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the image of the flying man stayed with me since i was a kid from the time i watched the end of a strange little documentary called gizmo aside from featuring a guy who
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could vomit kerosene and another guy who could blow up a balloon through his ear the film dealt primarily with man's failed attempts at flight there were crude airplanes that people
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tried to launch off ramps there were planes that were built to flap like birds some were attached to bicycles some were even rocket powered
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but the result was always the same and then finally at the very end of the film they showed us what all of those
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dreamers had been searching for
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[Music]
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after 25 years the images are still with me plus i can use some excitement so i start looking for a place to learn there are three hang gliding schools within a two hour drive of the
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washington dc metro area one of them located in manquin virginia says on their website that they use a training method called scooter towing which according to the site
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eliminates the strenuous climb up the hill associated with traditional training hill instruction the only thing is lessons start at 8am which means i have to be out the door by
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6 15 though they appear simple successful hang glider designs didn't emerge until years after the space age had begun these manned controllable aircraft typically weigh around
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60 pounds and fold up into a sack hardly wider than a loaf of bread using nothing but currents of rising air hang glider pilots can reach altitudes of more than 20 000 feet and have recorded flights of
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more than 435 miles this is the man that many consider to be the great grandfather of hang gliding 413 years before the wright brothers flew over the sand dunes at kitty hawk
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leonardo da vinci was sketching wings based on his studies of bats he eventually developed a design for a fixed wing glider that could essentially be worn by the pilot but although some of his paintings like
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bird's eye view of a landscape suggest otherwise none of da vinci's inventions ever took him into the air british nobleman and scientist sir george cayley was among the first to
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recognize that a fixed-wing aircraft could fly so long as the wings were cambered to create lift in 1848 one of his gliders lifted a ten-year-old boy off the ground for short hops of a few
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yards four years later kaylee convinced his coachman to pilot a larger more refined version of his glider after a wavering uncontrolled flight of several hundred feet
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the coachman reportedly told kaylee i wish to give notice sir i was hired to drive not to fly despite kaylie's innovations no real progress was made in glider designs for
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more than 30 years finally in august 1883 american john montgomery flew his own glider nearly 600 feet launching from the hills of otay mesa california
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he is credited with having the first ever controlled flights in a heavier-than-air craft montgomery continued to improve upon his designs until 1911 when he suffered a fatal crash after stalling less than
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20 feet above the ground [Music] next we have a man whose birthday will forever be noted in the u.s hang gliding association's calendar
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as a teenager in northeast germany otto lilliamthal built wings of birch and canvas and tried flapping them while running down hills perhaps not unlike one of the would-be flyers from gizmo
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but lilianthal grew up to be an engineer and he intently studied the research left behind by sir george cayley by the early 1890s lillianthal had developed cloth-covered wings that flew him across
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his garden by 1894 with an improved glider otto was making flights longer than 150 feet from a hill he created near his home in berlin he made more than 2 000
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flights from this hill gaining worldwide notoriety in the process lilianthal's glider was controlled by the movement of his lower body to shift the center of gravity during
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flight he was attached to the glider by nothing more than arm loops from which the rest of his body hung hence the eventual name of this type of flight hang gliding over the next couple of
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years otto liliumthal had flights on this glider that went as far as 1100 feet but on august 9 1896 a gust of wind threw his glider out of control
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and he died the day after the crash according to legend his last words were sacrifices must be made the dream has begun carry on sacrifices must be made is written on otto's
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gravestone however the curators of the otto lilienthal museum in anklem germany told me that lillianthal's assistant reported that following the crash otto was apparently unaware of the
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seriousness of his injuries according to the assistant lilianthal's last words were i have to rest a little bit and then we can continue but there is no minimizing otto's
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contributions lillianthal freely shared his flight designs with octave chanute a civil engineer living in america chanute in turn built his own gliders and flew them over the sand dunes near
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lake michigan on may 13 1900 wilbur wright contacted chinoot the first of more than 430 letters that would pass between the wright brothers and the older engineer
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after building a series of their own gliders the two brothers added an engine and on december 17 1903 they showed the world that powered controlled flight had at last arrived
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[Music] with the realization of powered flight gliders like those of chinoot and lilianthal were largely forgotten decades would pass and ultimately it
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would take the genius of a nasa engineer and the innovations of an australian water skier to both resurrect and redefine hang gliding
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[Music] as a child growing up near the coastal mountains of northern california francis regallo was an avid kite flyer before long he was building his own
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kites using raw materials like newspaper and wood from packing crates neither young francis nor the other children he flew kites with would likely have believed that one day francis regalo would build a kite that
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would change aviation forever regala went on to earn one of the first aeronautical engineering degrees ever issued within the u.s at stanford university in 1935 he was
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appointed to a research position at the langley laboratory of the national advisory committee for aeronautics or naca in hampton virginia though he excelled at langley he found
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little satisfaction in designing large high-speed aircraft that only the government could use and so away from work francis regallo returned to his boyhood passion of kite building
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but after years of training in aeronautics and aerodynamics the kite designs of the last few centuries were no longer good enough it was around that time that rogallo had
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the idea for what he called a flexible wing an airfoil that used the force of the air itself to retain its shape he eventually created a cloth model that his wife gertrude sewed from the same fabric used
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for their kitchen curtains with the success of that design regalo asked his superiors at langley if they had any interest in his new flexible wing the langley research center there
