landing

[Steve Davy]

Red's a dangerous shithead (reminds me of Bill Cummings). Smart enough to be literate, but too stupid to reason.

Rot in hell, Red.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33264
Don't Land In The Wheat - Knock Out

AndRand - 2015/08/13 21:04:14 UTC

Jason Boehm - 2015/08/12 14:21:25 UTC

in those instances treat the top of the grass/wheat/corn/shrubbery etc like ground

Got the same from my instructor.

Big freakin' surprise. Always works perfectly on paper.

And here's one I had to experience by myself - when skimming wheat in ground effect to land behind it I crossed the wheat field line not perpendicular, with one wing first. And, surprise! one wing went down...
Crashlanding without stall so not a bruise (me or glider).

Try to stall next time. You won't even crash. The worst you will experience will be an inconvenience.

CAL - 2015/08/14 17:45:56 UTC

the last time I landed in a wheat field as others have stated, I made the flare before the bar touched the ground, but I didn't do so well when the farmer came around and replied. you know that is my livelihood you just landed in ! after feeling like crap, I let him know I would pay any damages and felt terrible that I couldn't make it to the field where it was clear. he took my information and said he would get back to me if he felt there was damage to his crop. he never did call back.

1. So why not fly with a small roll of twenties and shove twice what you think the damages are into his hand?
2. So maybe we shouldn't be landing in crops.

Dave Hopkins - 2015/08/15 01:32:17 UTC

I once landed my Atos in' 6' rye grass. That will get your attention! I'm 6'4" and walking out I couldn't see over it. I thought maybe it was 3' coming in then I saw the wind bending it over.
Flare hard and keep your knees bent.

And you'll always be just fine - despite the carnage we always see when people are practicing for these totally avoidable situations in primary putting greens.

It's the end of summer, there are tall crops and weeds out there.

And virtually no safe fields to be found at this time of year.

Mike Bomstad - 2015/08/15 02:31:27 UTC

A ate it a month ago landing in a field I thought was short alfalfa.
2 weeks prior it was ankle height, came back 2 weeks later it was waist high thick wheat. Really took me off guard as I thought I knew what I was landing in (lesson learned)

How'd it stack up against?:

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=13359
Today was a bad day!

Mike Bomstad - 2009/08/26 04:21:15 UTC

The harness is part of the aircraft... end of story.
(Just because it's easy to remove, does not mean it should be. Dont choose the path of least resistance)

Attach it to the wing, completing the aircraft.... then preflight the completed aircraft.
Buckle yourself into the cockpit and then your ready.

Grabbed the BT before I knew it.

How? Surely you knew that:

Red Howard - 2015/08/12 14:33:55 UTC

It can be safe to land in a crop, if necessary, but you have to ignore the actual ground level.

For ANY crop landing, the tops of the vegetation must be treated as the "new" ground level, and do a hard flare just before the feet touch, at trim speed.

Ive got some footage I'll get to sometime in the near future.

I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

NMERider - 2015/08/15 02:32:54 UTC

Last year I landed in very tall weeds and brush where I really couldn't see what was below me until I landed. I accidentally caused my drag chute to collapse which made me overshoot my target by 100 yards.

Did you NEED your drag chute to hit your "target"? I thought all of us Hang Four types were supposed to be able to stop within 25 FEET of our targets WITHOUT drag chutes.

During the long slog out of there I crossed through a 4-strand barbed wire fence that was so strong it would have stopped a moose. Had I flown into that well-hidden fence I'd likely be dead right now and you'd need a séance to hear my story through a medium.

Near the beginning of last year you were damned seriously injured as a consequence of a crash that would never have happened without the drag chute. And now it sounds like the complication of the drag chute put you in a situation which could've easily done the same or worse. Are you sure these things are increasing your safety margin better than working on tighter approaches would?

Moral of the story is don't assume that there isn't anything deadly sticking up where you cannot see it and just go flying into plant growth thinking you will have a soft landing. It may be your last. I'd rather land on an asphalt highway where I can see what's coming than get the surprise of my life.

So then what's the point of all this whipstall landing practice we're constantly doing to perfect our technique? Wouldn't we be better practicing not landing in environments in which our safety is depended on skill, luck, and the full cooperation of Mother Nature?

Ask Dennis (HGXC) what happened in 2008 when he landed on crops using the method of flaring high and dropping vertically. I recall that it did some serious damage to his ankle or foot when he discovered the hidden rock down below.

