[reluctantsparrow]

IMHO, a whack is not induced by excessive pull. The trigger can be more appropriately described as "prematurely reduced push" or "insufficient push".

---<)kaimartin(>---

That seems to line up with my "roll in" experiences Kai. I have rolled in several ways...sometime slowing the glider to just above stall as the wheels touch....sometimes "greasing" it in at a fairly high rate of speed....
I NEVER stall the glider just off the deck. Always keep the speed up and keep the glider flying until wheels are on deck....then usually pull in to roll it out and keep the keel "up" until the glider rolls to a full stop in most cases. Then the keel gently settles.

[reluctantsparrow]

Wow Rick.... great find!
I hired a law firm to professionally search for any prior art and they never found what you just posted. Neither did I. Doing a "prior art search" is how I found the U.S. Hawks in the first place.
He even had the restraint line and wheels going on too. Pretty smart fella. And he thought of all that s*** because he HAD to! Same as me...my shoulder got so screwed up 9 years ago I just could not do prone anymore....necessity is the mother of invention.
For myself, I am just going to keep moving forward. This past year has been the most comfortable flying experience of my entire life. in spite of my shoulder injury from 9 years ago I have been flying anytime I want for as long as I want with no soreness whatsoever. NO sore neck, NO sore shoulders. NO sore Back. Flying Suuprone with the FlyBar has simply transformed my hang gliding experience.
Scott Campbell (former test pilot for Eipperformance) bought a new Freedom X from Northwing and we are bending up a flybar for it. A Freedom X with a "black smoke" mylar sail, flybar, and a sleek suprone harness? It is going to be the sexiest thing in the sky.
I have purchased a professional tubing bender with Delrin followblocks so as not to gouge or scar aluminum. Moving forward at the speed of cash.
Met with Kamron Blevins of Northwing two week ago as well. Kamron brought some tubing over for me to play around with. Kamron fully supports the Flybar endeavor, and can't wait to fly it for his self.
To quote my friend, Kamron Blevins, from two weeks ago...Kamron said..."This thing could actually save hang gliding if it catches on fast enough"....
Bending up a flybar for a Northwing EZ this week and planning a trip to Chelan so Kamron can fly it. We did not have time when he was here at my place.
I am totally unconcerned about the future of hang gliding BTW. To fly like a bird is humanity's oldest dream and Hang Gliding is the closest thing to birdlike flight humanity has ever come up with.
Sure, free flight might die in the united States for various stupid reasons but the dream itself has a certain immortality attached to it. The dream has been around a long time and will remain far after we are all gone.
Perhaps we are not pursuing a "safe splat" device for ourselves. Perhaps we are all doing this for a future generation.
I hope it is for us, but it worth pursuing regardless.

[Rick Masters]

"This thing could actually save hang gliding if it catches on fast enough"

I hadn't given any thought to the crossover potential, but it may be significant.
They could keep their paraglider harness, sell the dangerous parachute to some other dummy and get a real aircraft.
Not sure there's enough of them capable of thinking clearly after multiple concussions
or running off the hill safely on a hang glider with a paraglider limp, but maybe there are a few.
Not sure what they'll do when they realize they don't need to hang around like a balloon
or that they can go way back into the range and still get out
or that their reserve can easily spend its entire career in the bag
or that tree landings are not something you think about much
or that glider racks are an absolute chick magnet.    
I disagree, of course, that hang gliding needs to be saved.
A few enthusiasts will always be around to keep it alive.
These things go in cycles.
Hang gliding died out before with the advent of the first power aircraft, which were essentially ultralights with much heavier engines.
But there were always a few who were fascinated by footlaunch soaring like Volmer Jensen, who never quit.
It's obvious to me that now that hang gliding is going to be around forever.
A few people might realize how retrograde paragliding is - choosing lower performance at greater risk - and step up
but most of these people just want to fly without putting in the effort it takes to become a real pilot.

[Frank Colver]

I am just thrilled to see seated hang gliding coming back with improvements. I never wanted to fly prone and never did during my 7 years of flying in the 70's. When everyone else went prone, then I had to start taking jabs about my outdated flying form. However, I was having a great time looking around during my flights and afterward without a sore neck. The tradeoff in performance was not important to me.

The difference between then and now is that my legs were below the base tube. I can see the advantage of this above the bar method. One advantage of my lower position was that i had a lot of control compared to the size of the triangle control bar. I liked the smaller bar for the launching run.

Frank C.

[reluctantsparrow]

the "crossover" has already began here where I fly. like I said in earlier posts. It is the PG crowd that has showed the most interest, not the HG.
I know of one local PG pilot, having seen the Flybar in action, currently taking hang gliding lessons. He is crossing over, more will follow.
As the bar gets out there at more sites with more exposure?....oh yes...Both PG and HG are going to take notice.
Flying with the FlyBar is MORE comfortable than paragliding. Don't have to hold the arms up all day to fly...just rest them on the flybar....
I am setting up a 190 Falcon and the 170 EZ with flybars this month. Then I will be able to let pilots give it a whirl on single surface gliders they are familiar with.

[JoeF]

epic crash hand gliding (эпичные падения дельтапланов)

No wheels
Gouging small wheels
No skis

Safe-Splat motivation

[Rick Masters]

Tandem wheels

[Rick Masters]

[Red]

I'm a little late to the game, but I believe there are two fixes for the current lack of pilot safety in a mishap. The first comes from my direct experience. I flew the Fledgling for decades, and more than one pilot came over to say they had never seen me "beak-in" with the glider. There was a simple reason for that. I had my own custom controls rigged (very crudely copied on the Fledge-III) that allowed me to open both rudders fully, and at the same time, flare from about a foot (30cm) behind the triangle bar. (The Fledge-III flare control system was pitiful, IMHO.) Anyway, with twelve square feet (1,1 square meters) of solid drag at the kingpost height, plus the "extra" arm length for the flare, my Fledgling would rotate to a keel-almost-vertical position on the flare. You may core-sample the LZ with the tail of the keel, but the nose would never hit. The flare window was fairly broad in time or airspeed, especially for a rigid wing, because there was no way the glider would balloon up with both rudders fully deployed, if the flare was done a little too soon.

The other approach has been mentioned here already, bowsprits. I believe that the Aeolus was the shape of things to come. I really liked the bird-like planform of that glider. The nose angle was broad, so the bowsprit was not too long or too beefy. It did provide well for the safety of a pilot in a mishap, though. I hear that the Aeolus had a serious tendency to yaw in flight, but I believe we know enough now to remedy that quirk. The vertical fin was maybe too small, or maybe too close to the pilot. The horizontal tailfeathers could also be enlarged, to whatever is needed to insure good pitch responses when needed. I would still like to see the basic design resurrected, with improvements as noted. This would be a bird that I want to fly . . . and it would be safer than the short-keel gliders now available, in a mishap.

All IMHO, of course.

[JoeF]

This one?

aolus_id354.jpg (95.5 KiB) Viewed 6630 times

http://www.delta-club-82.com/bible/354-hang-glider-aolus.htm