2021 Wings Over Wairar By Steve Cronin
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e a n i n t o l i f e ’s h a p p y accidents.” That’s what I was telling myself as I was coaching one of the many students into another hang check on my humble Moyes Malibu. I wasn’t really planning on giving countless hang checks when I signed up to be the point person for the Wellington Hang Gliding & Paragliding Club’s display at this years, prodigious Wings Over Wairarapa event. To be honest, I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d not been to any air shows before. Standing outside the Omaka Air Show back in 2015 with my frustrated sister and family, refusing to cut off
my leg to pay for a three hour ‘look around’ doesn’t really count, right? And, apart from setting up a glider and standing around trying to look cool at a balloon festival, my resume for ‘displays at air festivals’ was a complete blank too. So be it. With Kris Ericksen selfishly going off to compete in the 2021 Paragliding Nationals - I hope it was worth it Kris, because boy, did you miss out - there was a spot to fill. Our club had an invite to put on a display as part of the STEM program (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths: think students, lots of students) at this year’s air show, so with little real thought I grabbed the baton, Kris was to so elegantly to pass, and away we went. This was a total ‘we’ thing too. So, let’s get the thanks out the way now. I volunteered on the Tuesday night, was freaking out through most of Thursday and Friday, wondering what on earth I’d gotten myself in for, but thankfully by Saturday more of the crew from the WHGPC had come on board and we had a game plan. I didn’t feel like so much of a turkey now, just a little turkey that might be able to hide in the flock. So mucho gracious to Marina Adams, Brian Morris, Ian Loveridge, Geoff Williams, Mr Ian Miller and the lovely Bev, and last by now means
Left: Girl Power! Phoyo; Marina Adams
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least, there in spirit, Dave Maule and Grant Firth, our reserve bench for Sunday, which got Covided. This is a new word in western vernacular. It means when your event is cancelled because of a virus. What a shame. What a bummer. But, make no mistake, no wellmeaning, naive individual could pull off something like this alone and hope to be successful. That’s just crazy talk. But as a club you can. My humble thanks and gratitude to you all for coming on board for what I hope was a great two days, and a chance to promote our sport and our collective passion for free flight to the wider community, especially the students. Thanks Grant and Kate Tatham, for feeding me and for that early Saturday morning, ‘kick on the door’ so I didn’t sleep in, which looked to be on the cards. Thanks for Kris Ericksen in getting the ball initially rolling. Finally, for your support and enthusiasm, thank you Nick Taber. So, back to that hang check. If you’ll pardon the pun, I was kind of ‘winging’ it on this one. I know from the casual observer I looked like an ‘old hand’ at this. Not true. I had no clue. But I do know how to set up a hang glider and stand beside it looking cool, to some degree at least. Kind of like I might know what I’m doing. So I just pretended I was standing on Mt Murchison, next to my kite, and talked to anyone who
got close enough to listen. This is what happened that Friday morning of this year’s WOW. The Wings organisers have the foresight to open the displays to students the Friday morning, before the main event kicks off at lunch time with general admission. So there I was, with barely that first coffee seeping into my bones when the first group of students came through. I’d set up the Malibu with a very basic apron harness in place just to demonstrate how ‘low-fi’ you can go with this flying thing when one kid asks me, “...can I have a go in that?” Hmmm, that was a very good question. I couldn’t see why not. I wasn’t really planning on hang checks, just a static display, but it seemed like a good idea at the time,
