Getting the HANG of it.

Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

OREGON HANG GLIDING For more information on the Oregon Hang Gliding School, go to www .oregonhanggliding.com or call [phone]

Dangling from an aluminum frame 2,000 feet above the Willamette Valley floor may not sound like everyone's idea of fun, but for Jennifer Phillips, 32, it was the perfect way to spend a Monday afternoon.

"Awesome," pronounced Phillips after touching down in an empty field near Coburg following a tandem flight with instructor John Matylonek. "I don't think I stopped smiling the whole time."

Phillips, an Air Force pilot who has parachuted from airplanes and dangled from the end of a bungee cord, may have an above-average threshold for fear, but Matylonek insists that his sport is not just for adrenaline junkies.

"By definition, hang glider pilots are very conservative," he says. "If they weren't, they couldn't do it."

Matylonek, 44, estimates that there are about 300 hang gliding enthusiasts in Oregon and says he gives lessons to about 100 students. New advances such as stationary towing are making it easier than ever to learn the sport, which is popularly practiced at the Oregon Coast, Lakeview and Woodrat Mountain near Jacksonville.

If there was a heyday for the sport in Lane County, Matylonek says, it was during the 1990s, when scores of pilots would launch their gliders off the Coburg hills. At that time, he says, the sport was popular enough to attract a few spectators, but a fatal accident put a damper on the enthusiasm and caused timber companies and other land owners to limit access to launch and landing sites. Today, there are two remaining launch sites on BLM land east of Coburg.

"We've been doing this for 40 years and yet we're still battling this perception that what we're doing is crazy," laments Matylonek.

Hang gliders such as Matylonek say there is a widespread public misconception that they are risking their lives every time they launch into the air. It's partly because of that misconception that Matylonek started teaching the sport in 1997. By teaching students such as Phillips, he hopes to ensure the future of his sport, which he says is a safe activity (according to the 10,000-member United States Hang Gliding and Para- gliding Association, there were five reported deaths in 2005) that can even be taught to children.

In addition to running the Corvallis-based Oregon Hang Gliding School, Matylonek teaches hang gliding classes at two different community colleges. Introductory lessons with tandem flights start at $220, and the cost can go up to $5,000 for instruction and the purchase of a glider.

A combination of art, science and athleticism, hang gliding, Matylonek says, also teaches patience.

"It's not a thrill ride that you can take anytime you want," he says. "It teaches people how to delay gratification."

Preflight jitters 

Watching Matylonek and Phillips prepare to launch from a steep hillside high in the Coburg hills, it's hard to believe his assertion that hang gliding is not an activity for thrill seekers. Before leaving the ground, Matylonek, who bears a resemblance to Phil Keoghan, the host of the adventure reality show "The Amazing Race," reaches a heightened state of alertness. With wide-open eyes, he scans the horizon and scopes out the bowl-shaped launch pad. Meanwhile, Phillips, who has until this point been remarkably calm, has grown noticeably tense.

"OK," she admits, "I'm nervous now."

To get to this point, Phillips underwent ground training and participated in a half-day course on the Oregon Coast where she learned to fly a much smaller hang glider by "skimming" just a few feet off the ground. Matylonek can teach his students the same low-level flying technique at the Corvallis airport using a mechanical tow line. Towing allows instructors to work in less than ideal weather conditions and, when used with motorized ultralight planes, allows skilled pilots to fly in previously unthinkable spots such as Florida, which has become a hang gliding hot spot.

If Phillips decides she wants to pursue hang gliding after her tandem jump, she will take at least a dozen more lessons before flying on her own. She will learn to launch in different weather conditions and varying terrain types and will practice making approaches in a variety of different landing zones. If she decides to invest in her own equipment, a glider, harness, parachute and helmet will set her back about $4,500.

"Right now I'm just dabbling," says Phillips, who got the idea to try the sport after seeing one of Matylonek's billboard advertisements while jogging. "It just seemed like something that not a lot of people do."

Reading the wind

If the daredevil nature of hang gliding is apparent just before launch, the science - and maybe the art - can be seen in the way Matylonek prepares for a flight. An amateur meteorologist who stays glued to weather Web sites and computer models of high and low pressure systems to help him find his next flight window, he says hang gliding has changed the way he looks at the world.

"You never really look at a bird or a tree or a wisp of wind in the same way," he says, pointing to a fast moving cumulus cloud as an indication of wind speed.

Being a hang glider has taught Matylonek how to check smoke rising from chimneys and watch wind shadows on reservoirs. And, he knows a thing or two about turkey vultures.

Even though he and other Oregon pilots fly almost year-round, he says the main drawback of hang gliding in a rainy climate is that flight distances are more limited. A Lebanon pilot, for example, recently broke the state distance record by hang gliding more than 80 miles to Roseburg, but pilots in other parts of the country have been known to fly as far as 300 miles.

"Being Oregon, you can't have perfect weather when you fly," Matylonek says. "You have to learn to determine when something is (big enough) to be concerned with."

Space-age inspiration

The first hang glider in history was German civil engineer Otto Lilienthal, who left the ground briefly in 1891, but hang gliding as a sport didn't take off until decades later. A NASA project for a spacecraft recovery system served as the inspiration for modern-day hang gliders, which emerged in the 1960s.

While the growth of hang gliding has been relatively gradual, its sister sport of paragliding has been taking off faster, says Jayne DePanfilis, executive director of the USHPA. The sport, which was pioneered in the French Alps during the late 1970s, involves using a gliding parachute to soar through the air. Part of the appeal is portability. While a fixed-wing hang glider weighs from 75 to 100 pounds and fits into a 15-foot-long bag, a paragliding set-up can be packed into a 25- to 30-pound backpack. The growth of the sport can be seen in the membership of the USHPA, which adopted paragliding in 1993 and has seen more and more of its members picking up parachutes.

"Overall, membership has remained very stable, but the composition has changed," DePanfilis says.

The giant tandem hang glider being used by Matylonek and Phillips is anything but lightweight. With a 40-foot wingspan, the glider is difficult to maneuver on the ground and, even in the air, Matylonek compares flying it to driving a truck.

But once airborne, Matylonek says, the glider will respond, allowing him to control roll, pitch and yaw with subtle shifts of his weight.

"You are the fuselage," he explains, "You can't fly without the glider and it can't fly without you."

The final push

After going over every inch of the glider with his hands to check for problems, Matylonek dons a harness and instructs Phillips to do the same. They've practiced the routine in ground school and the movements appear familiar to Phillips as she tries her "hang" in the gravel parking lot.

After muscling the giant glider to the launch zone and performing his final preflight check, Matylonek goes through the sequence of events one more time for Phillips.

"Now, you're going to run like hell, right," he says. "I'm going to be doing the steering, you're going to be doing the running."

Matylonek gives a call to get ready, and the pair head off down a grassy launch ramp littered with stumps. At first it looks as if they are headed for the remnants of a massive Douglas fir, but the wings of the glider start to rise the moment the push begins.

Soon Phillips, the designated runner, can run no more. Her feet leave the ground and Matylonek gives one final push just in time to clear the massive stump.

Once airborne, the running and the shouting and all of the awkwardness of pushing 75 pounds of aluminum and plastic and synthetic fiber off a mountaintop is replaced by silence as the glider levels off and the pair begin their slow descent toward the valley floor.

Later, after they've landed safely in a farmer's field, Phillips says that she was surprised by the lack of fear she felt once the glider left the ground, and Matylonek recounts what his student said on the way down.

"She kept saying, "It's like being a bird, It's like being a bird."