I did some terrible and permanent damage to my right foot assuming there was no felled White Oak trunk concealed by the brush I was ground looping a blown launch into at Woodstock on 1992/06/20. Seems to be some sorta pattern going on here.

Tormod Helgesen - 2015/08/15 06:30:20 UTC

A one in a million incidence. There is rarely hidden rocks of a substantial size in a crop field, because that would frak up the harvester and the farmers don't like that.

'Bout the same odds of a pro toad getting killed aerotowing out of a major operation as a consequence of a Rooney Link inconvenience. Not really worth talking or thinking about.

Red Howard - 2015/08/15 14:05:50 UTC

Tormod,

I agree, just a coincidence. If the alternative is a knock-out whack, as reported here, it would be far better to injure a foot (unlikely) than to risk serious head and neck injuries (very likely). If the pilot here recovered within a day, I'd say that was really lucky.

Yeah red, Ken had the options of either nailing a nice crisp flare while still above the wheat and taking a one in a million chance of injuring a foot or plowing in with a very high likelihood of sustaining a serious concussion.

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What WAS he thinking?

Treat the tops of the crops or vegetation like the ground, and flare just above it. Make it a No-Steps flare, hold the flare, and sink straight down to the dirt.

Get fucked.

It's not realistic to expect to land in mowed grass fields, in the real world, unless you only land at flight parks or golf courses.

Fuck no. Absolutely no foundation in reality.

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Look at all those acres of wheat Ken has available and compare them to that microscopic mowed grass strip that everybody's taking off from and landing on.

I have landed in a field of soft sucking mud, which had a dusty-dry thin crust over it. Running out the landing was impossible, and even a few steps to finish the landing would not have been possible.

And just think how nasty a concussion you might have sustained impacting that soft sucking mud if you'd been late on your flare timing.

Full-stop landings are not just show-boating; they can save your aluminum...

Yeah...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=28835
Why I don't paraglide

Tom Emery - 2013/04/17 14:29:12 UTC

Been flying Crestline about a year now. I've seen more bent aluminum than twisted risers. Every time another hang pounds in, Steven, the resident PG master, just rolls his eyes and says something like, "And you guys think hang gliding is safer."

Right.

...and maybe save your bacon.

Yeah...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=31747
Lockout

Davis Straub - 2014/08/29 17:26:54 UTC

I thought that I had made it clear that I want weaklinks and I want weaklinks to break to save the pilot's bacon.

Ain't it great to be in a sport with so many bacon saving options available to us!

Asshole.

Matt Christensen - 2015/08/15 14:28:38 UTC

A couple other things to keep in mind. You will not have the ground effect you are used to when landing in crop. Also, it is far worse in my opinion to let your basebar her grabbed by crop than the ground. Tall crop will allow you to swing further forward, potentially slamming you much harder on your head and increasing the likelihood of getting hit by your glider when you swing through.

Thanks bigtime for helping us to really understand what we're up against.

A friend landed in wheat, swung through and had a brain stem bleed as a result, changing his life permanently.

Probably hadn't been properly briefed on the implications of letting your basebar get grabbed by crop.
Sounds like another failure of all those prayers we always hear for full and speedy recoveries.

Take landing in any crop very seriously...

But not so seriously as to just never do it.

...and avoid if possible.

So tell me when it's NOT POSSIBLE to avoid landing in crops. How come we're the only aircraft on the fucking planet - including CROP DUSTERS - in which crop landings are considered to be totally inevitable?

[Tad Eareckson]

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43580
Don't land in the wheat

Cragin Shelton - 2015/08/15 14:21:16 UTC

Grass Grab of Base Tube

My experience was the same as David's. A base tube grass grab does not have to be by vegetation as dense as wheat crop. Early in my H2 days I had the same thing happen at High Rock when the grass had not been mown recently.

So how good an idea is it to land at a field in which the grass has not been mowed recently - 'specially in one's early H2 days?

The tall tops of relatively sparse tall grass threw me down into the ground. I was only out for less than a minute. By the time my buddy Dan...

Fuck him too - and anyone else who considers you a buddy.

...who had already landed, raced to me in the field, I was on my feet and asked him, in all seriousness, "Did I fly?"

Yeah, I remember that.

That earned me a backboard ride to the emergency room. Back at home, with a dandy headache...

And a substantial and permanent reduction in IQ - which was never all that great to begin with.

I went "back to the book" and re-read the following:

Landing in high weeds or crops - Sometimes, the weeds in our landing fields grow fast in the course of a couple of months and we are caught with a surprise challenge. Treat such cover just like rough ground and flare well to come down vertically. Running is out of the question and very high weeds.

