[dhmartens]

I attended the Otto 45 meet and was humbled by the historical founders I met and the close inspection of the 1970's technology that fueled the evolution of the greatest sport on earth that is dear to me. I got a chance and practiced launching and landing after over a year hiatus because of getting caught up in fighting for the righteous cause. What effected me most was meeting the people who flew these devices in the 70's and early 80's, gave so much to the progression of the sport and more importantly are the "ones who survive it are few". The fact they survived makes them very special almost like they had guardian angels. That day we had perfect winds of 13 to 19. I got to meet with BobK in person, compare notes and I now have a 3 phase strategy of total victory which will now begin to go into effect.

We are truly the People of the SouthWind.

[Dayhead]

I'm glad to find folks enjoying the "Sling Wing" toy glider.

I got in a jam about 15 years ago and had to sell a fraction of the patent to a guy that wanted to make and sell the glider. He named his "Zing Wing".

The glider was originally made so that I would have something to teach my HG students something about flying wing aerodynamics with. It didn't work out for that purpose, as the students didn't care anything at all about aerodynamics.

They did want some gliders to play with though, So a few years later I patented it and licensed a company to market it.

Between every inventor and success stands an accountant and a lawyer. If you're gonna market a flying machine, may I suggest that you do everything yourself. But if quality is of no concern....

I sure had a lot of fun at the BirdDay Party, although my sore arm prevented me from flying this year. It was so good to see everyone again.

John Heiney wears sunglasses. Twice I failed to recognize him, and it was embarrassing to say the least, but it does go to show how much the eyes play an important role in my recognition system. Getting old ain't for sissies....

I'm pretty upset over what I consider to be the abysmal state of the HG art. When I started HG in '76 i had grand dreams of what the Hg would become. Last year I flew a state-of-the-art Wills Wing T2C. I don't understand why in 2016 we have to make a choice between good handling and good performance.

Wait a minute. I do understand why! It's because our HG manufacturers have this insane blind loyalty to the idea that flex wing HG's are to be controlled by pure weight shift only.

To fly in a flex wing competition, the glider can only be controlled by weight shift.

Help me out here guys. Out of every 100 gliders sold, how many get flown in one of these 'official' competitions where only weight shift is allowed? C'mon and take a guess, yours will be as good as anyones.

So subtract that amount from the 100, and the number we have left is the number of Hg pilots that are putting up with what can only be described as substandard handling qualities.

That's right, X-percentage of the Hgers are making the decision to put up with this crap so that a few other pilots can fly in a contest. The more I think about it the madder I get.

Some of you are saying about now "Well, Steve, if you feel so strongly about it, why don't you fix it?"

The answer is simple: I'm not qualified. I'm not an engineer, I'm not even a half-assed mechanic. The only thing I can do is bitch and moan and maybe by doing so I can get those that are qualified to do something about it.

Well, I've got to go do something constructive so I'll close for now. But you ain't heard the last from me, I'm a man on a mission--a mission to try and save HG from itself.

Yours in Flight, Steve

[Rick Masters]

It's because our HG manufacturers have this insane blind loyalty to the idea that flex wing HG's are to be controlled by pure weight shift only.

I would argue the manufacturers built the types of gliders the pilots were demanding. Pilots wanted simple wings they could rig quickly and dive off the hill on. Control surfaces were for the more technically-inclined pilots on rigid wings. Drag rudders on Fledges, mostly. The superb standouts in rigids were Don Mitchell's Mitchel Wing, with spoilers and elevons (but no rudders), flown by Dr. Howard Long in the middle 70s, and the Sunseed, designed by Bob Trampenau and flown by Eric Raymond, with aileron-like diffuser tips, in the early 80s.
  
    During this period, a lot was being discovered. Control reversal in the Mitchell Wing, brought on by the spoilers at low speed, came as a complete surprise to Don Mitchell. This control reversal was also apparent in some experiments with flex wings, resulting in pitch-overs at flare. The flexwing ultralights equipped with a canard proved to be high-fatality disasters.
    Drag rudders on the wingtips of very tight racing flexwings were tried into the middle 1980s but the pronounced yaw tendancies typical of these ships played against the development of effective flying techniques. They created unnecessary drag and worked against the proven adverse yaw technique of initially loading the opposite wing in turns. The extra drag presented by adding control surfaces lowered the performance of the wings. The XC pilots driving the evolution of hang glider design didn't want that. They didn't want to spend any more time rigging - because they were used to simple Rogallos. Rigging deflexors in the later 1970s was as far as they wanted to go. High aspect ratio wings strong enough to fly without draggy deflexors was the holy grail - then Roy Haggard annihilated everything with the Comet.
    Even if adequate control surfaces had been implemented, the fastest racers were all detuning their dive recovery systems to reduce drag. No properly set-up hang glider, with or without control surfaces, could compete against these fast and deadly modifieds.
    The big handling advance in the early 80s was the French Connection. The ease of control this pitch enhancing device brought to tight racing wings was stunning. There was no sacrifice in performance.
    So I don't blame the manufacturers at all. They were simply responding to the demand of the times. If all the pilots had refused to fly the fast and difficult wings, it would have been a different story. But we all lusted after those monsters.

[Dayhead]

Thanks for the info Rick.

For all any of you know, I just might be totally full of s***. But then again, I may be only partially full of it.

For the time being, I'm asking for a chance to get my point across. I'm not very articulate so I may need several posts to clarify just what it is I'm trying to say.

I came to HG from the airplane world. I was only a couple/few hours away from taking my private pilot checkride when I bought a used Pliable Moose standard and commenced teaching myself how to fly it.

Right off the bat I recognized that HG's weren't anything like an airplane, which was both good and bad.

The good we all know about. The bad qualities had among them the one I'm pissing about on this forum, poor roll control. I need to get something out of the way right now: There are many, and quite possibly a majority, of pilots that don't agree with me. So if you feel that the present state of the art is adequate, then you may wish to put me on your Ignore List. If I should be posting this stuff on a different forum, or start a new topic, please feel free to advise me of this.

I took a break from California and went back to live with family in the Missouri Ozarks in 1986, and didn't return to California 'til 1997. While in Missouri I made friends with some really cool airplane folks, and I got to spend a lot of time flying to airshows for free, although that meant spending a lot of time polishing the bare aluminum airframe of a T-6 and a PT-22, and of course upon arrival at the show I got to clean the oil off the belly of the planes.

On one such occasion, I made friends with the builder/owner of a 200+ mph fiberglass airplane, and he took me up with him.

It was amazing. Not only fast, but the thing was controlled with a little side stick, and with quite literally fingertip pressure the plane could be looped and rolled all day with practically no fatigue.

I knew right then that if this thing could be built by a layman in his garage, there was simply no reason why someone such as myself or you couldn't build a foot-launchable or wheeled-launched part 103 glider with truly outstanding handling qualities.

If you guys vote that I'm barking up the wrong tree here, I'll make like an Arab and quietly fold my tent and silently walk away. But if you think we can have a conversation, I'll stay.

Rick says that the pilot population voted with their wallets for the technology in use today. He's right, but I'd like to add my opinion:

Had a better system been offered, the pilots would have voted for it.

But Hg is a small market. No current manufacturer has the resources to pursue research and devilment into alternative ways of getting things done. So where will new design ideas come from? From the grassroots, from the backyard inventor.

I think that in the days or years to come we will see a breakthrough in HG design. It won't be all that great of a leap, but it will bring to our community a safer, more relaxing, and possibly more exciting flying apparatus, one without all the baggage that current Hg designs have.

It may be a tired cliche, but the willingness to do out of the box thinking is required. It will be important to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, to respect all that we've done so far, and yet still be willing to recognize the stuff that does need to be replaced.

Forget me for a moment, I'm sure many already have. Just take a look at the accidents, both here and in the Pg world. Look at the high cost of equipment, and the frightening depreciation rate it has. Almost no one of us is willing to look at our cost per flying hour, it's just too damn depressing. ( I'm one of the exceptions here, all my gear is antique).

