All about learning to hang glide!

SWriverstone · January 15, 2009

I've been asked a few times by people about learning to be a hang glider pilot...so I thought I'd post up with a basic overview!

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You don't need a license to be a hang glider pilot...but there is a national governing body for the sport with 4 pilot ratings (Hang 1 thru 4). It's an honor system, self-policing thing: You have to earn your Hang 2 rating to fly high, and as a 2 you can only fly under the tutelage of an experienced Observer. To truly fly solo anywhere (in other words, without the mandatory Observer) you have to earn your Hang 3 rating (which is where I am currently).

Lessons generally cost around $75-85 each (less if you buy a package of 8-10 lessons). If you don't screw up, 10-12 lessons are enough for your Hang 2 and first high-altitude flight. From there, you'll probably log anywhere from 60-100 additional flight hours to earn your Hang 3.

A used, beginner-level hang glider (like a Wills Wing Falcon) doesn't cost much more than a good carving setup. I spent $1000 on mine and sold it a couple years later for $1300. :) New gliders generally run anywhere from $3500 (for an easy-to-fly single-surface glider) to $6,000 (for a high-performance, topless double-surface glider like a Wills Wing Talon 2). And you can easily get a decade or two of use out of a glider if you take care of it.

Learning to fly is easy. Learning to take off (either foot-launch or towed aloft) is a little harder...and learning to land is by far the hardest. Unlike powered flight, you only get one chance to land in a hang glider, so your approach has got to be good! It takes a lot of practice to master the landing flare, which is where you glide down close to the ground at high speed, coast along bleeding off energy, and then just before stalling, push the nose up (the flare) and land on your feet.

Traditionally, hang gliding lessons have been taught by teaching foot-launched flight from low training hills. (You rarely fly more than 10 feet off the ground from a training hill.) Plenty of good instructors still teach this method, and for flying in the mountains, foot-launching is a required skill.

Many instructors now are teaching by a "kinder, gentler, safer" method known as scooter towing—which takes place on completely flat ground (typically a long grass airstrip). A small scooter is mounted on a trailer, and the rear wheel is replaced with a drum of thin spectra line. You and your glider are attached to the line, and the instructor literally pulls you into the air like a kite. At the end of the flight area, you slap a trigger to release the tow line and land normally.

This is a fantastic way to learn because your height off the ground is carefully controlled by the instructor (with the throttle). Though you're being towed through the air, you still steer the glider. As a beginner you'll typically fly 500-1000 yards anywhere from 3 to 20 feet above ground. If you start to get into trouble (it happens to everyone), the instructor just rolls off the throttle and you float gently to the ground (well, sometimes you "belly in," which is another common beginner experience—usually harmless!). Eventually, the instructor can tow you as high as 50-100 feet off the ground.

This form of towing is called "static winch" towing, because the winch is stationary. The next step up is truck towing, where the winch is anchored to the bed of a pickup truck. A special line and frame holds you and your glider on the tailgate of the truck in flying position. The instructor heads down the airstrip, and when the truck reaches about 30 knots airspeed, he signals, you pull a release ring and BANG! You pop off the truck and climb like a bat out of hell for the first 50 feet...then continue climbing (as the instructor continues driving and paying out line) to as high as 1200' above ground level. It's a major rush the first time you do it! (And always fun every subsequent time.)

Everything I describe above is typically done at a hang gliding flight park. Pilots who are taught foot-launch from training hills often don't get the advantage of the graduated tow-training. Instead, they'll spend a dozen lessons foot-launching from a low hill...then immediately graduate to a late-day, calm-air flight off a high mountain launch. It's a bigger leap, and the first mountain launch for everyone is scary as hell and exhilarating at the same time!

The ultimate form of flying at a flight park is aerotowing—being towed behind a modified ultralight aircraft up to around 2,000' where you release and go hunting for thermals.

Flying the mountains on a good day is brain-dead easy, because you're flying mechanical lift resulting from wind hitting the ridge and deflecting upward. You can boat around in ridge lift for hours, sometimes a few thousand feet over the ridge. If there is no wind (and no ridge lift) you have what's called a "sled," which means you launch and just glide straight down to the landing zone.

Staying aloft over flatlands is more challenging, because there is no mechanical lift—it's all thermal flying. You glide around until you feel a wing lift, then turn sharply in the direction of the lifted wing and try to "core" the thermal. If you find a good one (more common than you might think), you can climb several hundred feet per minute. Eventually, the thermal tops out and you go on glide again, hunting for another thermal.

BTW, many people ask if you can actually feel the temperature change in a thermal. The answer is no, you can't. That's partly because an air mass only has to be a couple degrees warmer than the surrounding air to rise, and that's a pretty hard difference to feel. So how do you know if you're in a thermal? If it's a good one, you'll feel a wing lift. If it's a weaker one, most pilots fly with an instrument called a vario, which detects lift or sink. In addition to visual indicators, a vario also has an audio tone. When you find lift, the vario beeps! The stronger the lift, the faster and higher-pitched the beeping is.

I like to say hang gliding is like "sailing in the sky." Sailing is an apt metaphor, because flying hang gliders, we don't glide straight to the ground any more often than sailboats just sit still on dead-calm days. Most of the time the atmosphere is pretty active, and it's just a matter of finding the activity! A hang glider sail is texturally almost exactly like a sailboat sail, made of thick dacron. And the experience of flying at altitude reminds me a lot of sailing...because all you hear is the wind, the gentle flapping of the sail and the quiet clinking of the rigging. It's incredibly beautiful.