Be aware that high weeds may they [sic]...

Dennis's books are RIDDLED with crap like that. I make mistakes like that in my posts but not at the frequency he does and not in material that's gonna be hardwired to paper and that I'm gonna sell to people for very substantial bucks for untold decades to come.

grab your base bar and pull your nose down.

Duh.

This is not a problem as long as you were aware of the possibility and flare before the weeds pull you in.

And pull off the flare with the same consistent perfection you always maintain landing in Happy Acres putting greens in all flying conditions.

Treat the tops of the weeds like the ground and flare accordingly.

You'll be fine. Just like when you're dealing with the inconvenience of a standard aerotow weak link break or making the easy reach to your easily reachable Industry Standard release.

Usually you can let your legs drag in the weeds, but not your bar. Crops are handled similarly although we do everything in our power to avoid landing in crops ...

How much extra did we pay to have those two sentences padding our purchase?

From Hang Gliding Training Manual, Dennis Pagen, 1995, p. 204

So what did you think the purpose of all those no stepper landing flares you started perfecting on the training hill on Day 1 - Flight 1 was supposed to be? Weren't you told that you'd need to master that skill for the inevitable and frequent waist high grass and crops landings you'd start doing within the next few months?

Did you EVER ONCE hear any of your asshole instructors tell you NOT to land in waist high grass and crops 'cause doing so would rocket your probability of leaving the field in an ambulance with a serious concussion and/or broken arm or neck?

And how long was it after that experience and review of the Hang Gliding Training Manual that you resumed landing in waist high grass in the primary?

Somebody find me some videos of people landing in crap like that at the conclusions of their XC flights.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33265
Helmet Quality

Cool Breeze - 2015/08/18 20:07:36 UTC

Perhaps it time to resign hang gliders to make them easier and safer to land.

You mean the way we recently resigned the Rooney Link to make hang gliders 97 percent safer to aerotow?

Since take off and landing are so critical and where the majority of accidents occurs... Maybe this is not such a bad idea. Thinking along the lines of an atos...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=26854
Skids versus wheels

Andrew Stakhov - 2012/08/11 13:52:35 UTC

So I just came back from flying in Austria (awesome place btw). Stark difference I noticed is a large chunk of pilots choose to fly with skids instead of wheels. Conversations I had with pilots they say they actually work better in certain situations as they don't get plugged up like smaller wheels. Even larger heavier Atosses were all flying with skids. I was curious why they consistently chose to land on skids on those expensive machines and they were saying that it's just not worth the risk of a mistimed flare or wing hitting the ground... And those are all carbon frames etc.

Flaps and spoilers, and some kind of variable geometry that focuses on allowing for slow controlled flight. When I mean slow, like a condor coming in with some speed, but not a topless coming in hot in ground effect.

Gil Dodgen - 1995/01

All of this reminds me of a comment Mike Meier made when he was learning to fly sailplanes. He mentioned how easy it was to land a sailplane (with spoilers for glide-path control and wheels), and then said, "If other aircraft were as difficult to land as hang gliders no one would fly them."

What do you think? And disregard cost and weight... Pretend that's not an issue.

1. What do YOU think about why none of those Austrian Atosses weren't anywhere near happy enough with the superior handling they enjoy as a consequence of their control surfaces to even wanna consider foot landing them?

2. Who's gonna actually DO this redesign?

- You Jack Show motherfuckers who are all ten times too stupid to swap a two and a half dollar straight parachute pin into your barrel releases to triple plus their performance?

- The glider manufacturers in response to your concerns?

3. Hey Jeff... This guy's screaming for your LeverLink. So how come you're not in there talking to him? Too wrapped up in your work on the prototype?

Paul Hurless - 2015/08/18 20:36:37 UTC

Most of the current hang gliders are very easy and safe to land, but the pilot still needs to know how to fly them. You can't take the human factor out of the equation. People will always find innovative ways to screw things up.

What's wrong with the tried and true technique everyone and his dog is trained to use starting Day One, Flight One? Name something in hang gliding that causes one percent of the death and destruction that rotating to upright for landing does.

P.S. Get fucked.

Steve Forslund - 2015/08/18 21:04:44 UTC

My Sensor has flaps

But your four word sentence doesn't have a period at its end.
P.S. See my P.S. to Paul.

Cool Breeze - 2015/08/18 21:11:32 UTC

Seems like most topless are not, as seen by landings at most comps.... And I bet more injuries are on advanced wings hrs floaters.

