Cross Country magazine
August 2008
FOR A HANG GLIDER pilot Carl Wallbank spends a lot of time working over water. His day job as a sub-sea engineer means he spends a fair amount of life on oil rigs in the North Sea. But Carl’s first love has always been the sky, not the ocean.
A hang glider pilot since 1991 and a competition pilot since 2000 he is now captain of the British team.
Now 36 he remembers the first time he saw a hang glider as a 21-year-old: “I watched one take off from a mountain in Wales in 1991,” he says. “I had never seen a hang glider before. Words can’t describe what I felt when I watched the pilot run off the mountain and soar like a bird.
“From that second I was hooked. I couldn’t think about anything else and had to do it. I bought a second-hand glider and was running up and down fields trying to learn how to steer within a week.
“The next weekend I went up a 250m hill. Once I calmed my nerves I ran and ran till my feet left the ground and I was flying.” He didn’t know how to control the glider properly or land, he says. “And there I was, hundreds of feet in the air just like a bird!”
He figured he would have about three minutes to learn how to fly, and how to land, before he would reach the ground. “Somehow I managed to land without incident,” he says now. “It was the most amazing feeling I had ever had. I was so excited that I carried the glider – fully rigged – back to the top of the mountain and did it again. But it took so long to carry up that it was nearly dark when I got there.”
That didn’t stop him though, and off he went again. “From that day on I was totally hooked.”
Flying had always been something Carl, who is from Liverpool, had wanted to do. “As a child,” he says, “I was always fascinated with planes and anything that was not connected to the ground.”
As a teenager that meant getting into the air in a slightly different way – he was one of the UK’s top BMX freestylers in the 1980s. “It was the nearest I got to flying,” he says looking back.
Carl still can’t quite believe what hang gliding feels like; the privilege of it. “Hang gliding is a feeling that very few humans have experienced,” he says. “It takes us out of our normal human life and turns us into this amazing birdlike man.
“It gives us an unbelievable freedom to do as we wish. We are free from the hustle of normal life. The problems in life, work and the world are gone as soon as our feet leave the ground.”
He continues: “Any issue in your mind is totally removed for the duration of the flight. You focus so hard with all your senses.
“Your vision, taste and smell work harder than ever as you try to feel your way through the sky looking for evidence of rising air. If you lose this focus – even a small lapse in concentration – you will soon be down close to the ground looking for a landing field.”
He is a little in awe of it: “I guess only people who have flown hang gliders before can fully understand the feeling,” he concludes.
Carl’s fascination with flying has been matched by a dedication that has seen him reach the highest level of his sport. He led the British team to win first place gold at the World Championships in Texas in 2007. It has left him with a unique sense of pride in the accomplishment.
“Being the captain of the British team for the first time and winning team-gold for my country in Texas takes some beating.”
But first place on the team podium hasn’t been his only achievement. He came eighth overall in the 2007 Worlds and sixth in the 2006 Europeans, when his team also won a podium place in third place.
The same year, 2006, he won the British series, while in 2002 he was a member of the British team that took third place bronze at the Europeans.
He also has a couple of unique personal bests in the UK. He holds the record for the longest flight in Wales and is the only hang glider pilot to fly coast to coast in Great Britain.
His most memorable flight was completed as part of the longest competition task ever set: 284km in Texas in 2007. A flight he describes with some understatement as “nice”.
Another flight, “was probably more memorable for the unlucky pilots who didn't make it that day,” he says.
“It was the last day at the Europeans in 2002 when the British team really needed to pull something out of the bag to get bronze. As a team we really got it together and with a team mate we flew wing tip to wing tip for three hours, diving in and out of these deep valleys in Slovenia, sometimes just popping up enough to look into Austria before falling down again,” he says, painting a remarkable picture.
“We picked our way slowly along the course watching many pilots land below, and managed to stay in the air long enough to get to goal.”
Carl, he says, flies because of the freedom. “I get the feeling that no one who doesn't fly will ever feel free. I’m free.”
He doesn’t “yet” hold any world records, although he has been chasing the British record for distance. “I will get it next,” he says confidently.
Newcomers to the sport often wonder if top pilots get scared, and yes, Carl admits that fear is a factor, but not while flying and not while thousands of feet in the air.
“I do get scared,” he says, “but only before I take off and after I've landed. I don't have time to get scared whilst flying. All my energies are focused on what I have to do to get myself out of or away from any danger. It’s only afterwards when I think about it that I get scared.”
But fear is not the main emotion in the sport. Elation is. And never more so than when he was flying at the World Championships in Brasil in 2003. “I was climbing through 10,000ft in a thermal with all my friends when a message came over the team radio: 'Carl congratulations, you have just become a dad to a little boy!!' Was I on top of the world, literally!”
If that was one of his best moments hang gliding, perhaps his worst was when he was being towed into the air by a winch at RAF Kemble. “I had a lockout [stall and veer off course] and came in very hard on my head causing me to have to have serious neck surgery in 2006.”
Hang gliding has its dangers he admits. “Like anything in this world, if you abuse it, it will hurt. So give it the respect it deserves and it will respect you.”
His respect for the air extends to its natural inhabitants. “Birds are the real master of the sky,” he says. “They are as interested in us as we are in them. They watch and follow us – it does get a little unnerving when they fly at us with the claws out though.”
Carl likes all types of flying. “Big mountains, flatlands, coastal stuff and even the beautiful rolling hills in England on a good summer’s day,” he says. “Anywhere there is rising air.”
He is looking forward to returning to Laragne, France, for the pre-Worlds and World Championships in 2009. “I've flown in Laragne quite a few times,” he says. “I love the place. It is quite technical so I still have a lot to learn here, but I always have hopes for a good result.” He injects a note of caution into his confidence: “I just need to believe in myself a little more ... we'll have to see.”
With Carl at the helm the UK team won gold at the World Championships in 2007. Will it do it again in 2009? “Never say never!” he says immediately. “Nobody thought we would do it in Texas and we did. We proved that you don't have to be the best in the world to win. Working well as a team does allow the unthinkable to happen.”
Carl trains by flying regularly. “It’s the only way to keep fit,” he says. “I find normal exercising isn't enough for the muscles you use in hang gliding.” And what about the head game? After all, the mental attitude to flying has to be right to win. “I'm still trying work that one out,” he jokes. “Seriously though, being happy and enjoying it helps.”
If he wasn’t flying Carl would be flying his ultra-light aircraft – he built it himself – or skiing. If not that he’s in the gym or working.
Looking forward he says his goals for hang gliding in general are “just to keep this sport alive and help others to experience this amazing thing.” To that end, he gives any prospective pilot this advice: “Join your local club, get a duel flight, get to school and get in the air.”
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