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just didn't have any interest in it at all they and but they said that i could feel free to do it on my at home on my own and of course that i really
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had to get for their permission because working for them while anything i did aeronautically belonged to them denied the resources of langley regalo
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built a makeshift wind tunnel with a 36 inch fan in his home in which to test his ever improving flexible wing designs in 1948 he registered the patent for his flexible kite
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in his wife's name packaged in a tube and sold under the name flexi kite the design sold fairly well as a toy [Music] in 1952 we licensed a
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company up in connecticut to manufacture these kites and they made them just like we made them but they put them in this tube and they sold about 7 000 of them i
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think finally after more than 10 years rigallo's employers began to listen to his suggestions that the flexible wing had more potential than its use as a play thing their change and mindset came shortly
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after the launch of sputnik 1 in 1957 and the start of the space race within a year naca had been absorbed by the newly created national aeronautics and space administration
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which now attempted to find ways of returning capsules safely from orbit in 1960 the first director of the marshall space flight center werner von braun visited langley to
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discuss the potential of the flexible wing as a means of returning spent rocket boosters to dry land regalo gave von braun a demonstration of a flexible wing model the same model he demonstrated for me in
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his living room more than 40 years later suddenly regalo was able to test his flexible wings in the world's largest wind tunnels as nasa began an extensive series of tests to determine the ways in which the
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wing could be used variations of the wing were developed that included stiff leading edges in some of these tests the leading edges were inflated once the wing was released during one demonstration spectators at
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an air show were amazed when the flexible wings stayed aloft much longer than expected circling and gliding on currents of rising air the implications were enormous the capability for non-powered flight had
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been available to mankind for thousands of years the cloth and rope in use by the ancient egyptians would have been sufficient to develop a flexible wing aside from being a way to potentially
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return capsules and boosters to land regalo's wing was also viewed by nasa as a way to drop off and transport cargo jeeps and other vehicles could be towed behind planes or supplies could be
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dropped off and directed to precise locations at the culmination of these cargo tests a three-ton load was attached to the wing and dropped from high altitude a series of timed detonations unfolded
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the wing section by section until it stretched more than 70 feet from tip to tip
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[Applause] [Music] as these tests were being conducted nasa gave regalo permission to publish details on the non-military aspects of his experiments
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immediately ambitious souls with a burning urge to fly used regalo's reports to construct their own flexible wings one of the first was university of california student barry hill palmer
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shown here in 1961 with a regalo wing built from bamboo and cellophane like otto lilienthal nearly 70 years before palmer hung by his arms and steered the wing by shifting his lower body
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[Music] it was around that time that the u.s government began using aerospace contractors to continue tests with regalo's flexible wing designs one of those contractors the ryan
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aeronautical company created a manned version of the wing with a tricycle landing configuration and a control stick this vehicle was towed behind an airplane and glided back down to earth
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after being released nasa ultimately abandoned the idea of using the flexible wing to return rocket boosters or transport cargo but while tests continued the aerospace
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contractors like regalo were permitted to publish their findings and hidden away in magazines like the november 1961 issue of popular mechanics with its cover story on how to build
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your own car wash were articles that would start a revolution in personal flight like barry hill palmer in california tom purcell jr created his own model of regalo's wing design
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in north carolina purcell came up with two versions one was towed up to altitude over land by a car the second had floats and was towed behind a boat
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america was now represented by creative pilots using the flexible wing on both coasts however the innovations that would take regalo's wing toward hang gliding as we know it today were about to happen on the other side
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of the world in the early 1960s australian john dickinson was a member of the grafton waterski club in new south wales his passion for aviation was well known by his fellow club members
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as they were used to seeing him flying about in his modified gyrocopter that made dickinson the club's resident aeronautical expert and one day his fellow skiers approached him with an assignment
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[Music] the annual jacaranda carnival held on the clarence river was again on its way organized by the grafton water ski club the day's exhibitions included ski jumps
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and slalom races but to the crowds that the carnival always drew the greatest spectacle was watching the club's members try to fly their flat ski kites flown by the club's more daring members
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these kites were hardly more aerodynamic than a tilted ham stuck out a moving car window and if the tow line pressure diminished even for an instant both the kite and skier literally fell from the sky
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to the delight of the crowds virtually every skier who had flown a flat kite at earlier jacaranda carnivals had been in a spectacular crash john dickinson's assignment was to build a better ski kite
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he came up with several different designs but wasn't satisfied with any of them then like barry hill palmer and tom purcell dickinson came upon a magazine photo that would change everything
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but he needed a model for water skiers one that could be easily controlled by the pilot while getting up to speed while being towed into the air and most importantly after release from the tow line or in the event that the line went slack
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[Music] he obsessed over the control issue for nearly four months before he found the answer i was watching my daughter swinging i was swinging in a park in grafton and i thought
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there's the answer separate the body away from the kite connected as a single point and by adjusting the length of the control arm then i would have full control over the glider because mainly just it's you're using your
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weight to gain leverage through the handlebar i can see that at the same time that if we had a lever then i could control the angle of attack as a glider
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and then of course it was it naturally followed that if you could do that backwards and forwards for up and down if you moved it left and right you had control over the right and left ergo three axis control
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this is one of the first pictures ever taken of dickinson's new ski wing as he called it only a few days after its first flight in september 1963 grafton water ski club member rod fuller
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is the pilot here you can see the two innovations that dickinson was responsible for and that are still in use today here is the single weight shift connection point attached at the glider's center of
