Hang Gliding and Paragliding Volume 44 / Issue 1: January 2014 | Page 27

right rudder and tried to shift my weight right a bit.” When
she neared the water, she shifted her weight back, in order to
pitch up and eke out a bit more glide.
It worked. At 258 feet, The Chicken Whisperer broke
the world record. “I had a ton of adrenaline and definitely
threw more than one fistpump after hitting the water,” Shane
remembers.
This was an amazing moment. Team member Marshall
Gusman recalls, “The absolute best feeling came from watching our pilot fly further and further out over the water, exactly
as we had planned and hoped and dreamed.”
As the contest dictates, the glider was destroyed immediately after, smashed and crushed into a dumpster. Hazen
had mixed feelings: “It was surreal. I’d worked on it so hard
for so long. But it was a pain to transport—worrying at every
bump that it would break—so it was sort of a relief, too.
There would be no more stress. Besides, the video will live on
forever.”

A New Appreciation
In the end, Hazen was blown away by his team. “I can’t say
how impressed I was with our pilot and everyone else who
helped build The Chicken Whisperer,” he exulted.
The Flugtag contest gave the team a true connection to
the golden years of DIY flight. Gusman explains, “We could

imagine how hard the aviation pioneers had to work to understand and build a flying machine from scratch with no prior
examples to follow.”
Hazen left Long Beach with an appreciation—both
technical and emotional—of what the early pioneers endured
and he now feels more attached than ever to flying: “I have
the utmost respect for the optimized aircraft we get to fly
today as HG/PG pilots, and I’m also in awe of the ingenuity,
dedication, and sacrifice that went into getting our sport to
this level.”
And then he quips: “How could those pioneers have been
so brave, ingenious, and, sometimes, stupid?”
Christina Ammon writes from The Crash Pad at Woodrat
Mountain in Oregon. Contact her at: woodratcrashpad@gmail.
com

Chicken Whisperer’s Team’s RedBull Page:
www.redbullflugtagusa.com/page/teams/view_
team/775/the_chicken_whisperers
Watch The Chicken Whisperer’s record-breaking flight:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM9nL1h-L4M
Great vintage early flight video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMhdksPFhCM

HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

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