1. By "hrs" do you mean "versus"?

2. What kind of injuries...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=22176
Paragliding Collapses

Jim Rooney - 2011/06/12 13:57:58 UTC

Most common HG injury... spiral fracture of the humerus.

...for the most part?

NMERider - 2015/08/18 22:23:41 UTC

A wiser pilot than I recently remarked that being a comp pilot does not mean you are an X/C pilot.

'Course not. It means you're a Three, have paid the entry fee and have your appropriate aerotow bridle from Davis, and aren't Tad.

An X/C pilot knows he has to land at least well enough to survive in some remote place with no one else around and possibly no one even knowing your whereabouts (and I speak from experience ). Whereas in a comp there are typically others around to dial 911 or 999 depending on the country and everyone is accounted for (or not).

Paul Hurless - 2015/08/19 00:11:10 UTC

A lot of the comp pilots choose smaller wings for performance reasons which might make landings a little more difficult. Not really the fault of the glider.

Why wouldn't flying a smaller glider over which one has more control authority make landing safer? Should a couple miles per hour higher stall speed be that much of a big fuckin' deal?

NMERider - 2015/08/19 01:39:41 UTC

I don't know whether this is currently true given the good handling of the latest gliders compared to the gliders from even a few years back. What does seem to be as true as ever is the lack of good landing technique by too many comp pilots. I have heard many descriptions of poor technique followed by crashes at international comps from pilots who were there to witness it first-hand.

1. Where do most of these witnessed crashes tend to occur? The narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place for which everyone's bee-lining 'cause those are the best options for miles around? Or the Happy Acres putting greens in which comp pilots are actually landing?

2. Oh. So you're saying that while globally 95 percent of hang glider training starting Day One, Flight One and continuing through Four level is focused on safe foot landing technique none of it does any actual good for the flyers most likely to put themselves in situations in which their safety is dependent upon these "skills".

I don't know what to make of it.

That's OK. I know EXACTLY what to make of it. Start treating these birds like the sailplanes they are and our problems disappear.

As far as I'm concerned if one person broke an arm at a comp then the fuckin' comp wasn't worth it. Was the fun all you motherfuckers have had over the years at the Ridgely ECC enough to balance out John Claytor's career ending crosswind launch lockout and...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33264
Don't Land In The Wheat - Knock Out

Matt Christensen - 2015/08/15 14:28:38 UTC

A friend landed in wheat, swung through and had a brain stem bleed as a result, changing his life permanently.

...what happened to Paul Vernon? How many more decades do you figure it's gonna take you to address these problems?

Aw, fuck. Why actually address any actual problems when you can have all these Groundhog Day hell discussions cycling every other month.

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28-11505
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[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2095
Should we try a different way? Designwise....

Steve Corbin - 2015/09/02 22:26:04 UTC

This is a subject that I have been meditating on for quite some time now.

I hear and read about the alleged decline in participation in HG, and how PG is thriving.

Any un-biased observer should be able to see why wanna-be pilots find PG more attractive than HG. Standing around in the Andy Jackson Memorial International Airpark at a busy fly-in shows that a PG landing is a total non-event, while everyone stands up to watch HG's, piloted by "experts", come in to land. A good landing by a HG is greeted by cheers, an acknowledgement that landing one successfully is a demonstration not just of skill, but good luck as well.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=28835
Why I don't paraglide

Tom Emery - 2013/04/17 14:29:12 UTC

Been flying Crestline about a year now. I've seen more bent aluminum than twisted risers. Every time another hang pounds in, Steven, the resident PG master, just rolls his eyes and says something like, "And you guys think hang gliding is safer."

Gil Dodgen - 1995/01

All of this reminds me of a comment Mike Meier made when he was learning to fly sailplanes. He mentioned how easy it was to land a sailplane (with spoilers for glide-path control and wheels), and then said, "If other aircraft were as difficult to land as hang gliders no one would fly them."

A "blown launch" in a PG rarely results in anything more than getting dirty and having to untangle a bunch of string from bushes. With a HG, there is a lot of risk for injury and expensive damage to equipment.

1. The equipment that makes collapse a nonissue and enables penetration speed when the glider DOES make it through launch.
2. Blown launches in dolly and platform towing are, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent.

There are many who support the status quo.

Good freakin' luck taking a stand against it.

They like to point out that all you have to do is be careful. And practice a lot.