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gravity or cg and here is the lever which would later be known as the a-frame control bar and now simply as the control bar that allows the pilot to shift his weight
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and along with it the glider's cg it flew first time with um well it didn't fly first time actually i had a central gravity adjustment down the keel and i took it out
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to fly it and the center of gravity adjustment was uh too far forward and it skied two or three miles and we couldn't get it into the air we returned to the beach and the center of gravity adjustment was moved to where
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i'd actually calculated it to be and then another pilot a very big guy about six foot four very heavily built he said let me fly the thing see so
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he uh got all set did a jump start and went straight up in the air 80 feet and pulled the bar to his chest and of course it was just as sensitive as a modern glider and it came straight down 80 feet into the water
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and he gave him such a hell of a shake-up he never so much as handled the glide rift in we got our club topski or a fella called rod fuller so he took the control he
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obviously learned from our mistakes and got them to slowly accelerate it and then gently lifted him off the water and he flew for about four miles i suppose and returned to the beach the rope was sort of let loose and he
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glided into the beach complete with glider and all and i then took the glider and uh and and flew it myself and um i mean i was how do you
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how excited can one get over something that you've conceived club had about 80 members and there were only two people who got hooked on it there was rod fuller and myself and we every weekend saturday and sunday
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would fly the glider we did this up to the time of the waterski festival in november and of course the whole thing just went so perfectly that everyone was
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terribly disappointed this kite took off under control flew around the circuit under control and was landed under control throughout 1964 and into 1965
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dickinson and fuller generated publicity for the ski wing by flying exhibitions outside of grafton dickinson formed a partnership with a company in sydney that built and sold the ski wing while he offered demonstrations and
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instruction but in a decision that would later haunt him while dickinson received a provisional patent for his ski wing design he did not secure a permanent patent when the opportunity came
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finally the the papers came through to complete the patent and i didn't have the money to do it and i just have to let it lapse much to my chagrin at this point in time i mean i'm on a government pension now i've been worth i estimate more than 15 million if i'd
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have been able to complete the pain by 1965 we had the offspring of francis regallo and john dickinson a wing that was in most ways identical to what hang glider pilots would be flying for the next 10 years
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but in 1965 the sport of hang gliding still didn't officially exist how did the ski wing come to being runoff hills by eager pilots in australia across europe and in the us
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[Music] look up fearless in the dictionary and you may find references to the names moyes and bennett like dickinson australians bill moyes
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and bill bennett were competitive water skiers and friendly rivals both had tried flying the notoriously unstable flat kites behind speed boats and in 1966 when dickinson received some
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press for a two-hour towed ski wing flight on the hawkesbury river on the outskirts of sydney moyes and bennett both sydney residents heard about it within a year they were not only expert pilots on the ski wing they had begun
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modifying and selling their own gliders both moyes and bennett clearly realized the commercial potential of these wings and from the outset dedicated themselves to their promotion their exploits became a continual
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see-saw of one upsmanship [Music] he would fight of 500 feet and i'd get a six he'd get a 750 and i'd go to a thousand you know he'd play two miles five 955 it was just um a
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matter of one person waiting to see what the other one did to see how he could outperform it or something see wherever bill and i went and whatever we did we were setting a world record it's easy when nobody else
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has ever done it he jumped two feet nobody ever jumped two feet so it's a world record next week you do three feet and four feet and so on well eventually he um he went up and towed up to ten thousand feet or something and i had
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to go up on a hot air balloon to get even get higher than that you know in 1969 bill bennett set out to conquer the united states by way of california
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bill moyes though he spent several years flying the ski wing for crowds across the u.s and europe stayed in australia his company moyes delta gliders remains one of the largest hang gliding
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manufacturers in the world bennett set up his own company delta wing kites in van nuys though adventurous young souls like barry hill palmer and fellow californian
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richard miller were already running their own regala wing variations off of hills bill bennett is considered to be the first person to ever fly a regalo wing with john dickinson's control design in the united states
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and it was only a few months after arriving in the u.s that bennett would perform the stunt he would always be best known for i thought what a neat thing to do on the
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4th of july would be to fly over the statue of land on liberty island you know so we went up there and went up the hudson all the way from perth amboy
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and put the guider together and got in the water at uh ellis island and towed up a thousand feet or so a couple of pour around the statue and landed on liberty island
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the harbour policeman was extremely nice i'd landed and i was just standing on the grass and he came up and said it's your name bill bennett i said yes sir he said now i want you to shut up say nothing and listen to me okay i said
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yes sir he said now i hear that you are going to fly over and around the statue and land on on the island and i hope my mouth and said i told you keep quiet he said now my advice to you young man
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is to pack up your tent and steal into the night i said yes sir goodbye people say well how do you ever get permission to do these things well of course you don't it's much easier to be forgiven
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than it is to get permission the promotion of this new extreme activity by bennett and moyes and the competition between the two flyers continued and it wasn't long before bill moyes had
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his own brush with authorities bill bennett had short circuited a couple of things that i had planned here and he made a noise about he going to jump into the grand canyon so i thought well i'll steal it off him and i did
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i went there looking at the site and i was dropping little paper parachutes over the edge to see how the air was flowing and one of the rangers said what are you doing i said i'm going to jump off here with a kite and he said you are not this is a
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national park this is not a place for a circus you'll fall down there and kill yourself we're going to whisk our lives coming down to the gatches so he embarrassed me pretty much and i definitely probably right i'll pack up and you know i just thought it was about to turn a
