What Inspired Bill to fly? No-one is really sure. When
asked, he refers to his childhood longing to fly like the birds.  In the early 70's Bill and his young family (wife Paula and son Aaron) moved from their one-room school house in Brougham Ontario to a 100 Acre Property located on a ridge in between Port Perry and Oshawa, in the hamlet of Purple Hill (I think it could be called a hamlet, there were at the time only about 4 families living there). The move had been initiated by the Federal government who had expropriated the school house for the proposed Pickering airport. The airport has still not materialized and hopefully never will. More on this story in Bill's autobigraphical Father Goose. 
A friend and neighbor from
Claremont Ontario, Michael
Robertson, had become interested in the newly developed sport of
Hang Gliding, and found one of the hills behind Bill's new home a great
place to practice foot launching his early Rogallo Wing Gliders. Bill,
not wanting to miss out on the fun purchased a revolutionary fixed-wing
glider called the Easy Riser, a bi-wing craft designed in California by
Larry Mauro. Bill Practiced foot launching from his back yard with varying degrees of success. Tired of endlessly hauling the glider
back up the hill, Bill took the next step and bolted an 8 horsepower
go-kart engine on to the back of the glider, carved himself a propeller
and on a fateful day in 1978 made Canadian aviation history by becoming the first
in our Country to foot-launch a rigid winged powered aircraft.
If you have RealPlayer
installed,
The evolution of the aircraft that was finally used to imprint and train
the geese happened over a period of about 6 years, and not always
smooth. With Bill as the designer, engineer, fabricator and test
pilot it is surprising how few injuries were sustained. There were a
number of setbacks, including a broken tailbone, and a hanger that
collapsed due to snow load destroying the ultralight. The final version
was quite a step up from the old foot
launch powered glider, and featured a tail
fashioned from two drag rudders, a Chrome-Molly tricycle landing gear with steerable nose-wheel,
bungee cord
suspension, and a reliable 3 cylinder 2 stroke Konig engine
capable of producing 24 horsepower. The pilot no longer had to hang from
his armpits but was seated comfortably in a swing seat and controlled
the pitch with a joystick.
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Though the modified Easy-Riser was excellent for working with the geese,
it was not the ideal aircraft for long distance migration. The riser's
small fuel tank gave it limited range, and it's underpowered engine made take-offs in tight spaces
difficult or impossible. Parts were hard to come by or had to be
fabricated. Bill and Joe Duff, a photographer and avid ultralight
pilot from Toronto decided a different type of aircraft was needed for
their 1993 migration from Purple Hill to Virginia. They came up with the Idea of using a modified
trike design. The trike consists of a hang-glider wing with A-frame
controller above a tricycle landing gear configuration. After
researching several manufacturers they determined the
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Steering on the riser was controlled by two drag rudders, mounted between
the wingtips. To turn you twisted the bars under your armpits that you
hang from. Pitch control was by weight shift, leaning forward made you go
down and backward made you tilt upwards.
Cosmos,
designed and manufactured in France was the right machine. It has the
power needed to get out of short fields and, with the larger wing, was
able to fly slowly enough for the birds.