Pilot Stories & Interviews

Follow up:

Thermal Flyer: Please tell us how you got started.

Marshall Poole: I been around flight since I was born, literally. My grandfather would babysit me as an infant and put me in airplanes and helicopters and know that is when I fell in love with flying. Seventeen years later I was walking in a mall in Rhode Island of all places. The school that was soliciting new pilots had a Vidio and a Javlin 208. I took his flyer and called two years later when I graduated from high school in 1988. When my feet left the ground and I was hooked.

Thermal Flyer: How long have you been flying?

Marshall Poole: 13 years and loving every minute of it.

Thermal Flyer: Where have you done most of your flying?

Marshall Poole: I got started in Massachusetts with two years of bunny hill stuff. I got me first glider at Morningside in New Hampshire. I did more of the bunny hill stuff in Rhode Island. Then I moved to San Bernadino, California. At Crestline I was taught by Bob McKenzie and did ridge lift and thermal flying for two and a half years. Great flying. Two days a week sometime twice a day. From there I moved to Sedona in 1994. I was told a local carpet cleaning guy flies so I called and got a hold of Paul Whitcome and then Tim Costello. Mingus flying is great as is northern Arizona.

Thermal Flyer: So what's with the missile?

Marshall Poole: Very simple. Storage. I moved into a house where I couldn't put my glider in the house so I thought a PVC drainage tube with a cap was best. But I wanted one with style so I made plywood fins, a laminated Styrofoam nose cone and a twisted rope fuse. I even have a block and tackle system to lift it off my truck. People love it especially now since September 11th. They even take pictures and say right on!

Thermal Flyer: What was your most memorable flight?

Marshall Poole: That is easy, April 22, 1999, Andy Rockhold's birthday. Tim and I were to meet him at Yarnell but he went home. So Tim and I went on. Conditions didn't seem all that great when we got to launch but Tim's wife said it looks good up there, pointing to the streamer on top. So we punched off in what turned out to be a great glass off. We flew for one and a half hours with one of the most incredible sunsets I have ever seen let alone flown in. Everything was red, the ground, the glider, the air. It was beautiful. Also at the time of landing we could see Mars, a full moon and a comet all at the same time. The Best!

Thermal Flyer: When people ask what is it like to hang glide what do you tell them?

Marshall Poole: What I explain to them is that it is the freest form of flight there is. If you go skydiving you are not flying you are falling. Plain and simple. In a hot air balloon you're in an oversized laundry hamper filled with high explosives even in an airplane you're surrounded by metal, glass. And if Exxon gives out, gravity takes over, gravity becomes your fuel. With hang gliding you launch and land the same as a bird. You lay prone like a bird. Even use the same methods to go high and far not to mention it is so much fun!