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walk away anyhow i don't believe he could do it so that reversed the whole thing i had to do it then so i left and then i flew back in the night with a small kite that i could break down to
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put in a small cessna i came back with a buddy and a film crew and they changed the ranges down there in the early hours of the morning and they were coming out with a buddy helicopter just as i was coming down and
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they you know we passed each other and they hovered around and watched me land and then they went back and sat down rangers to arrest us they locked us up we spent a couple of days and uh had a bit of money in jail
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and were fine for they didn't find me for flying into the grand canyon they fined me for filming without a permit because had they fined me for flying that means they would admit that it happened so they denied
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it happened when the newspapers called her no no we caught him at the top but unfortunately we'd buried a roll of film down the bottom they didn't want other people uh the you america is quite crazy they tell me that
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if one successful flight would have people there arriving with sheets and poles and jumping over the damn thing and they were probably right for bill bennett the only logical response was to jump into death valley
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in 1971 and by this time hollywood was starting to notice bennett was featured on thrill seekers a television show hosted by chuck connors and in 1972 one of bennett's delta wing
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kites proved itself as a reliable stealthy way for james bond to drop into mr big's hideout but it may shock you to learn that it wasn't roger moore being towed far above the waters of jamaica
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it was bennett but perhaps the greatest feat ever accomplished by bill bennett or bill moyes was simply the fact that they survived their stunts were performed before the
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days of harnesses or emergency parachutes they flew thousands of feet in the air in kites that were still being tried and tested held up only by their plastic seats
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next time you go back and do the same show again you've got to do it higher and faster or you know you can't sell the same act so trying to go too fast we were breaking ropes and the gliders were tumbling over backwards
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and they're early regalis when we pulled them hard they pitched nose up they climbed rapidly but the nose kept pitching up when when the tow force went if you broke anything then you immediately looped and then fell back
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into it so i had five of those up there in north dakota i had a good one in jamestown i fell 400 feet broke my pelvis and ribs and teeth and a few other things split my liver
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another one in melbourne i did the same thing again i broke an arm in denmark i flew in melbourne on the yarra river there's a photographer there saying how do you know you're going to land where
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you think i said look we always land where we stay we're going to land but how do you know that i said because we always do it and that's where i'm going to land up there right he said all right and sure enough he wandered
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off up to where i was going to land and then i came down short landed in a palm tree and um broke my wrist another time i took off and the wind gave me a big old ground whip it really did a good job on me and
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slammed me back over into the side of the mountain and they helicoptered me out with a broken back we've survived things that were probably much more severe than things that cause people their
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demise you know i guess it's all a matter of just not being your time yet we agreed that the last man alive is the winner but moyes and bennett accomplished what they set out to do
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introduce this new sport to the world and in 1971 on otto lilienthal's birthday a group of californians brought their foot launched glider designs to an anonymous hill in orange county
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it is considered by many to be the day when hang gliding became a sport an article in sports illustrated in december 1973 followed two months later by one in reader's digest called the flyingest
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flying there is made hang gliding's place in american culture official after an hour and 40 minutes we're at manquin flight park home to blue sky hang gliding
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steve wendt blue skies owner operator and instructor lives here with his cat java he's been flying hang gliders since the mid-1970s i got started on my own kind of as a
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rebellious thing to my parents not wanting me to race motorcycles anymore they made me sell it and i just kind of was interested in flying all along this was in 1975 and i ordered a hang glider through the
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mail it was a kit 400 bucks and i had a little book that said how to fly the book was just a little pamphlet that gave you the how to's on putting it together and the basics of running a glider down a
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hill into the wind and flying and i really didn't have much to compare it to it was a original standard regalo and if i ever got more than 30 or 40 feet off the ground that's probably all i ever did with it in fact it scared
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me more than anything else at times and they were just finally upgrading gliders to where they started to have a little wider nose angle and finally they came out with battens in the sail and different things like that that made it perform better and
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gliders were evolving so quickly at that point you know into the early 80s it seemed like every year there was there was something so new to fly that worked so much better it was worth moving into that new equipment
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and glider designs have continued to evolve into remarkable pieces of engineering though dickinson's a-frame control bar and central weight shift point are still pretty much universal modern hang gliders look a lot
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different from those being flown in the 60s and early 70s virtually every part of their design is dedicated to either strength or flight stability to make a glider stable and roll gliders
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have what's called dihedral where the wingtips are raised slightly above the root and the raising of those tips gives the glider stability and roll a flat wing is going to produce more lift than a tilted wing if we have our wings
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tilted upward and the glider gets bumped into a turn now my left wing is flat my right wing is banked upward my left wing is producing more lift and it tries to right itself so a stable
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glider has a little dihedral and every time it gets bumped into a turn the lower wing tends to want to lift more and right itself we've got improved stability and pitch by sweeping the wings back
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and having a lower angle of attack or twist sometimes called wash out along the trailing edge of the wing so by bringing in sweep and twist we provide pitch stability to the gliders and by having
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dihedral we have roll controlled stability in each glider and every glider is a little different based upon what the glider has been designed to do there is a wide spectrum of glider designs to choose from
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based on pilot skill level this beginner glider has a wide nose angle for added stability it also has what's known as a single surface sail which means that the sail area ends at the glider's leading edge
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compare this with a more advanced model with a double surface sail that wraps around the leading edge and runs all the way back this makes the glider much faster and allows it to penetrate stronger winds
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this glider is also topless which means that it doesn't have the king post associated with most other models topless gliders are high performance and relatively new first appearing in the mid-1990s
