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Videos of Zing Wings in flight |
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ZB 18 in Flight (1.55 Meg) |
ZR 18 in Flight (1.3 Meg) |
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Complete ZB 28 Flight No. 1 (1.88 Meg) |
Complete ZB 28 Flight No. 2 (2.72 Meg) |
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| Night Hawks flying with ZB 28 (.877 Meg) | Sam our Border Collie in Action (2.76 Meg) | |
| Zing Wing Pictures (Click on picture for larger version) |
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Zing Wings in the Himalayas An adventurous man named Phill Brigstock from the UK took a trip to the Himalayas and brought some Zing Wings with him to give out as presents to the children he encountered. He traveled to the Everest Base Camp, and these pictures were taken from the village of Phortse. Phill tells me the gliders were a big hit with the local children, and that they still flew well at 18,500 feet, just a lot faster with higher descent rates due to the thin air. The very best perk I get from this little business is the incredible people I get to meet. Phill is definitely one of them! With his permission, I want to share the pictures he sent me with visitors to our web site. Many thanks Phill! |
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| Other Flying Stuff | ||
Solar Balloons |
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I love about anything capable of flight. Over the years, I have experimented with many different different flying things. One of the most fun (and challenging) is the solar balloon. The materiaI I use to make them is basically the same stuff used to make garbage bags. Basically, all you have to do is inflate them with regular old air and the sun does the rest. The bottoms of my balloons are left open, and the internal pressure keeps them inflated like regular hot air balloons. I have flown them free flight and tethered, and lifted and dropped radio controlled gliders from them. The heaviest object I have lifted is a 2 pound lead deep sea fishing weight. Here are a few pictures of some of my experiments. I'd like to be able to produce them fast enought to make selling them parctical, but I haven't got the building processes refined enough yet. Maybe some day.... |
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| They even work on overcast days! | Balloon eclipsing the Sun | |
| Around the Area |
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We live on Lookout Mountain (in Georgia) just south of Chattanooga, TN. This is a rural area that is heavily wooded with mostly hardwood trees (oak, hickory, maple, sourwood, etc.). Lookout Mountain is composed mostly of sandstone and limestone and is part of the Cumberland Plateau that stretches from Alabama through northwest Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and ends in Kentucky. Lookout Mountain is riddled with many caves, and Ellisons Cave located about 20 miles from here on Pigeon Mountain (a finger jutting off Lookout Mountain to the east near Lafayette, GA) that has the deepest known vertical drop of any cave in the US, about 600 feet! Our home is at about 1800 feet above sea level. Below are some pictures of where we live and some of the things we have seen since we moved here. |
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| This is a picture of our home. We have a small pond in front of the house that has quite a few bass, catfish, blue gill, and even a resident water snake (non-poisonous) we named Jake. Our yard is not very good for flying anything! Almost every time I have tried to fly Zing Wings here, they either end up in the pond or in the trees. Oh well, it is still a nice and quiet little place to live. | This is a really BIG caterpillar I found in the woods behind our shed. It looks fearce and not like anything to be messed with. The truth is that it is harmless and turns into a Regal Moth. The name for this mean looking creature is the Hickory Horned Devil. | |
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| We have a lot of frogs and toads around our place. This is a really cute shot of a toad. | A hang glider launching from Lookout Mountain Flight Park | |
The below pictures are from an area on Pigeon Mountain called Rock Town. It is a favorite place for rock climbers. The rocks are basically sandstone and are weathered in very spectacular ways. (Kathy is my wife, Emily my daughter, Ben and Jon are 2 of my 4 sons) |
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| Kathy and Emily standing by balancing boulder | Ben and Jon climbing on a really cool rock...lots of hand holds on this one! | |
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| Ben and Jon on nice weathered rock | Ben and Jon in a hole in the rock | |
| Our Dogs |
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For a long time, I wanted to have a border collie. I waited until we moved to the country and had enough room for such a high energy dog. We started off with Sam, and then got him a wife, Lilly. Well Sam and Lilly decided to have their own family. Lilly had 7 puppies (5 boys, 2 girls). We kept 2 of the boys and found homes for the others. It was a very hard thing to see the puppies leave our home. We were with Lilly when she delivered them, and mine was the first human hand that held each one. The 2 we kept are named Stan and Ted. They are pretty good boys. Sam is featured in the above videos catching various models of our Zing Wings. They seem to be his favorite toy. He has helped me so much over the years by retrieving them, especially when new models were in development. Sam seldom breaks the gliders, and most of the time there aren't even noticable tooth marks in the foam when he brings them back. He is a true friend! We love our dogs and made a special point to live in the country on a big enough piece of land for them to run. These dogs aren't for everyone because they require a lot of time and energy from their owners. They are fast, very agile, and most of all, smart. Our dogs understand so much of what we say to them it seems like we're talking to other people most of the time. Our dogs also love to swim, and spend much of the summer in our pond. It helps them stay cool, and they really seem to enjoy swimming as much as they do running. We also have an elderly black lab named Maggie. She is the acting grandma of all the border collies. |
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| Sam | Lilly | |
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| Maggie | Stan | |
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| Ted | Lilly and newborn pups | |
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| Sometimes I see the world in black and white... | Sam airborn over the pond fetching a ball (right below him in the water)...man he can jump! | |