I'll close with my opinion of Where We Went Wrong:

I've already mentioned pure weight shift for roll control. When this first became an issue, somebody invented the Tall Keel Pocket. Then when that could no longer cut the mustard, someone invented the Floating Cross-Bar.
Those inventions were relatively cheap to produce, and helped quite a bit. To keep weight-shift-for-roll viable, a new invention on par with those is needed. And no, the VG ain't it. I feel that we should be embarrassed by the use of a VG. We gotta make a choice between reasonable handling and performance, and we do it with what is essentially a sailboat boom vang or a main sheet system. In 2016? Gimmee a break.

Another fork in the road that we took, again by Popular Demand, is the type of competition we pursue.

Cross-country racing is fine, but the goals of it have driven the glider design. That's Ok for the gifted athletes I suppose, but humans have egos, and so we weekend warriors just gotta have a topless bladewing too.
Like Republicans, we vote against our own best interests.

In the early days, when even the hottest gliders could only muster performance figures that are less than today's trainers, competition was for Duration and Spot Landing. Hmmm, I wonder what kind of qualities today's gliders would have, if spot landings were still an event.

And what if our national org had promoted safety by giving awards to those mfgs that had the best safety record?
Today we have a situation where the forward keel length and harness suspension length conspire together to produce brain damage when the nose plate hits our head in a whacked landing.
And speaking of whacks:

How could glider design have been influenced to produce easy landing qualities? What could we as an org have done to promote some other qualities besides a high speed flat glide angle? It's Ok if the outstanding athletes among us dismiss my ideas and criticisms, after all they look good in the present system of doing things. But if you're not in that niche...

Pg's routinely out distance Hg's with twice the glide angle. Hmmm...maybe if competitions had been designed to stress ease of landing in tiny LZ's we wouldn't be in this mess. I wonder where we'd be today if comps had been structured to reward the lowest stalling speed and the lowest sink rate and turn diameter?

Ok, before I call it a night I'd like to remind everyone that my ranting and raving is purely just stream-of-consciousness writing, with little or no pre-thought involved. All I know is that we can do better, and we're not, and if we don't then it's bye-bye hang gliding.

Of course, I may be full of s***, in which case just put me on the ignore list. Your Friend in Flight, Steve

[ARP]

Dayhead,

I, for one, think you are on the right track. Manufacturers are limited by the restrictive nature of the glider class system to fit in with requirements of competitions. This prevents major developments in performance and ease of operation. The stupid thing about this is most pilots never enter competitions. Manufacturers probably think that sales are driven by competition results and not by what the majority might want in a glider used purely for pleasure. This is an artificial barrier to glider improvement that manufacturers could address if they have a mind to do so. If they were to look more closely at the market potential it is probably more profitable to cater for the pleasure flying market than that driven by competition results.

Tony

[Rick Masters]

You guys talk like there's no sweet handling hang gliders out there.
There are, but they are big and slow.
Most hang glider pilots want faster gliders so they can fly farther.
A better l/d or a better sink rate result in the same thing: more time to look for thermals.
But the better l/d ship offers the capability to look for thermals somewhere else.

When you talk about paragliders out-flying hang gliders, you can only be referring to those instances where high l/d hang gliders would go down in weak conditions while paragliders float along on a tailwind in minimum sink. If more hang glider pilots tried XC in big, slow floaters, you would see them doing the same kind of flights as these paragliders, albeit flying farther. Nobody does this around my neck of the woods because going XC on floaters is dangerous. You often run into conditions during XC flights where penetration becomes a survival issue. That's one reason hang gliding does not rack up the fatality or injury rates of paragliding. It's harder to blow us off course and our wings can handle turbulence that is deadly to paragliders.

Over the years, I've met a lot of skilled pilots who could land hot ships well.
I've also met a lot of people who couldn't land anything well.
Competition sets a high mark, providing examples of what can be done with these magnificent wings.
It's no surprise that most of us strive to emulate that.

...we can do better, and we're not, and if we don't then it's bye-bye hang gliding.

That is preposterous and laughable.