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so how does a ready-to-fly hang glider come out of one of these 20-foot long bags it usually takes 15 to 20 minutes but holly will help us speed through first we put together the a-frame
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control bar by attaching the bottom segment called the base tube to the ends of the two down tubes next we'll turn the glider upright and take off the bag after removing some velcro straps the
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wings get spread apart in the case of this moyes sonic model spreading the wings automatically raises the king post to which holly attaches the rear wires known as reflex bridles
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next before the sail is tensioned we insert thin aluminum tubes called battens into their appropriate sleeves the battens hold the sail into the optimum cambered shape for flight and are usually held in place by an
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elastic cord there are usually about five or six battens in each wing before putting the last few battens in place we tension the sail by locking this cable into place on the keel
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tensioning the sail fully spreads the wings and lifts the wingtips off the ground once we take the wingtip bags off we can slide the last battens in including a couple that get inserted underneath the wings
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a careful check to make sure everything's in place and that's it all right i'm good here pressure set
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your call go to cruise [Music] with nothing but flat fields making up manquin flight park
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foot launching isn't an option to get gliders into the air instead blue sky uses truck towing in which the glider is pulled up behind a truck with a payout winch typically reaching between one and two
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thousand feet before the pilot detaches or there is arrow towing where the pilot is towed behind an ultralight and releases at around 2500 feet more on those later the scooter towing
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that i had read about on blue sky's website is a way to get student pilots into the air for short flights instead of being pulled across the field behind a scooter as i thought might be the case a mutated 50cc scooter sits atop a
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stationary mount the scooter's rear wheel has been replaced with an intake spool for the tow line which runs about a thousand feet down the field reaches a pulley anchored into the ground
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and comes back to attach to both the glider and the student's harness by revving the throttle steve can control how much pull and resulting lift the student receives which lets steve back off accordingly if
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he sees the student doing something inappropriate for example all right look ahead where one step won't do it you're gonna have to run
00:37:58
now there you kind of took you kind of took a step and then fell over we gotta run ideally a scooter tow student should fly down the length of the field hit the release lever which looks like a
00:38:10
bicycle brake and come in for a graceful landing landings can be a bit tough as the pilot approaches the ground they need to push out on the glider's down tubes which shifts the pilot's weight backward
00:38:22
and raises the glider's nose known as flaring the glider or just a flare the idea is to stall the glider at roughly the same moment the pilot's feet reach the ground when performed by an experienced pilot
00:38:35
the flare is a work of art of course things don't always go so smoothly it usually takes seven or eight scooter toe lessons with the student getting about eight flights per lesson
00:38:56
before graduating to their first truck tow it's what every student at blue sky is working toward and ultimately it's steve's decision as to whether or not you're ready the day i arrive for my first lesson
00:39:11
zelda is on her fourth she's still having a bit of trouble though particularly on launches i have one of my wings one of my my right wing was down low and i think i i'm not sure if i ran
00:39:33
enough and but it just happened try again what you want to do is you want to get that glider on your shoulders and that glider should stay right on your shoulders as you start to
00:39:45
run so that it doesn't fall off your shoulders and then it'll lift off when it has speed but one of the things that's happened is your body's going forward the glider falls off your shoulders and
00:39:57
slides down your arms and it isn't flying yet and if it fly if it falls off there one side before the other you're in a turn already i believe that's a little bit of what's happening to us right now
00:40:08
okay i have a 13 year old daughter and she's like my you're nuts you're crazy and my mother my mother thinks i'm absolutely nutso you know why are you doing this why are
00:40:21
you doing this and but that's all right i've never been really good at any sport i mean i could you know i've swam and i can you know i've run and i've
00:40:33
done you know gymnastics and done you know things but never to any kind of perfection never something that has gone the limit and i think i could do this one it'll be
00:40:50
fun [Music] same thing you're not keeping the glider on your shoulders long enough to get it flying so it's falling off your shoulders and has no directional control whatsoever
00:41:14
go ahead and scream for me zelda let me hear it there the concept of shifting your own weight to control both the roll and pitch of the glider takes some getting used to and a lot of beginning students have
00:41:31
trouble with it here on a simulator built next to the hangers steve offers first-time students a basic idea of weight shift now for left and right we go in the
00:41:42
direction that we move our body in the direction that we wish to go if i want to make a right hand correction i want to simply pull my body to the right don't lean your head to the right that won't work
00:41:55
no matter how big your head is if your head's a 50 pound head this won't help it's all in the hips you got good hips all right so if you can do this you know wiggle your hips
00:42:07
you'll get control out of that glider because that's where all your weight is the mistake of leaning instead of shifting your weight that steve warned against is a classic error in learning to fly a hang glider
00:42:18
it's called cross controlling the pilot wants to turn in a certain direction so they grab the control frame and pull their upper body that way but when they do their hips and most of their weight get rotated in the opposite direction
00:42:32
and the glider responds accordingly doing the exact opposite of what the pilot wants [Music] another common mistake is letting the glider fly too slow during approach to landing
00:42:44
like any aircraft flying slow puts less air over the wing surface and the controls become mushy and unresponsive the worst time to do this with a hang glider is on approach to landing when you need it to respond quickly to
00:42:57
corrections this pilot is on his eighth lesson and is awaiting steve's approval to graduate to his first truck tow getting slow that's why he's not on the truck does
00:43:12
things like that the last time i looked at it man you were way out of the bar and i'm like man you can't have the bar out like that and you were like still 15 feet off the ground with the bar here and there's nothing left i mean you got to have speed
00:43:24
if anything you need to pull them in that last you know quarter of your flight have good speed your foot you're not going to get as long of a flight it's not going to fly farther but you'll have good energy and ground effect for your flare
00:43:37
this is tex forest blue sky's only employee other than steve if you're visiting blue sky and want to get a real taste of hang gliding without taking any lessons tex is the one who will take you up 2500
00:43:50
feet in the tandem glider whatever you did kind of remember the negative side to it and just that yeah just because right now you're at a stage where instructors we're all looking for consistency right you know you can't have
00:44:02
three good ones and then one crappy one they all have to be good now and until they are like that i mean that's the reason y'all you're another lesson away from the truck i was 23 down at the beach with some of
00:44:16
my buddies from school and we were camping out and they're a whole week at the beach and running out of things to do we jet skied one day one day we went hiking you know and it's like hey let's go hang gliding tomorrow okay they got
00:44:29
to school here and i tried it and boom i mean i'd flown in an aircraft before jets and things like people travel but never like that it was like you would fly in your dreams hot you would run and just
00:44:42
