in a crashing hang-glider. "I was about 500 ft. up over Lake Owasso," says the Minnesota businessman of the 1977 accident. A powerboat that was towing his craft over the water throttled up too fast and literally pulled Popov's gossamer wings apart. "I got all caught up in the material and was petrified. I had a lot of time to think on the way down, and I promised myself that if I survived, I would figure...
...good instability today," a lean fellow with the quick eyes of a race-car driver says with satisfaction. He's an American hang-glider pilot named Jim Lee, and he is talking about air masses, not temperament. Instability, good to violent, is what the high desert of California's Owens Valley, near Bishop, is known for. Very hot, light air, cooking on the valley floor and over the canyons, rises at great speed in columnar thermal currents; and from upper altitudes, cold, heavy air sinks fast in compensation. You can "peg" your variometer here with no trouble...
...send pilots not experienced enough to handle the valley's big air. As things turned out, two expert members of the top-ranked British team were tumbled upside down in separate incidents. When this happens, the pilot, who in normal flight dangles below the wing, can fall into the glider's underside and break the delicate structure of tubing and wires. The magical flying contraption instantly becomes wreckage, and the pilot has to deploy his emergency parachute. So it went for the two Brits, each of whom survived with minor injuries...
...came close to parachuting. Flying out of the fast-rising center of a thermal, he was struck by heavy, cold air that bashed downward with more force than he had ever encountered. The nose of his glider was knocked from a 3- o'clock position, level flight, through 6 o'clock, full dive. This is called "going over the falls," and it's not a surprise to a good pilot. But Lee's glider was shoved so hard that it pivoted on to 9 o'clock, completely upside down. A few more degrees of rotation -- 10 or 11 o'clock...