US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

All my HG Super 8 movies are at my retired HG friend's house.
Later on all my VCR tapes turned to static.
Today I found a video where someone had converted movies from 1978 and put them on YouTube.
This is EXACTLY how my wife Terry and I together with friend Don Ray started out on January 1978.
We learned to start deep water on trick skis and then progressed to pop starts off of the beach
like is shown in the video. The control frames for the hang gliders were made of stainless steel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ecN0gkyJE

Thanks Bill---

Awesome video Bill!!!!!

Thanks for posting it.     

Here are a few thoughts that went through my mind:

       Upright to prone ... in 1/4 second or less. Wow!!     
       It might have been wise to put a float ... on the nose.   
       Bee Gees music ... who'da thought it would sound that good in 2016?
       I haven't seen bell bottoms in about 40 years.

I also thought, put a float on the front tip. But they probably found out, it wasn't worth changing the weight and balance.

I saw some of these boat towing pictures from back then, when I was reading up on John Dickenson: http://johndickenson.net/

~

I got a free boat and trailer off of Craigslist (I wanted the trailer to pick up ultralight plane projects). Used it to pick up my Chotia Woodhopper. All the airplane guys told me, sawzall up the boat and get rid of it. I hate destroying anything though, I'd rather restore it, even though I never could see me using it for anything at all. So I put it on blocks to pull the trailer out from under it.

Now I can rethink of it as glider tow vehicle...

What a crazy way to launch though, with a jerk right off the dock. Probably less tricky than from water skis.

Modern Austria / Alps hang gliding:

How refreshing to see a series of good stand up landings!

Frank C.