The 14th annual Lumby Air Races started on Sunday, July 2nd and continue on to Saturday, July 8th.  A number of local and out of town pilots have joined in the friendly competition which features racing around the Lumby valley trying to see how many 10 km triangles can be done.  There has been some challenging strong west winds on some of the days but flights are still being had.  Here are a couple of beautiful sunset  pics from Saddle Mountain.

Ryan from Edmonton arrived on Good Friday and began his paragliding lessons the next day.  Eleven days later, with 2 bad weather days in the middle, Ryan is now a P2 Novice pilot.  Ryan has set a few records at the Freedom Flight School such as:

• First student to graduate before May
• Fastest to 5 high flights on one day - 10:30 am
• Most airtime in one day by a student - 1 hour and 30 minutes

Great job Ryan and we look forward to see where your free flying career will take you. 

​Congratulations Ryan!!!

The Freedom Flight School hosted a Hang Glider Instructor's course last week.  The four day intensive course consisted of 2 instructors re-certifying and 3 new students.  The course was led by Randy Rauck, the owner of the Freedom Flight Park, who has now obtained his senior instructor rating.  Randy was supervised by the "Grandfather of Hang Gliding in Canada", the legendary Michael Robertson who came out from High Perspectives in Ontario.  This man has been flying since 1968 and has 30,000+ flights under his belt.  His wisdom and energy for this sport is unparalleled.  At 76 years old, he's still flying high in the sky!  We were also fortunate that Ken de Russy from Washington state came up for the event.  Ken was an active pilot and instructor back in the 70s and is a walking Wikipedia of hang gliding facts and stories from back in the day.

It was a super successful course with smiles all around.  Thanks Michael, Ken and Randy!

The Freedom Flight School is back in action.  Due to a light snow pack this winter, we've been able to get flying earlier than usual.  Already 4 students have begun their paragliding journey with a few more starting soon.  Here are a few pics of the action.

From Steve, who graduated from the Freedom Flight School last September:
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I had not my longest air time flight today, but it was my best ever. I landed 20 km from launch and it only took me 1:08. I was very efficient in my thermaling. I read where they were and climbed each one only once, as high as they would take me then moved forward right away to find the next. I hit cloud base twice today, it was the first time ever getting to cloud base. It was absolutely amazing, I was laughing and giggling with excitement. So beautiful. I could hardly believe I was there. I didn’t even try to take pictures I just wanted to enjoy it! Once I left the mountain and headed out to the flat valley I just looked for the small clouds building and went under them. I could feel the temperature change from when I went from the sinking air to the rising air that was feeding the clouds. Today was the day I always dreamed of and got to feel how it is to really fly and be at one with the sky.
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Nice work Steve!

On behalf of everyone at the Freedom Flight School, we would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

It was a fantastic flying season in 2018 and we look forward to more in 2019!  Thank you to all pilots, students, tandem passengers and drivers for making it a memorable season.

See you next year!

November has been a surprisingly decent month for flying, compared to usual (let's hope that's not due to global warming!).  Last week Don took on of our recent student graduate's husband Glen out for a tandem from Coopers.  You've got to dress up warm for this time of the year...but your reward is some "Frosty Cloud Surfing"!

September wasn't the best month for flying, but a few sunny weeks in October made up for it.  That helped one of our students, Rebecca, complete her P2 training on October 24th.

What a great way to end the season.  Congratulations Rebecca!!!

The annual Thanksgiving Fly-In and Potluck dinner was held on a glorious fall day last Saturday.  All pilots were treated to fantastic conditions with rare October thermals allowing for some super flights. 

As usual we had the "flour bomb drop" competition (little brown paper bags with flour that tend to explode when they hit the ground) and a spot landing event was also added this year.  Congratulations to Jesse Scrimbit who won the hang gliding spot landing and Matt Paley who won the paragliding division.  Dave Underwood and Victoria Gladue were closest on the bomb drop but that wasn't a difficult task as they were flying tandem so they had a dedicated bombardier...but it was all in good fun.

Over 50 people enjoyed the turkey dinner and a great bonfire to finish off a wonderful day.

Happy Thanksgiving!