Until after you have it perfected and can dispense with the training wheels. (I really love it when they break their arms.)

The list is long and I'm simply not willing to go any further into it.

I'm willing to take up some of the slack.

This post is only the opinion of one pilot, and yet it is the opinion of a pilot aged 63 with 39 years in HG, and so I believe has some validity.

It's not a fuckin' OPINION. It's blindingly obvious FACT. Has been since the beginning of time.

But that's your choice to agree or not.

Shouldn't be.

My opinion, simply stated, is that we really oughta "back up and regroup".

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=26854
Skids versus wheels

Andrew Stakhov - 2012/08/11 13:52:35 UTC

So I just came back from flying in Austria (awesome place btw). Stark difference I noticed is a large chunk of pilots choose to fly with skids instead of wheels. Conversations I had with pilots they say they actually work better in certain situations as they don't get plugged up like smaller wheels. Even larger heavier Atosses were all flying with skids. I was curious why they consistently chose to land on skids on those expensive machines and they were saying that it's just not worth the risk of a mistimed flare or wing hitting the ground... And those are all carbon frames etc.

By that I mean take a good long critical look at our technology, calmly analyze it, and see if we can't find a place in our history where taking a different path might have made a difference in the situation we find ourselves in today.

Put wheels or skids an the fuckin' basetube and land the fuckin' glider sanely in sane landing fields.

If we can do that, we can consider ways to improve the technology in such a manner as to possibly slow if not reverse the decline, if it exists. I believe it does.

I'm neither Psychologist...

Neither is Bob - but that's never stopped him from pulling out of his ass and declaring universal truths on the human condition.

...or Engineer...

Since when did engineering have anything to do with hang gliding?

...but I am "mechanically inclined", and like many my age I've become familiar with the "Human Condition".

Any comment on any of Bob's pronouncements?

So I believe I can make some statements that have some credibility.

So did Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney for the darkest decade in the history of the sport. Then, suddenly...

Possibly the best place to start is with the List of Priorities that we use to design a foot-launchable flying apparatus. This would apply to both disciplines now enjoyed, or endured, as you see fit to state it. Likely a bit of both will be the consensus.

There appears to be a lot of effort directed towards creating an open-air foot launchable sailplane.

We've already got one. It's called a hang glider. We need to start thinking of and treating it as such.

It can be argued that expanding the performance envelope in that direction has succeeded in contracting other envelopes.

Some of you will recall the preface to The Last Whole Earth Catalog, by Stewart Brand. A partial quote: "...has succeeded to the point where the gross defects obscure the actual gains...". I contend that HG design evolution is a prime example of this. Our existing Priorities List is in need of a re-evaluation.

So how should we re-arrange the priorities list? Well, here's where we need to study the paraglider. How do PG's differ from HG's?

You don't rotate to upright and put your hands at shoulder or ear height where you can't control the glider and where you do facilitate breaking an arm or dislocating a shoulder to get you through the most critical and dangerous phase of the flight.

First off we notice how extremely lightweight and compact they are in comparison.

Which helps a lot when you're recovering a body and the wreckage from a slope.

And then let's look at the performance envelope, where we can readily see that the "high-speed flat-glide angle" just barely exists, and in comparison to high-performance HG's it doesn't even exist at all. And yet the PG's are kicking butt, especially in the aerobatics department, and at many flying sites are doing quite well in the XC arena.

And in tight weak thermals.

Perhaps we can apply "Freakonomics" here. Could it be that the ability to pull off a safe landing almost anywhere actually trumps high-speed flat-glide angle?

No. Hang gliders don't land almost anywhere or need to. And the ones that try to land anywhere tend not to last very long.

Well, yes and no. I think the current open-distance record for HG stands at 475 miles...

Who gives a rat's ass? I didn't get into the sport to find the one spot and time of year on the planet at which the geography and meteorology would have a possibility of lining up to allow something like that to happen, spend years working on being at the right place at the right time, then fly my ass off from dawn to dusk to rack up straight-line one-way miles. They did it, good for them. I wanna take off a hundred yards from where my car is parked, work some thermals for a few hours, land a hundred yards from where my car is parked.

...while for PG it's less than half of that. But these record setting pilots represent only a very small percentage of the pilot population as a whole.

0.001 percent. But let's gear our training programs from Day One, Flight One on the premise that everyone and his dog will become that one in a hundred thousand and need to conclude his world record flight with a crisp no-stepper in the middle of a narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place..

I know that most of the flyers in my club rarely venture more than a couple dozen miles from the fishbowl, and depending on your definition of that fishbowl, many never even leave it at all.