Interestingly, people think of hang gliding as an "adrenaline, daredevil sport," but it's not at all. Flying is incredibly laid-back, quiet, and peaceful. (Unless you're flying in a storm, which you shouldn't be, or in violent thermals, which you shouldn't be unless you're a superstud pilot!) Heck, you're even laying prone in a comfy, sleeping bag-like harness!

If you're interested,go check out the website for the United States Hanggliding and Paragliding Association (USHPA). They have some good information on learning to fly and (more importantly) a database of instructors and flight parks in every state.

http://www.ushpa.org

You might not be able to find an instructor nearby (or even in your own state)...but then again, don't think there have to be mountains nearby—plenty of world-class flight parks exist in totally flat parts of the country.

Finally, like any sport that depends on weather and mother nature, learning to hang glide takes a lot of patience! You can't always fly every day...and if you're foot-launching from a training hill, you need a headwind. I've been to many lessons when we did nothing but sit on the hillside for hours waiting to see if the wind would shift (instructors usually won't charge you for those lessons).

But when you do fly...all those hours of waiting are more than worth it!

Scott

willywhit · January 15, 2009

scott,

that's awesome. How's the wife doing after her accident a few years back ? Still soaring ?

This is really big in Brasil and I plan to learn eventually. The kitesurfing experience will hopefully flatten out the learning curve a bit.

Also want to get certified to skydive. I've done a few jumps, static line and tandem and would love to be able to jump solo, 20+ second freefalls , all that.

I've got a connection with with a school in Maine and just need to invest the time and $$ to do it. Great bunch of wacky folks that're into this stuff.

Also wanna be a private pilot someday. :rolleyes: ultralight maybe ?

Hangliding and skydiving 1st, then maybe a single engine Cessna. :cool:

I wanna hear more.

http://www.flyaboveall.com/paraglide.htm

http://www.rioturismoradical.com.br/hanggliding.htm

nuther perspectiva

SWriverstone · January 16, 2009

Hi willywhit! Holly's doing fine—long since fully recovered from the accident, and she's been flying again. :biggthump Her first flight after a year off (from the accident) really had me nervous as hell...but she did fine, perfect launch, perfect landing.

Yes! Free flight is definitely big around Rio...I've seen lots of vids and photos of people flying there and landing on the beach...looks awesome!

Kitesurfing is yet another sport Holly and I would love to get into. And if you want to get into full-blown paragliding, that would definitely be a good first step.

I know many pilots who are "biwingual" (as we say in the sport)...they fly both hang gliders and paragliders. I have to admit I've thought of getting into paragliding for the portability of it—just sling it over your shoulder and you're off!

Hang gliders are difficult to impossible to fly (on commercial airlines) with...so traveling (with a hang glider) is pretty much limited to wherever you can drive with the glider strapped to your roofracks. On the other hand, paragliders have always kinda scared me 'cause it's just a big bag which can (and does) completely deflate...(in more turbulent air, called a "collapse"), leaving you SOL. A hang glider is a lot "tougher" in the air 'cause it has a rigid airframe (which is why PG pilots call HG pilots "plumbers," because of all our "pipes." LOL)

The toughest thing about both is that you really have to be laid-back to do it, in the sense that it's not a sport like snowboarding where if you drive to the slope and there's snow, you're gonna ride. Atmospheric and weather conditions are capricious, and there are many times when even world-class pilots will show up to a flying site only to find the wind has shifted, and they end up sitting around doing nothing for 2-3 hours waiting to see if things change (with no guarantee they will).

Imagine only being able to snowboard when it's actually snowing—that's sort of like hang gliding and paragliding, LOL. (But good conditions happen more often than you might think, and to a certain extent, they're predictable.)

Scott

willywhit · January 26, 2009

Dale is quite a guy !

http://www.daleelliott.com/About_Me.html

http://www.imthinkingofyou.com/

Hotbeans · January 27, 2009

Ok. I'm up for it. I'm north of Pittsburgh and can ride down sometime this spring/summer. You do lesson's, have the stuff?

bjvircks · January 31, 2009

Landing can be a real pain in the head if you don't time the flare well. You can drag your legs, then slide on your belly a bit before the control bar hits the ground and stops dead. The problem is that the wing and you keep moving. The wing rocks forward at high speed and the nose whacks into the ground as you, the human pendulum, swing forward and your head slams into the keel of the glider. Moral of the story? Keep the training wheels on untill you can consistently nail the landing. At Lake Elsinore in SoCal we were merciless to the noobs, a load chorus of WHACK ringing out whenever anyone screwed up.

One thing you didn't mention was training by going up tandem in the mountains with a qualified instructor. The instructor handles the takeoff and landing and the student gets to fly the rest. Very quick way to gain skills and get used to altitude safely. This is done along with training hill work to master launching and landing. This is how my son learned. At the end of 10 days of consistent good flyable condtions he was doing solo flights from 2,000 ft agl and got his 2 rating. While out there I got my 4 reinstated.

Flying a hang glider has been and probably always will be the most awsome thing I've felt. I deeply miss flying the Owens Valley every other weeked, but staying employed played the trump card.

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