[Bob Kuczewski]

When I first started lessons,
...
The broomstick worked for me. Broomsticks are cheap and most everybody has one.

That's a creative idea from your instructor!! Thanks for posting it.   

By the way, Tiny Hawk is mostly broomsticks - 3 of them. It's also got an old batten as the boom and a clothes hanger for the glider frame. I could have made the "sail" out of any cloth, but I had some scraps left over from "Little Hawk" so I used authentic hang gliding sail material (Moyes Xtralight?) for this particular version.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Rowan recently started a new topic on hanggliding.org asking about computer simulations for learning to fly a hang glider.

USING COMPUTER SIMULATION TO HELP LEARN TO FLY
By rowanbradley

I am wondering whether computer simulation of flying a hang glider can play any helpful role in learning to fly.

Several pilots posted concerns to that topic that a computer simulation won't provide the physical "muscle memory" that's most helpful during the very few seconds of each early training hill flight. I agree with their concerns.

Red posted a link to his own simulator design which suspends a real hang glider using a ring (rim) to get around the nose wire.

FLTsimulator.jpg (36.78 KiB) Viewed 2182 times

Red's link (ironically) includes my own photo from a Torrey Hawks event where we used a simulator borrowed from Joe Greblo (thanks again Joe!):

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Red's simulator (and the one pictured above) are surely nice to have, but a new hang gliding student is not likely to have a spare hang glider hanging around (to hang from a tree) or a fancy rig like the one we borrowed from Joe.

The idea suggested by Miguel (in an earlier post above) is much more practical for a new student like Rowan. It only requires one broomstick and some imagination. 

The Tiny Hawk idea just adds two more broomsticks to make a triangular control frame with a "boom" to hold the visualization "glider" (made from a coat hanger in this case). The total cost is less than 10 bucks, and it can be assembled in less than half an hour. It's also quite small and portable so it can be "flown" around inside your house (cruising from room to room) or even at the local library as reported above by Sam:

... we did fly Tiny Hawk at the County Library for all to see.
   :
Because of the Tiny Hawk being right in front of your eyes, it's a visual thing.

... the TH control bar is on a much larger scale which requires a somewhat realistic physical input for first muscle memory.

"First muscle memory" - exactly right Sam!!  

This picture of some UCSD students at Torrey sums it up nicely:

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I encourage instructors and new pilots (like Rowan) to use inexpensive visualization tools like "Tiny Hawk" to build the "muscle memory" needed for quick and automatic responses when hang gliding.

Note: The Tiny Hawk idea is another casualty of Jack's "iron curtain" on hanggliding.org (no links allowed to ushawks.org). It's another idea that new pilots like Rowan aren't allowed to find from within the walls of "The world's largest hang gliding community" (aka hanggliding.org).

[Bob Kuczewski]

I just watched Eric's latest video about pilots not being particularly friendly in their outreach efforts. I don't know how true that is in general, but the Torrey Hawks and U.S. Hawks have done quite a bit of outreach.

In this topic, for example, several UCSD students were given some hands-on time with "Tiny Hawk" at Torrey. We were scolded and threatened by the Torrey operator for allowing unrated pilots to hold a "hang glider" like "Tiny Hawk" or "Little Hawk". I explained that even "Little Hawk" was only a 1/3 size model and not capable of flight. I also pointed out that they weren't even hooked in and were just holding it to get a feel for the sport. It didn't matter and we were shut down with vague threats.

Eventually, the U.S. Hawks and Torrey Hawks worked out free tandem arrangements with Dave Beardslee. We wanted to fly them at Torrey, but they wouldn't even allow Dave to give free tandem flights there without paying the full tandem fee to the business. So they ended up flying at Lake Elsinore.

BTW, here's Eric's video that reminded me of our outreach efforts: