[Rick Masters]

Close call on that hump at landing!
I wouldn't call that a difficult field for an older hang glider.
I can see why the pilot threw his drouge with that rocket ship, though.
Looks to me that the topless glider is only half-perfected.
Needs some true variable geometry at landing to slow it down.
Something like added dihedral or pop-out flaps or additional sail for landing...
I'll be waiting for Jim and Frank to suggest wheels.        
But that's just a kludge, ya know, for the real problem of getting it to slow down enough for a stand-up landing.
I wonder if a topless would slow down a little more with Jim's flybar?

[Frank Colver]

After I started flying my RC gliders at my desert place I found out how really neat large flaps can be. I have to land the models in my dirt driveway amid many glider eating hungry desert thorny plants and I can't make a long/low approach. I added big 80* flaps to all of my RC models, for use there. It would be great if someone figured out how to do that on the fast landing HG's.

It's great to drop the flaps on the cross wind leg and watch the model slow and start descending steeply into the upwind landing leg, still under full control.

Coming in a little too short? Raise the flaps briefly and extend the glide and then put them down again. Neat, if we could do this with a high performance HG.

Frank

[magentabluesky]

Way too much junk . . . KISS out the window.

I would take pilot skill and technique over the drogue chute any day.

Captain Donald Quackenbush nailed it in the comments section:

Small landing field with obstacles requires loose VG and getting on the uprights sooner to degrade glide.

Small turbulent field landing: Release VG early. Once on final, get upright to degrade glide angle, get feet under you, and be in position to flare when necessary. Never drag drogue through bushes.

Getting vertical and opening your harness with your legs will degrade your glide. Leave the drogue chute at home.

Flying Frank's Swing Seat really showed me the importance of getting vertical in the flare.

[Rick Masters]

A little headwind always seems to help.

[magentabluesky]

The first question is why does this guy need a drogue chute with all those open fields to land in?

Leave the drogue chute at home.

The next question is why doesn’t he have a way to retract or cut the drogue chute loose?

Leave the drogue chute at home.

And lastly, why would the drogue chute deployment on takeoff keep him from doing a normal upright on the down tubes landing?

Just leave the drogue chute at home.

I would take pilot skill and technique over the drogue chute any day.

[Frank Colver]

Answering your "lastly" question: Because the chute is attached below his butt. It's holding his feet up so he can't make a running landing. Good Grief Charlie Brown

Frank

[Rick Masters]

I used a Delta Wing Drogue Chute.
This would clip around a rear wire with the drogue secured inside a bag on the downtube.
When you tugged the drouge out of the bag, and tossed it to the side, it would deploy and pull the clip up the wire to the end of the keel.
It couldn't foul with anything back there and it was on a pretty short bridle - a lot shorter than the one in this video.
It was not particularly dramatic and I couldn't tell that it was slowing me down much.
A drogue is most effective at high speed.
At slow speeds, such as landing pre-flare, it doesn't do much.
I don't think the drogue in this video did much, either.
The guy was burning in. That's what you do with a properly set-up drogue for a short-field landing.
I was going, "Why is he flying so fast?"
The guy needs to work on his landing technique.        
Why didn't he rotate? There was no flare!
All the drogue does is give you a little worse l/d.
It doesn't have to affect your landing.
Is that how hang glider pilots flare these days - with their hands on their base tube?
I never did that with any glider - single or double surface.
You'd be sure to belly-in.
Frank, the guy never rotated. That's what caused the crash. He should have rotated from a lot higher up.
The drogue helps your flare. It pulls you back. It pulls your cg back. Even if its tangled around your leg. That's good.
The drogue looked like it was attached to his lower harness suspension point.
Do you think he had it wrapped around his leg?
I've watched it 3 times and I can't be sure.
Anyway, you can't draw any conclusions about drouges from this video.
If you have the drogue directly behind the harness, that's the dirtiest part of a hang glider.
Look how it was dancing all around in the turbulent flow on that long bridle.
You want it attached to the keel, I'd think, on a shorter bridle.

I'm kinda like Mike.
I flew with the drogue for a while, but I just never really needed it.
If guys need it on today's faster gliders, then that's okay.
But I started flying with flour bombs in kleenex, tossing one on my final 360 to gauge the wind direction.
That worked pretty good.
Any wind at all and I could flare hard and drop a couple feet, letting the dirt take the weight of the glider and me landing on bent knees.
Became my standard technique in Owens Valley.
Less advantage to a drogue if you land off-wind.