[JoeF]

Steve,
Stay here going for new niche grounds. Other niche HG design branches will continue. There is room for one-of designs. There is a wide realm of activity types. "Competition" could be, as you noted, with various kinds of target actions. Let the variety of HGs blossom.

Mark West and team are working on something that will emphasize portability.

My X#n series does not have to fulfill someone else's HG purposes.

The following file has not been updated for some while, but the spirit will be evided: NICHE HANG GLIDING ACTIVITY
Steve, honor your spirit and directions. Stay here sharing your deepest passionate HG dreams and desires.
Let the manufacturers do whatever then need to do. The grass-roots HG maker may seed new branches of HG wings and specialized niche activity. Innovators need not wait for a following.

There is yet much undone in hang gliding.
== The large potential realm of micro hang gliding beckons innovation.
== Many craft safety solutions are yet to be brought to wing running hang gliding.
== Safe-Splat for conventional hang gliding could tease innovation.
== High-hat realm? Presto-oh-Change-oh wings will challenge designers.
== Control, as you note, has a pull for innovation yet. Wing morphing. More variable geometry.
== Area change during flight ...
== Interface with power: solar, muscle, oscillation mining, regenerative processes, ...
== Sensors
==
... playing at such as Otto Meet 45 seems to give impetus toward motivation

[Bob Kuczewski]

... Ok, before I call it a night I'd like to remind everyone that my ranting and raving is purely just stream-of-consciousness writing, with little or no pre-thought involved. All I know is that we can do better, and we're not, and if we don't then it's bye-bye hang gliding.

Of course, I may be full of s***, in which case just put me on the ignore list. Your Friend in Flight, Steve

Hi Steve,

I think the sport of hang gliding is in trouble for a number of reasons:

• Constriction of flying sites.
• Growth of the "easy alternative" known as paragliding.
• USHPA doesn't need hang gliding, so we don't have a national association that "sinks or swims" based on hang gliding alone.
• Transportation and storage difficulties.
• The "instant gratification" generation.
• Competition from virtual ... everything.

I think that there's a great need for outreach and that includes easy flying gliders. But the lack of easy gliders probably isn't what's keeping most people out of the sport. In fact, I suspect that most people considering the sport don't even know anything about handling issues. Instead, they're presented with the hurdles of: cost, storage, transportation, and training time. I think it seems almost overwhelming to many potential pilots. Paragliding just seems easier.

The Rio Grande Soaring Association (RGSA) is a tiny club in a relatively sparse part of the country, but they do a great job of bringing local pilots into the sport because they make themselves available to new pilots as mentors. I've seen it first-hand, and that's what we need to start doing better if we want to grow the sport.

A gentle glider is a huge help (just look at what they do with the Condor 330 at Dockweiler), but it takes outreach to bring in new pilots. We (as hang glider pilots) also need to realize that USHPA isn't going to help. They are rapidly transforming into a paragliding organization (just look at the leadership changes in the past decade). Hang gliding needs a hang gliding organization to survive.
 
 
P.S. In a private message Joe also pointed out the problem that hang gliding mostly takes place in remote areas out of public sight. He also corrected my misspelling of "hurtles". Thanks Joe!!

[Frank Colver]

P.S. In a private message Joe also pointed out the problem that hang gliding mostly takes place in remote areas out of public sight.

We had a big audience at the 45th anniversary meet all afternoon, of people curious about hang gliding, because of the close proximity of the very popular bike path to the Dockweiler HG site. Too bad there aren't more HG sites like that. Lots of questions were asked by the general public about hang gliding and the school - Windsports.

Frank

[Bob Kuczewski]

We had a big audience at the 45th anniversary meet all afternoon, of people curious about hang gliding, because of the close proximity of the very popular bike path to the Dockweiler HG site. Too bad there aren't more HG sites like that. Lots of questions were asked by the general public about hang gliding and the school - Windsports.

It would be nice if the Sunday-Funday events could attract people as well. I would really like it if Joe could "deputize" a few of us to give free "walk up and fly" introductions to passers by without any cost on Sunday Fundays. Short of that, maybe a discount rate on a few introductory flights that we could advertise (via flyers or the Internet) for Sunday Funday?