lift off the ground and that was it for me at that moment i knew this was a sport i wanted to pursue tex is also the illustrator for the u.s hang gliding association's calendar but he's more well known among local
00:44:54
pilots for his airheads series a collection of drawings he did while serving as editor of the capital hang gliding association's newsletter in the early 90s there's an airhead for every occasion
00:45:07
like this one paying tribute to the regalo wing designs of the early 1970s here's one that caused a bit of controversy for the capital hang gliding association
00:45:19
i always want to make a bumper sticker like that hang water pilots are well hung and yeah i did them too i think because people were taking this sport so seriously and you should but sometimes you know you got to be
00:45:32
able to like laugh at things too and i think it's like just that little lighter side of it you know it's like jeez you gotta you can't take things so seriously that it becomes it's not fun anymore when tex teaches through a tandem flight
00:45:44
it is done on this glider designed specifically for two people it has landing gear to remove the issue of running to a stop on landing you get the girls that scream and they're excited and
00:45:56
you get guys that you know their eyes bulge out i mean it's just sometimes when you take them up for their very first time and they have no idea what it's going to be like you take them up there and it's just like wow that sense of wonderment it's always amazing
00:46:08
i'm going to get this harness up get a strap over my big ass oh yeah okay coming down ready we had one young kid that came here he's probably in his early teens maybe 13 or
00:46:22
14 and he was on the ground all cocking and talking big and everything and hooked him in the hang glider and boy as soon as we left the ground he just was like scared to death you could see his lip quivering and he was just like
00:46:35
and we got up maybe 300 feet 400 feet and i just said are you all right and he wasn't saying anything and i kept saying are you okay and all of a sudden he just said i'm really scared i'm really scared and
00:46:49
i said well do you want me to land he goes i want to get on the ground they just like had a panic attack and i pulled the release and you know i can't got down as fast as i could and the guy was scared to death and as soon as we hit the ground
00:47:01
he was like back being himself again the guy hopped out he was just like oh yeah man that was cool it was fun you know and it was just so funny to see that from my perspective and his friends had no clue you know and and i told him i said hey this is our
00:47:13
secret you know i won't tell him he's like oh thanks you know by my fifth lesson steve and tex are recommending that i sign up for a tandem flight myself steve tells me i'm a couple of lessons from soloing off the truck
00:47:26
and he wants to be sure i won't be overwhelmed by the altitude zelda meanwhile is still having trouble she's now on her 11th lesson it's been a long you know it's been a long summer really
00:47:40
you know frustrated sometimes kind of moving three steps forward and then you know just having to think about what i'm doing i think it's a really it's a sport that you really have to concentrate on and really
00:47:54
think about what you're doing all the time not to make any bad decisions don't go here and try to pull it in and don't go here when you let go just turn your hands and let it out right okay
00:48:08
[Music] that would help [Music] there was one lesson that i drove back to winchester and i hardly said anything i was so
00:48:23
discouraged i was so frustrated it was just a bad i don't know you know a bad time i really i think it's a great sport i i really have this ambition and this um
00:48:36
you know feeling that i can do it now and i would really like to just accomplish it i think it'd be a great accomplishment for myself
00:48:51
okay sex you got any more of that magic sleeping powder oh the relaxing powder i think it's like a beer and a half baby and a half i think that'll be requirements for every lesson just have
00:49:04
a beer right on cue the air calms down at about five o'clock that afternoon
00:49:21
and the conditions are perfect for my tandem flight the tandem glider which is manufactured under the name double vision has two harnesses that hang side by side the straps for each harness connect to a
00:49:35
steel carabiner which in turn connects to what is called a hang loop the nylon strap that wraps around the glider center of gravity at the keel i walk around the glider looking for anything that might be out of place but
00:49:47
i'm not sure i'd know the difference [Music] we're going to be aero towed that is pulled up behind this ultra light which is also known as the tug plane
00:49:59
the tug plane has a 65 horsepower engine and weighs about 400 pounds with a full tank of gas the tug will pull us behind 200 feet of this plastic line which is called spectra the spectral line used at blue
00:50:13
sky for scooter towing aero towing and truck towing has a test strength of 1200 pounds at just over one-fifth of an inch thick but to make sure that the tug plane doesn't drag us against our will through
00:50:26
the sky or into the ground we won't connect to the spectra directly the line extends from the tug plane to an aluminum carabiner through which runs a nylon rope that in turn attaches to two places
00:50:39
texas harness where he has a secondary release and up to the main aerotow release which is activated by squeezing the same bicycle brake handle used in scooter toes the rope connects to this release by a
00:50:51
thin cord called the weak link which breaks at about 120 pounds if the forces during tow exceed that the weak link will break and the tug plane and glider will separate this setup is the same one used for
00:51:04
single pilot aerotoes although without the landing gear of the double vision gliders are instead launched off a wheeled cart that is left behind when they get airborne [Music]
00:51:18
finally we're ready and the ultralight's engine roars into full power the ground speed is a lot faster than i'm used to on the scooter toes about 35 miles an hour and i wonder how
00:51:30
easily the double vision can handle it tex isn't concerned the ground falls away and away and away after only a minute or so i asked tex how high we are
00:51:43
trying to sound nonchalant ah heck he says maybe 400 450 and as we continued to climb it all became clear to me this sport that i had dedicated my last five weekends and much of my free
00:51:56
thought to it wasn't about running off gently sloped training hills or practicing your moves in the simulator it wasn't about getting towed 30 feet above a field by a scooter with a modified rear wheel
00:52:09
what i had been taking lessons for was hang gliding getting up as high as possible for as long as possible hanging by a nylon strap from a 60-pound fabrication of aluminum tubes and dacron
00:52:22
sheaths hang gliding's reputation as an extreme sport was not given to it as a result of scooter toes and at 2300 feet the enormity of what we were doing
00:52:33
pressed down upon me the ultralight floated 200 feet in front of us suspended in ethereal nothingness by nothingness the spectral line barely visible where it reached the tug plane's tail
00:52:46
and beneath us the roads that i had traveled so enthusiastically to get here to take up this sport the tug pilot signals for our release and tech squeezes the handle
00:52:58
the ultra light speeds away and suddenly the only sound is the gentle rush of wind over the double vision sail ground speed at this height is impossible to gauge it's like we're simply suspended in space
00:53:12
the tallest building in north america the sears tower in chicago stands 1450 feet we're a thousand feet higher when my hang loop fails
00:53:23
i will fall for nearly 15 seconds before hitting the ground at about 130 miles an hour i asked tex about the strength of the hang loop and he tells me good god man
00:53:35
hang loops could pick up a car after a pause he asks me if i'm okay yeah i tell him but suddenly one of his airhead illustrations makes perfect sense to me
00:53:48
he lets me take the controls and for the next 10 minutes we practice turns it's a little more challenging because i have to move his weight as well as mine we even try a stall where the nose is gradually pushed out until the glider
00:54:00
stops flying there's a quick feeling of a roller coaster on a hill and we lose about 40 feet of altitude before the glider recovers i'm glad when we're finally on our approach to landing
00:54:12
this first flight has left me a bit overwhelmed if i had taken this tandem before i had gone through so many lessons i might not have continued but as it is i have too much time invested to give up now
00:54:24
i'm even starting to pick up some of the hang gliding slang after spending the last several weekends here with the pilots for instance a waffle an abbreviation for what's that for is a clueless spectator
00:54:38
who frustrates a hang glider pilot with an endless barrage of questions washing your face means flying through a cloud specking out refers to getting so high that to those on the ground