Fuck those faggots.

And the most popular XC destination, a local airport, features a landing spot in the shade of a micro-brewery. Go figure...

We could construct a narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place at that airport to make the flights more challenging, realistic, rewarding. Or at least maintain a strip of wheat field people could target for extra points.

Gotta go see the chiropractor. Most of my HG's weigh close to 70 lbs. I wonder if the PG crowd needs bone-crushing on a regular basis...

Yeah, ya can't qualify as a genuine extreme sport without going out of your way to achieve extra bone crushing. Why do ya think we put our releases within easy reach and use Rooney Links to increase the safety of the towing operation?

Anyway, I'm far from finished with this post/rant/ philosophizing...

Steve Corbin - 2015/09/03 02:10:55 UTC

Back from the Doc. Much better now!

So as I was sayin', most pilots aren't trying to fly as far as they can as fast as they can. Most of us just want to get up and fly around for awhile, enjoy the view, and experience the excitement of a few thermal climbs. Many would find happiness in PG but don't trust them, so stick with HG instead.

I believe we need a new design of foot-launchable flying apparatus.

Why does it hafta be foot launchable or landable? Foot launched hang glider flights are pretty much nonexistent in the flatlands and I'd guess constitute a distinct minority overall. Even in mountain environments folk like Chris Starbuck and Doug Prather have demonstrated that rolling launches are easily and safely doable with two man crews. And foot landing does little more than crash gliders and injure, cripple, and kill people.

The key to doing that lies in keeping an open mind, and the willingness to focus on a defined design goal.

Good freakin' luck. Do you have any idea just what it took to kill the Infallible Weak Link?

That goal will be defined by the order of priorities.

Well, now that The Bob Show is a safe place for people of varying ages to visit and has gotten everyone into helmets while they're on the ground...

Rick Masters - 2015/09/03 04:21:07 UTC

I would argue we have everything we need, already.
If you want to go fast and far, and have the skill to land out...

Or the brains to land out safely and sanely without the dice rolls of "skill"...

...you're looking at 70 to 100 pounds at take-off.

71 to 101 pounds with wheels or skids.

If you want to learn or boat around at the local bowl, a little more than half that.
If you want a hang glider to weigh what a paraglider does, it'll never happen.
Beta was vastly superior to VHS but VHS won.
More money went into the promotion of VHS and most people weren't critical enough to see the difference.
Beta was more expensive and the retail salesmen were always pushing the cheaper VHS units with a better margin.
After a while, you couldn't even find consumer Beta.
But on the Pro side, Beta went digital, then led to HDD and chip storage and VHS vanished almost overnight, replaced by DVDs.
To me, hang gliding is a lot like Beta.
We're in a down cycle brought on by not having a national hang gliding organization.
We're trying to promote hang gliding from within a paragliding organization.
It's ridiculous. We need to work on changing that first.

Start out with a five year dictatorship with zero protection or concern for individual freedoms, rights, protections. Can't possibly lose with a model like that.

Bob Kuczewski - 2015/09/03 06:49:04 UTC

My 2 cents ...

The only two cents that have ever counted for anything on The Bob Show...

I personally feel that a quick short packable hang glider would make a huge difference in saving the sport.

And fuck all those non California flatlanders.

Many of the young people who would be most likely to take up hang gliding live in dorms, barracks, apartments, or condos. They also drive tiny cars, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, or skateboards.

You seem to be ignoring the very important people of varying ages hang gliding demographic - the tricycle set.

It takes a fair amount of "additional" investment to be able to transport and store a full-sized hang glider. The younger generation might look wistfully at the hang glider's performance, but the practicality of a bag on their back will win the day.

As far as performance, there are certainly those who thrive on get high and go far. But I suspect the vast majority of HG pilots didn't get into the sport for that specific purpose. In fact, I suspect it's just the opposite - most people come to hang gliding just to fly, and those who get into competition do so because they end up looking for even more than flying.

Or are conditioned by the assholes in control of the sport to feel that this is something they need to do to really enjoy flying.

But even those folks went through the "wow, I can't believe I'm flying" phase before they set their sights on things that they didn't even know were possible when they started.

I think Joe Faust's quest for "busable" hang gliders is on the right track. I don't think the weight is so critical - especially to young men - but the length is a deal breaker for just too many people.

