I am happy to report the Skyline SkyDogs are alive and well, and most are still flying.  We flew our beloved launch "The Rock" above Skyline Drive, and other flyable sites in the area such as Bardon's Peak and Wisconsin Point.  I still hold the local foot-launched "Time Aloft" duration record with a 2 hour 45 minute flight at a site east of Wisconsin Point, "Becks Road," and hope some local fellow or lady would please exceed that time aloft record.  We are all in our 50s and 60s now, but still enjoy all the good things that come with flying hang gliders.

There are still some SkyDogs in the Duluth area (Dan O'Hara, Doug Johnson, Malcolm MacAulay, Craig Austin), but many have moved out to Washington state for the better flying conditions.

We still get together every year for "SkyDog Week," where we all fly together in Chelan, WA. The SkyDogs are known worldwide now, as Gerry Uchytil and Lee Fisher are former National Champions, and Larry Majchrzak and Dan Uchytil were the directors of the 1994 Women's World Hang Gliding Championships held in Chelan, WA. You can read the story of the Skyline SkyDogs in a chapter of the book Sky Adventures, Fantasies of Free Flight written by Jim Palmieri (ISBN 1-57502-268-0).  It is worth a read just to learn about the SkyDog's elaborate Rating System, and Dan O'Hara's epic poem of how to earn the rating "Order of the Gull".

When the SkyDogs get together for some adult beverages, we often express sorrow of how the next generation of young folks don't "pick up where we left off" ... so here I am "calling you out!"  With all the extreme sports etc. in our media, we don't understand why the local Duluth-Superior folks don't fly hang gliders or paragliders.

Here's a cool video of Doug Johnson recently soaring Wisconsin Point.



In the interest of preserving Skyline SkyDogs history in Duluth, I've attached a few photos.

Thanks,
Jon Solon
Chelan, WA