00:54:50
you are literally a speck a spud is a pilot who holds others up by waiting too long prior to launch a whack is used to describe any bad landing and landings are always open for a
00:55:03
critique by any of the pilots inevitably watching put your hands up put your hands up [Music] these hands were right here you could never even flare from there
00:55:18
a beak is a type of whack where the glider's nose touches the ground something that in theory should never happen beaking it is when the glider's nose slams hard into the ground and perhaps the most embarrassing whack
00:55:31
of all a turtle where the glider flips and the kingpost touches the ground so in a sport where slang for bad landings is used regularly
00:55:41
just how dangerous is the sport of hang gliding the early to mid 1970s is when hang gliding picked up its high risk reputation and back then it was well deserved as
00:55:58
word following the first lillianthal meat spread dozens of companies sprang up that began selling mail order hang glider kits to eager pilots in 1974 the united states hang gliding
00:56:11
association had 2794 members in that year there were 40 u.s hang gliding fatalities that's one death for every 70 members by 1975 there had been 110 u.s
00:56:26
deaths from a sport that had beneficial for less than four years in those days uh it went over big as an act i was the top paid performer in america for a couple of years
00:56:38
i couldn't fill all the bookings and bookers would hire anybody that would claim to be a performer so 17 guys followed me into the fairgrounds and all 17 are dead the only one left in response to the
00:56:52
rash of hang gliding fatalities in the mid-1970s the ushga established mandatory glider certifications by their manufacturers the association also developed an instructor certification program to
00:57:05
ensure that those teaching the sport were qualified as a result hang gliding fatality statistics don't look anything like the figures of the mid-1970s though the stigma of those days
00:57:17
continues to haunt the sport part of this decline is due to great improvements in glider design and construction today's gliders are designed to typically withstand as much as six positive g's and four negative g's on
00:57:30
their wings structural failures which were frequent in the mid-1970s are today usually associated only with acrobatic or other extreme flying maneuvers like this one which demonstrates what
00:57:43
has become standard equipment for hang glider pilots the emergency parachute having to throw a shoot is rare in a recent year for which data was collected there were only 10
00:57:55
intentional deployments and seven of those followed structural failures resulting from extreme acrobatic maneuvers but they are a major part of hang gliding's much improved safety record they'll usually save the pilot's life
00:58:08
even if they don't do it gracefully through my shoot a couple weeks ago doing aerobatic maneuvers failed aerobatic maneuver i was trying to complete a twisty basically diving at the ground um
00:58:22
throw all your weight to the side to the left get adverse yaw in pitch up throw all your weight to the right it's kind of like a vertical barrel roll tumbled about three times we're not sure of the exact number and at what at which point the leading
00:58:35
edges both broke in half i was spinning the glider was oscillating about 90 degrees up and down and realized my glider smashed i need to throw my shoot looked down pulled it out
00:58:49
through it took a little while i was probably at about anywhere between 2 000 and 1500 feet at this point touchdown standing on the under surface of the glider which is now pointed off
00:59:01
and uh couldn't have asked for a softer touchdown because the glider was coming down flat as well under canopy really slowed my descent and just basically squatted down and absorbed the impact and stood up and unbuckled for my
00:59:14
harness in most minor crashes the a-frame control bar acts as a safety cage absorbing the impact the aluminum down tubes are easy to replace [Music]
00:59:31
hang gliding's gone through its growing pains and its idea of you know how safe it is and so forth i think it's kind of plateaued on number of people entering the sport uh but the safety record i think has
00:59:43
gotten a lot better and that's due to the towing and the tandem flying i think tandem teaching really takes a lot of the dangers out of it and i still think we need a lot more promotion to the general public to really
00:59:54
let them see that it's out there and it's that you don't have to be on a sand dune to do it you don't have to live on the california coast to do it you know people view it as an extreme sport i don't look at it that it's as safe as any other aviation sport
01:00:07
and just like any other aviation sport it's not forgiving so you just gotta take your time with it and apply when things are right not experiment but so much you don't want to get into it casually it's like well are you sure you want to do this
01:00:20
because that's serious stuff when a human being when you leave the ground i mean it suddenly becomes very serious because obviously you can fall i think that what makes this sport not for everybody because you get some of those
01:00:33
people that are so casual and complacent and they don't want that level of um discipline in their sport they want it more casual or they don't have to worry about it so those people go bowling and they play tennis and golf and that's fine
01:00:46
it's a little harder takes a little more time a little more discipline but geez we have we're the only guys that we can say man i flew for four hours and it was great you know i was out there flying with a hawk or i went through a cloud i mean that stuff
01:00:57
dreams are made up now on her 14th lesson zelda is getting closer to that dream steve has her going briefly to the prone position during her scooter toes
01:01:16
[Applause] as for me my time has now come to soar with the birds or the angels depending on how it goes [Music]
01:01:29
here's how truck towing works the glider's base tube is mounted onto open brackets on the truck's tailgate a strap connected to the glider's nose is attached to a quick release mechanism
01:01:41
which is activated by pulling a ring under the base tube like scooter towing and arrow towing truck towing uses spectral line to connect to the pilot this powered winch holds several
01:01:54
thousand feet of it at peak altitude the pilot detaches by pulling this little release line so here we go at around 35 miles an hour steve hits the horn
01:02:12
and i pull the ring now my main responsibility is to keep the nose pointed toward the truck the efficiency of truck tows varies depending on wind direction and other weather factors on this one
01:02:38
when i pull the release i'm at 1150 feet now if i knew anything about thermals
01:02:52
and how to stay in them i could be up here for hours the longest flight off a single tow at manquin flight park is four and a half hours and the altitude record here is more than 7 600 feet
01:03:05
so what should i be trying to find instead of just flying around aimlessly a good visual example of how thermals work is a lava lamp the flat cool lava in this case represents a layer of air over the
01:03:21
ground at the beginning of the day the sun heats the ground throughout the morning the heat obviously doesn't come from below like the lamp but the idea is the same the surface below the air is getting hotter
01:03:33
and the air layer gets heated with it at manquin flight park the first places for this to happen are the areas that generate the most heat from sunlight like the freshly planted soybean field
01:03:45
as the field gets hotter the heated layer of air over it starts to rise typically taking on a dome or half bubble shape eventually in what is called a trigger the thermal pushes up through the cooler
01:03:58
air above it and releases to form a bubble this invisible rising air may also be roughly in the shape of a column still being fed by air from the ground thermals drift with the wind so one that
01:04:11
is triggered here might be over here by the time it reaches a thousand feet and since thermals are often independent rising bubbles a pilot at one altitude might ascend with it for thousands of feet
01:04:23
while a pilot a mere hundred feet lower will miss it entirely unfortunately working a thermal as they say here is not as simple as finding a nice warm bubble that will carry you gently into the sky
01:04:37
thermals are often irregularly shaped and can be smaller than your glider they rise at different speeds and their invisible edges are often associated with swirling chaotic air pilots caught in these turbulent edges
01:04:50
can be tossed around wildly and in rare extreme cases even flipped upside down you know when you've found a thermal one of two ways if it's strong enough you can feel yourself being thrown upward
01:05:04
or you can just rely on this instrument called a variometer or vario for short varios not only display altitude but whether you're rising or sinking and how fast so that you don't have to stare at them
01:05:17
