I was a pole vaulter in the 70s - my vaulter friends and I made hang gliders out of old fiberglass vaulting poles covered with a pretty thick MIL plastic. We used duct tape to attach the plastic to the frame. We used a foam ski belt as a harness. I swear this isn't a joke. We flew at a few ski resorts during the months they were closed down for skiing. We also flew at large sand dunes in Kitty Hawk, NC. We were young and stupid, what can I say . . .
Look for the nearest club/instructor/spot/pilots to get proper training. They will advise on equipment. A used glider is a good start, and you can pick a new one later.
i believe in the next 20 years we will have hang gliders that have motors where the propeller fits back into the leading edge of the wing or something, and the wing covering material is made of solar panels, and the wing ribs are where the batteries are located :) will make for very long flights. maybe all day on a good sunny day with thermals
@@watdatdoo human error kills humans in several activities, including airplanes, cars, bikes. Death is the price we all pay for being alive, and there's nothing else in life as flying like a bird. Hang gliding is the best and most beautiful thing I've ever experienced, and well worth any risk that might be involved. Still, those can be mitigated to a great extent and I know many pilots who have been doing it for decades and never got hurt.
I like the newer designs, as they appear to have no king pin; much cleaner aerodynamics. When I started hang gliding in '77, there were no double-surface sails and the only battens were to help stiffen the sail, not create an airfoil. Heck, we were just out of the Stone Age of regallo wing gliders w/ 15 degrees of billow and glide ratios in the single digit range. To put that into perspective, the Space Shuttle has a glide ratio of 4.5:1 - which is really poor. I remember how impressed I was with my Cirrrus 5 and its 1 to 2 degrees of billow and an 8:1 glide ratio. There are hang gliders out today that sport 15:1 and 20:1 glide ratios. To think what I was able to do in such a relatively primitive glider - 8 1/2 hr sustained flight, a PB of 12,500ft altitude and enough flight hours to warrant a commercial pilot's rating twice over - makes me wish I could still fly. Be still, my heart. lol
Yea, the innovations have excelled exponentially, and now in paragliding also. My beginner paraglider had about 8:1 glide ratio. Now my “high performance” En-B (still a B which is a very safe glider, but top of the B class) gets 9-10:1 in dead air at trim, the glide ratio gets worse when speed system is activated, but not by much, and I can speed up from 25 mph trim to about 40 mph full speed. If I only use half of the speed bar, fly at 32-33 mph air speed I don’t lose hardly any glide ratio. It’s that last 7 mph that really starts to degrade my glide. But the higher performance comp gliders can fly at 45 mph without losing almost any glide.
Absolutely super! I hesitated on my jump as can be seen on my RU-vid channel. I did book another jump but then lockdown happened. Hopefully I will be doing another jump soon and hopefully I'll be straight out with no hesitation! I have to say that bungee jumping is scarier than skydiving and wingwalking for me! Yes I've done those too!
@@lean2281 I screamed all the way down. Put it this way, I've never screamed when jumping out of an airplane! Skydiving from 15,000ft is a doddle compared to bungee jumping from 160ft!
@@lean2281 Yes I'd say it's worth it. UK Bungee use military grade materials so there's no problem with their equipment or their staff. It's just about having faith in yourself. It's scary but I wanted to get straight back up there and do it again! My problem is that I overthink it. It's not a thinking man's activity. Oddly, my heartrate remained normal throughout the experience. So my head was scared by my heart wasn't! Skydiving and wing walking don't get my heart going either now! Oh, top advice, don't have milky products before doing a bungee jump or any extreme activity. I had milky breakfast cereal, 2 milky teas and a milky hot chocolate the morning before doing airshow quality aerobatics in a stunt plane. It was like being in a tumble drier! I very nearly redecorated the cockpit. I wasn't sick but I was trying to be! I wasn't scared at all and I've never been motion sick before but I very nearly was sick that day and that was simply because of milk.
