I'm a old hang glider pilot, started flying 1974, last flight 2010, be very aware of the conditions & surroundings & you will probably live though it!!!
I flew those things for 12 years, lots of competitions including two World Championships. I only broke my pelvis once. Then I decided to take up a safer sprot, racing airplanes. Ten years, no injuries. That said, I still take my 1979 UP Condor to the Oregon coast every couple of year and soar the dune at Cape Kiwanda for an hour, make sure I can still do it. Shit, I'm only 78.
I took up scuba diving and didn't manage my risk as well as I should have ended up getting the bends. The reason for the bends was I went on a commercial airplane flight about 19 hours after two deep dives. I got treated and recovered but the point of this is I didn't manage the risk well I setup a dive the day before we left was suppose to be one deep one sallow but dive master wanted to go on 2 deep dives. I wasn't thinking about flying out I was excited to dive both of those dives. Then we left to dive 14 hours to the airport got only a few hours of sleep. Due to a pre-existing medical condition sleep apnea which was untreated at the time all of that added up to having too much nitrogen. With anything in life need to manage risk before anything else when we do these activities. I knew the risk I should have planned better but I wasn't thinking about risk management at the time I scheduled the dive. The 2nd deep dive again I should have sat that one out I did ask the 19 year old DM what he thought about flying out the next morning at 6am now I let him manage my risk he was a young kid solid muscle I'm 50 year old overweight guy. Hang gliding risk management probably starts with the weather.
Two rather trite points from my experiences with extreme sports. Sadly, all lives have a 100% probability of ending in death - so cram in as much life as you can. Secondly, the drive home from the isolated locale with tiredness rising and adrenaline dropping is actually the most dangerous point as it is a familiar skill but still risky and people get complacent IMHO. Stay safe everyone and live wonderful lives! Thanks for the video, the stats are very helpful.
Hang gliding is as safe as you want to make it. Problem is if you take no risks it can get boring, if you take too much risk, you can get killed. A little risk seems just right as you can recover if necessary, and expand your envelop of knowledge. There are some wonderful adventures you can have. Every flight is different. People die because they cannot resist taking chances or try to do too much, fly when they are tired, or get lazy.
I was doing it in the early 80's and I found that it was fairly dangerous because of my location. I stopped flying because of financial reasons and never started again because of fear of risk. But now I wish I had kept flying. If you can do it in a safe place, and you don't take big risks, it's not very dangerous. Pilots forget to clip in, or they do loop-de-loops, or they hit power lines, and that raises the number of micromorts. But if you are extremely careful, its probably not that risky.
This is a really interesting episode! I see you only uploaded a handfull of video's and have not done any lately. Why did you decide to abandon the channel, you where off to such a great start!?
you should add the risk of doing nothing to risk of hand gliding. because risky factors of doing nothing is always with us.. plus add the risk factor of driving ( if we drive to the hand gliding point )
Thanks for the link. I had a look to see if I can find the primary source of information but can't. I think the infographic is quite misleading. the 1/560 is PER PARTICIPANT rather than per flight. The statistics I was quoting was per flight (8 in one million). The info graphic presents data per participant for hang gliding but PER JUMP for skydiving. That isn't fair! In any case, if we assume that both 8 in one million flights is correct and 1/560 is correct, that assumes that a hang glider would go on total of 223 flights in a lifetime. If they stayed in the sport for 20 years before giving it up (or dying..) that is 11 flights per year. That seems about right.... Anyway, there is a big difference in per flight and per participant.
I've done both paragliding and hang gliding and there is a lot more room for human error in hang gliding, but less equipment failure. Paraglider wings collapse sometimes. Paragliding is SIMPLE to learn (i was solo on my first day), but hang gliding took me 6 days to go solo on a proper flight.
This is rubbish. You need to at least normalize by time to make sense. Clearly, you would agree a day hang gliding is more dangerous than a day of netflix.
is hang gliding dangerous..... People who ask this I can guarantee your political party affiliation just by 1 sentence. Also lying about your said party affiliation to make a point also exactly like your party affiliation.
