The Lookout Mountain Flight Park is getting in touch with its feminine side this weekend.
Registrants will check in today from 4 to 7 p.m. at the landing zone near Trenton, Ga., and go through orientation for the third biennial Women's Hang Gliding Festival. Student aerotow tandems are scheduled for 5 p.m. until dark, weather permitting.
Reservations are required for all the training and flying events through Sunday, including classes on the small and big training hills and a ground school at the training hills each morning. There also will be student aerotow tandems and discovery tandem flights each day, and the festival includes evening social activities as well.
There is an "open mic night with Kid Dave Miller and you" set for 8:30 p.m. Friday and a Halloween costume party with catered dinner, music, beer and a bonfire all for $10 on Saturday, starting at 7 p.m. Those are open even to people not taking part in the flying activities.
"Our primary goal for pilots is to have flying tasks for each day of the festival," the event website says. "In the event of blown-out conditions, we will be offering different clinics."
The clinics would include instruction on launching and landing, among other things.
The festival was designed for women hang gliders, obviously, but organizers say they welcomed all pilots, regardless of gender, to sign up and join in. The three primary objectives, however, were to provide female pilots a chance to fly and otherwise associate with each other, to give "inactive pilots" a "safe and comfortable environment" for getting back in the flow and regaining their confidence and to introduce women with no experience to the sport.
Lookout Mountain Flight Park is a "hang 2" facility with a "new, very forgiving slope launch and a large, grassy landing zone," as the website describes it.
"Fall is also a good time for ridge soaring conditions, an excellent way to build air time and to enjoy the sky," the site says. "We will be hosting fun flying competitions as well as fun flying in general."