while flying varios are usually set to beep if you're in rising air the more rapidly it beeps the greater the lift and sound a brief alarm if you're in sinking air otherwise they stay quiet
01:05:31
the most basic soaring rule then is to fly slow through rising air and fast through sinking air but unless the thermals are huge and everywhere that won't be enough ideally once a hang glider pilot finds a
01:05:44
thermal they want to circle within it and stay with it as high as it goes and thermals keep rising until they reach the layer where clouds form a level known as cloud base cloud base varies depending on air temperature
01:05:58
humidity and dew point but at man quinn 6500 feet is typical [Music] though thermals are invisible there are a couple of indicators that hang glider pilots look for
01:06:10
the most common to spot is one or more circling birds birds instinctively conserve energy by seeking out and circling in thermals as i was filming this one it rose about
01:06:21
500 feet without once flapping its wings the second is the appearance of cumulus clouds known in the hang gliding community as cumie's once a thermal reaches cloud base the
01:06:34
more humid air it is brought up cools condenses and becomes visible if the cloud is just starting to form there is a good chance that there is still a column of rising air underneath it
01:06:46
there are other types of lift that hang glider pilots can use but they're based on air being deflected on terrain like ridges mountains and valleys here amid the flat fields of manquin
01:06:58
it's thermal lift or nothing most of the experienced pilots here will keep themselves occupied until the day's thermal activity has started no no no no no what did you do that for
01:07:14
finding no lift on this flight and not being experienced enough to stay in it if i did i have what is called a sled run essentially being towed up and gliding back down to the ground which makes me as hang gliding
01:07:27
terminology would have it a sled dog but the addiction i've seen in the other pilots is palpable i'm ready to soar with the birds like i hear the others talk about
01:07:48
you know i was flying in the mountains and sometimes the hawk will soar the mountain just like you will he'll stay in the lift band and you'll be flying and pretty much not paying each other any mind and you can get closer and closer and you know he's i'm sure he's aware
01:08:00
that you're there because you can see him kind of look up at you occasionally and he's right below me and then i kind of dove at him and uh he did what hawks do i mean they react so lightning quick i mean he just pulled
01:08:11
his wings in and dropped out of the way and you could just see him falling away and i was just amazed that he reacted so quick and i startled him actually i felt a little bit bad because i probably scared him a little bit i think all hang water pilots eventually
01:08:23
have some encounter with a bird or a hawk or something i mean when you're thermaling you'll have birds right in thermal with you and i've had them really close where you're like wow is that bird even though i'm here and i'm sure he does but he's thinking
01:08:35
well that must be just a bigger bird because you're really not making a lot of noise i've stole thermals from birds where i've seen birds flying and i went over and took a thermal and joined it and sometimes i've seen them come over to me actually that's neat
01:08:47
where you know the bird will see you and go there's some lift and you'll see them you'll be flying they'll come on underneath of you and then start turning and you know that they saw you going up and they're like well they want to go up too and they're like yeah it's like it's
01:09:00
like some sort of symbiotic you know relationship there did you see those circling birds at the end of the tow road yeah you flew straight towards me and flew right with them there's a couple of them there but was it was there any lift there when you got there
01:09:12
no but i chased them out i thought maybe they had found a thermal clear that was beautiful ah
01:10:06
yes okay my gosh oh my gosh
01:10:17
okay nice nice nice great after 19 scooter tow lessons zelda gets the okay from steve to solo off the truck a few weeks later on a windless
01:10:35
afternoon zelda flew it was so great to see her go and i'd say it was one of the most perfect toes she took off and we were most worried about her on toe i didn't want to get her a turn have her
01:10:47
panic and just get into a turn and like have to release and she toed up so perfectly straight the toe was straight i was right over the truck man i didn't move that far i was like oh
01:11:03
i didn't move that bar i was like okay i'm just going to stay right there right over your truck it was up to about a thousand feet saw our release and oh my god she's doing it the flying was just
01:11:14
so perfect and it was just so neat i made it down all the way down and then just kind of came around here and circled back and then i
01:11:26
i you know i i i lined it up the landing wasn't that great and she didn't have a perfect landing although she landed on her feet okay kind of ran it out you know yeah and then she came back here and man talk about multiple air gases
01:11:39
and hit her afterwards she was like calm and she ran back in the truck and she got off and it was like she started equipping it was like oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah it was like oh back up everybody man it was like a tasmanian devil you know
01:11:52
that's when i got excited i was i was my mind was so concentrated on what i was doing up there but then when i came in i just kind of went oh my gosh this is so cool i could do this i could
01:12:06
do this she was walking around she felt like this tall man she was like i am zelda i can fly we were like for months i waited for zelda to fly again hoping to get the perfect shot
01:12:22
but the following summer i received an email from her hi josh just got back yesterday i have been hobbling around since wednesday of last week when i took a training hill lesson at morningside new hampshire
01:12:36
i had five pretty good runs but on the sixth run got a good gust of crosswind and didn't level off enough flared early came down with my left knee extended and cracked my base tube an x-ray showed
01:12:48
a fracture in my lateral tibia plateau i'm in a brace until i can see a specialist on friday my hang gliding is on hold until this heals and until i can find the committed time to dedicate to the sport
01:13:01
i want the dream but i can't make it happen i've been thinking about the video josh do you really want to include me i don't know when i'm going to succeed the video should reflect the trials of
01:13:14
training as well as the successes of flight and i'm not that example i mucked up again and there's no telling when i will get back in the air at this point i'm even questioning if i
01:13:26
will continue because of my level of skill the amount of commitment needed and my obligations to my daughter and job you'll see me at the park i cherish the friends and all of you who have flown your
01:13:40
dreams on your wings zelda i knew when i went into that flare that i had flared too early i knew that i made the error right there but i
01:13:51
knew enough to hold it you know i remembered steve in texas message you know you flare early you hold it no matter what you hold that flare and don't pull in but i was just too high and when i came
01:14:05
down i came down hard i took it hard on my left knee my dream was to get up into the sky by myself my dream was to fly alone
01:14:17
i love the experience of being up in the sky alone and flying that glider and i don't know if i could say right now but you know my dream is still there
01:14:30
to do it again maybe a few days later zelda learned that a pin would need to be inserted into her leg to stabilize the bone followed by at least three months of recovery and rehabilitation
01:14:46
[Music] as for me i'm finally able to find some rising air and stay within it i keep circling and the variometer keeps beeping past two thousand and three thousand and
01:14:58
four thousand until i decide to fly straight and leave the thermal at just over forty eight hundred feet [Music] i wasn't prepared for the sense of isolation
01:15:10
at this altitude even blue skies hangers are specks i can't make out anyone on the ground there is only the base tube in my hands and the earth far below and the sound of the wind
01:15:23
i start thinking about the carabiner holding me up and the nylon strap it's connected to and all the many wires holding my 60 pound aircraft together then i take a few deep breaths and look
01:15:36
out at the haze covered horizon and i realized that this is what i've been waiting for ever since i first saw the flying man as a kid
01:15:45
i am flying under my own wings [Music] [Music] [Applause] all i wanna
01:16:05
[Music] just telling them stories [Music]
01:16:32
when the sun is hot i wanna fly in the evening sunset all i wanna do is just fly
01:16:51
good man baby
01:17:02
[Music]
01:17:28
do [Music] [Music] [Music]
01:18:13
[Music] [Music]
01:19:06
[Music] you
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