midtoad's blog

American Cup competition back in 1986

Reprising a post I made on the HPAC mailing list yesterday, with the addition of a few pictures...

Max, you're right. We did have the American Cup in Invermere in 1986. It had previously been held at Lookout Mtn and once in Europe, and Andrew Barber-Starkey brought it to Canada.

We had the meet at Mt. Swansea and all 36 pilots carried their gliders up that path every day. It's not so bad once you get used to it. Tip: at any intersection, always take the right branch. And if you are carrying a hang glider, never lift it over your head at the switchbacks; instead, shift it backwards slightly on your shoulder and then, before it has a chance to tilt, swivel around so that the point of contact rolls across the back of your neck to the other shoulder - you'll now be heading the other way with a balanced glider.

BTW, for any keeners, you can try to beat my best time up the trail: 8:30 from the parking lot to summit... with harness.

That 1986 meet featured some excellent flying, with the last day featuring an unprecedented race to Nicholson. Out of 36 competitors, 34 made it!

It was probably one of best tasks in any international meet up to that point, and we had some of the top names in the sport at the meet.

One of the memories for me of that meet was during a flight (I was an alternate team member, so not competing) where I was flying a borrowed Magic 177 Full Race with all-mylar sail (which I was having fun with by spinning it repeatedly) where I watched from overhead a number of pilots return to goal at the field just south of the airport. I think Ricky Duncan won that task.

Another story: our team member Don Miller got it in his head that his shoulder straps (6mm perlon) were going to cause too much drag, so he replaced them with 3mm spectra. The shoulder strap broke in the first flight, and he had to fly with his chest on the base-tube. He didn't have a lot of luck in that meet; on another flight he had to pee so bad that he decided to land. But there was so much lift that he couldn't get down fast enough, and he couldn't wait to land, so had to let it go in flight (remember that we didn't have pods then, just cocoon harnesses, so there was no exit path for the pee). But after finding relief, he couldn't find a thermal to get back up with, and so ended up landing short, soaked.

Both Don and Dean Kupchanko were flying a coccoon harness with no padding. Dean said "I adjust the straps before each flight so that it hurts a different part of my body".

The Brazilian team arrived in a military cargo plane, accompanying their air force's acrobatic team which put on a show at the brand-new Fairmont airport. The Brazilians were aggressive - one was seeing low down in Sinclair Pass behind Radium. Faced with the choice of getting up or crashing in the trees, he did the right thing.

Another story from that flight. German team captain Ernst Schneider (who now lives in Invemere) landed in Taggart's field (it was a prohibited field clearly mentioned to pilots) on the first day, and took a zero for the day. American Mark Bennett also landed there some time later, but put in a landing claim form saying he landed just north of there (where there are nothing but trees), and even had signatures of two tourists from Utah as witnesses. Even though we had Dennis Taggart telling us that there was a second pilot in the field, Mark persisted with his lie. Finally, near the end of the meet, the American team captain, while not admitting any dishonesty on Mark's part, agreed to take a zero "just to be real neighbourly-like". Yeah, right.

Besides Don Miller, our other team members were Randy Haney (who took 3rd in the individual standings), Dale Moore (alternate), Rob Sinclair, Stu Cameron, Tony Schmidt, Ron Atkinson, Jim Bamford - all in the photo - and Dean Kupchanko, Andrew Barber-Starkey (Hmm, that adds up to more than 6...). Most of those pilots were local Invermere residents - which tells you something about what a hotbed of hang gliding Invermere was in those days. Eagle hang gliders used to be built in Invermere by Barry Howie in the mid 1970s.

Anyway, enough history! Some of the story may even be true!