Gil Dodgen - 1995/01

All of this reminds me of a comment Mike Meier made when he was learning to fly sailplanes. He mentioned how easy it was to land a sailplane (with spoilers for glide-path control and wheels), and then said, "If other aircraft were as difficult to land as hang gliders no one would fly them."

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=22176
Paragliding Collapses

Jim Rooney - 2011/06/12 13:57:58 UTC

Most common HG injury... spiral fracture of the humerus.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27086
Steve Pearson on landings

Steve Pearson - 2012/03/28 23:26:05 UTC

I can't control the glider in strong air with my hands at shoulder or ear height and I'd rather land on my belly with my hands on the basetube than get turned downwind.

Good topic Steve!!!

Kill the fuckin' foot landing.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2095
Should we try a different way? Designwise....

Bob Kuczewski - 2015/09/03 06:49:04 UTC

My 2 cents ... I personally feel that a quick short packable hang glider would make a huge difference in saving the sport.

As far as performance, there are certainly those who thrive on get high and go far. But I suspect the vast majority of HG pilots didn't get into the sport for that specific purpose. In fact, I suspect it's just the opposite - most people come to hang gliding just to fly, and those who get into competition do so because they end up looking for even more than flying. But even those folks went through the "wow, I can't believe I'm flying" phase before they set their sights on things that they didn't even know were possible when they started.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24846
Is this a joke ?

Jim Rooney - 2011/08/28 19:39:17 UTC

Weak links break for all kinds of reasons.
Some obvious, some not.

The general consensus is the age old adage... "err on the side of caution".

The frustration of a weaklink break is just that, frustration.
And it can be very frustrating for sure. Especially on a good day, which they tend to be. It seems to be a Murphy favourite. You'll be in a long tug line on a stellar day just itching to fly. The stars are all lining up when *bam*, out of nowhere your trip to happy XC land goes up in a flash. Now you've got to hike it all the way back to the back of the line and wait as the "perfect" window drifts on by.

I get it.
It can be a pisser.

But the "other side"... the not cautions one... is not one of frustration, it's one of very real danger.
Better to be frustrated than in a hospital, or worse.
No exaggeration... this is the fire that the "other side" is made of. Best not to play with it.

Anyway.
Now that the disclaimer is done...

One of the biggest bits that seems to be under appreciated is the bit that weaklinks break under shock loading.
They can take a hell of a lot more force if they're loaded slowly... which is exactly what happens in a lockout.

Most people don't experience this first hand.
It's because most pilots will hit the release before the weak link breaks... as they should. Most pilots understand this concept. I'd say almost all do.

Now, it happens fast.
Many pilots still get off line quick as well.
So most have not seen just how much force it takes to break a smoothly loaded weaklink. It's way more than you'd imagine.

What most have experienced is a weaklink that breaks due to shock loading.
This is very different.
They break so exceptionally easier under shock loading.
Even that initial pull on the cart is a severe shock load when compared to a lockout. Even when it's a "smooth" start.

The trouble is, this is what pilots are familiar with.
So it's natural to start thinking about what a weaklink "should" be in relation to shock loading and missing the reality of a smoothly loaded weaklink and the sheer speed of a lockout. As I pointed out before, they are exponential in nature... you hit a "tipping point" and then all hell breaks loose.

Most people get this.
So I'm sorry for boring you with what you know already.
It just needs to be pointed out from time to time, especially when the old misconceptions start rearing their heads or when you've got people new to all this showing up.

What do you suspect about the vast majority of people who got into the sport with respect to having magic fishing line and its enforcers dictate that people would spend a lot of what would've been the most spectacular flying days of their careers baking in launch lines waiting for late afternoon and evening sled conditions and having to listen to some mentally defective Aerotow Industry dickhead lecture them about shock loading?

Keep me posted on y'all's progress producing five-foot packable gliders and getting your people of varying ages airborne on them. I've already got - at the cost of my career - everybody in the country flying Tad-O-Links, spending their stellar days at cloudbase instead of on the ground, trying to forget that they ever and pretend that they never had anything to do with Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney.

And here's your place in that milestone of hang gliding history:

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=884
The Bob Show

Bob Kuczewski - 2011/12/13 05:55:39 UTC

I've had to deal with your profanity, your attacks on other members, your strong weak link theories, your lift and tug theories, and your hopelessly long and repetitive posts.

And...

Jim Rooney - 2011/08/25 04:55:25 UTC

Ditto dude.

It always amazes to hear know it all pilots arguing with the professional pilots.
I mean seriously, this is our job.
We do more tows in a day than they do in a month (year for most).

