short chute toss is a valid concern. Kept me awake last night for a short time. I really do not know and that is something I need to give more attention to.
Lacking any actual experience with PG equipment and its wishful thinking design philosophy, I suspect the PG harness on a hang glider is a poor choice for a parachute toss. I know that with a chest or belly-mounted chute, I would be able to exercise maximum strength and accurate aim, but taking an extra, time-consuming step trying to tug that chute out from under my a** is not in any way ideal for maximum performance of human musculature. Add that to the proximity of the base tube and the formerly free space now taken up by the handlebar, plus the usual complications presented by the side wires, and you're in a trap of your own making. I'd think all you could do is drop the chute because you might be banging your legs against the downtubes and not have enough room to pull it up between your legs. That is not a good option because "down" is rarely "down" when you are in trouble. As your ability to chuck that chute through a hole has been compromised, I have to say you need a ballistic chute fired out the top with that deadly combination.
There are a couple "gotchas" that lurk out there for hang glider test pilots. One is wishful thinking; the other is not seeing what you're looking at. The fix requires an ability to envision disastrous scenarios and guard against them. But every problem doesn't necessarily have an effective solution. Sometimes a seemingly good idea has a fatal flaw. The flaw that you miss will be the one that gets you.
Like you, I enjoyed fooling around with my gliders, always trying to improve the glide. After the 1981 XC-Classic, Klaus Kohmstedt gave me his Sport Keller harness. It might have been the first one in the US. I had just picked up a 190 Moyes Meteor for $500 from Mike Smith in Los Osos that had been used on a trike. It handled well with my hook-in weight of 220. It was sleeved, heavy at 90 pounds and just a tad baggy. I really liked the fact that it was sleeved since I was flying the Owens Valley. I didn't care that it was heavy because hang gliders don't weigh anything at takeoff or landing. It was a thermal monster that would force you down in your harness under creaking rigging like you wouldn't believe, but I wondered if I could improve the glide ratio between thermals.
Those were the days when sail tensioning was becoming a big deal and everybody was retrofitting their gliders for greater crossbar tension. We didn't see too many problems from it. Maybe a couple sail failures stemming from trailing edge damage. But all the crossbar failures seemed to happen in tumbles where the gig was up, anyway, so we didn't worry about it. Most guys were using rope pinch/lock hardware from sailing, like they still do today, but I rigged a 10-inch long handle on my right downtube, hinged about a foot above the base tube. When up, the sail was loose. When I pulled it down in flight, it held its position and I could boogy. It was easy to operate and seemed... foolproof.
I flew with polarized glass lenses to see dust in thermals. They were big ones, pilot type. I'd been flying the Moyes for a year with the lever and loved it. I launched off Horseshoe and thermaled north along the Sierra. It was a good day. I was at 11,000 feet, leaving Lone Pine Peak, when I bumped the lever with my helmet doing some aggressive adverse yaw thermaling. The lever, under load, snapped up and struck me in the face. The tip of the handle shattered my left lens and sprayed my eyes with tiny shards of broken glass. I knew if I blinked, I'd be finished. I headed out to Lone Pine Creek above Lone Pine at Movie Flat, painfully holding my eyes open, barely able to see with my left eye through the unstoppable rush of tears, unable to see at all through my left eye, stripped of depth perception, spiraling down. I had to flood my eyes. I needed a lot of water. I had to land at a creek. I set down okay behind Irene Cuff's Movie Ranch, my eyes streaming, and ran to the creek. I stuck my head under the water and shook it, eyes open, until I couldn't hold my breath any longer. That did it. I could see and the glass was gone.
So I changed the attachment of the tension rope a little bit and it stayed locked in place like it should. I got a new lens and figured I'd solved the problem. And I had. The lever remained locked the way I wanted from that moment forward. Then a few months later, it almost killed me. I never saw it coming. On another flight from Horseshoe, I was approaching thermaling the Sierra close to a big mile-high cliff above the Aberdeen lava fields. The thermals were roaring up the vertical granite sides. They were choppy and violent and fun. I was climbing strong, circling near the face with just enough room to recover and turn away if I got dumped. I hit some good turbulence, fell out, pulled in the bar to recover in a steep right hand dive when the little nylon rope that supported my helmet somehow found its way under the handle and snagged. I was locked in a steep right hand spiral next to the cliff. I could only release my hand to deal with the problem in the short moments when I was turning away from the cliff, then I'd have to adjust the spiral as best I could to avoid hitting the rocks. I popped the lever up but the line was still caught. Grab the bar. I ripped off my glove with my teeth. Grab the bar. Tugged at the line. Grabbed the bar. I was done. I was gonna throw my chute. But Rich Pfeiffer had told me that in situations like this, it was better to just jump out of your harness because the cliff was just going to collapse your chute and beat you to death so it was better to get it over with quick. I gave one more tug. The line popped free. I centered and departed the spiral and the cliff face, knowing I'd almost eaten it.
So you never know. You start fooling around with changes, you think everything's all right, you think you've got it under control. And guess what? It's nothing but wishfull thinking. You are looking right at the problem but didn't see it. Stay well, my friend. Don't let those handlebars snag your harness in turbulence.
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