We *might* have an idea of how this stuff works.
They *might* do well to listen.
Not that they will, mind you... cuz they *know*.

I mean seriously... ridgerodent's going to inform me as to what Kroop has to say on this? Seriously? Steve's a good friend of mine. I've worked at Quest with him. We've had this discussion ... IN PERSON. And many other ones that get misunderstood by the general public. It's laughable.

Don't even get me started on Tad. That obnoxious blow hard has gotten himself banned from every flying site that he used to visit... he doesn't fly anymore... because he has no where to fly. His theories were annoying at best and downright dangerous most of the time. Good riddance.

Note the STUNNING similarities.

So be sure and say howdy to God's Gift To Aviation for me when you find a spare moment down there in the ash heap of hang gliding history.

Frank Colver - 2015/09/04 03:26:48 UTC

On your "reasons for flying": during my hang gliding years (they're starting up again) I often told other HG pilots that I would never do any significant cross country flights because I was unwilling to fly in the atmospheric conditions that make such flights possible.

Meaning any thermal conditions.

I was always happy with flying local mountain sites, in mild conditions, and using the local LZ. I was able to utilize my share of gentle thermals (well, OK, some turned out to be not so gentle)...

Then how much point is there to be unwilling to fly in the atmospheric conditions that make XC flights possible?

...to extend flight times...

That's what your idea of hang gliding is? Going out when there are a few 250 foot per minute bubbles around so you can get extended sleds and not risk getting flipped upside down like so many others do going XC or staying local on good XC days?

Whoa! Just occurred to me that you and the Rooney Link would be a perfect match! 130 pound Greenspot braided Dacron trolling line. All the flight parks have miles of the stuff they've been desperately trying to give away the past three seasons. Stick a loop of it on a bridle end and stay at the back of the launch line.

..and then land where the vehicles (and coolers of beer) were.

Fuck that. I always try to land at least thirty miles downwind in a narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place and a two mile hike-out to the nearest road.

I always admired the cross country flying HG pilots...

So did I - until after I'd gotten to really know a few of them.

...but I did not wish to join them in those conditions.

Maybe you should've stuck more to hot-air ballooning.

I did gladly provide variometers to make their task easier.

Overgeneralization, but...

Fuck XC pilots. They're one-percenters who've geared the sport such that 95 percent of it is dedicated to forcing all participants to perfect stunt landings that XCers never actually use to land safely in dangerous environments that XCers never actually land in. I'd be pretty happy if the FAA made it a felony to ever have a glider more than ninety percent of glide range from a putting green with a minimum of two hundred feet of useable runway.

(Jonathan gets a pass because he encourages other flyers NOT TO do what he does.)

[NMERider]

....to ever have a glider more than ninety percent of glide range from a putting green with a minimum of two hundred feet of useable runway.

(Jonathan gets a pass because he encourages other flyers NOT TO do what he does.)

The safe X/C rule is more like 1/2 of best L/D to a wheel land-able field. Luckily my videos and stories have done a good job of discouraging pilots who are not able to reasonably safely land in funky places they've never seen.

[Tad Eareckson]

The safe X/C rule is more like 1/2 of best L/D to a wheel land-able field.

Wasn't setting ninety percent as safe. Was recommending it as the limit at which you get to leave minus handcuffs. The FAA sets 0.8 Gs as the minimum legal aerotow weak link. That's either exactly or damned close to what fatally inconvenienced Zack Marzec. You need twice that to hit the reasonably safe range. If you wanna crash as many aerotows as legally possible 0.8 is your ticket.

Luckily my videos and stories have done a good job of discouraging pilots who are not able to reasonably safely land in funky places they've never seen.

Unfortunately they HAVEN'T done a good job of discouraging u$hPa from training pilots to reasonably safely land in funky places they've never seen. And that's where 99.9 percent of the actual carnage takes place - in Happy Acres putting greens being used for narrow-dry-riverbed-with-large-rocks-strewn-all-over-the-place simulations.

Feeling REALLY evil? Combine the safest possible weak links with the safest possible landings on the safest possible runways in the safest possible air.

[spark]

dinosoar 2015. wheel landing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrg_ZxhXc1o


I should have slowed down a bit more before touch down.
Northern Tool wheels modified with a hub for VG.

http://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2932/33156164950_2fb3df1deb_o.jpg


http://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2923/33411163931_e9b6fd4f86_o.jpg

[Tad Eareckson]

That's OK, nice thing 'bout a wheel landing is that you don't break an arm if it's not perfect.