[Harry]

It's 2015 and in three and a half decades we've made little progress in the area of reducing stall speed and improving low speed control. We're still using weight-shift control, while the other guys have aerodynamic roll control and BRAKES.

Dayhead, after flying a Fledge 2 for 36 years, there's a good reason why I maintain that glider, and still fly it.
It has rudders that act as air brakes. I have numerous stories of how them rudders saved my a** time and time again.
I have been able to parachute that glider (2:1 glide) between trees. When other gliders had no other option than to pick out a soft looking tree, I've been able to deploy both rudders to slow down from a 12:1 glide to a 2:1 glide into a grove of trees and land on the ground without puncturing a wing. In other words, I dropped down into and between trees just like a parachute. The only weight shift is pitch. Combined weight shift and rudder control is tops!

There is one time where I came out of a loop, stalled, and pitched over forward and landed on top of my wing upside down, accelerating into an inverted dive. Too low to throw my chute, I pulled the bar in and deployed one full rudder. The glider rolled right side up just in time to land.

For spot landings, nothing beats a Fledge (in my opinion) for hitting the spot every damn time. You come in hot and apply both rudders as needed, flare hard, dead stop. Every time.

This is a glider made in 1979, and an easy glider for the H2 pilot. It takes 1 to 2 years to master the wing for most flying conditions, but once learned, look out!
If a manufacturer was to come out with a carbon fiber air frame version of that wing, I would mortgage my house to purchase one. It is one tough design that has lasted me all these years. It is fun to fly in turbulence and very satisfying to fly. The performance sucks compared to today's standards, but does nothing to diminish the fun. At 55 pounds of aluminum and dacron sail cloth, I can only guess what a carbon fiber version would weigh in at.

The only down side to the design is you can weight shift the glider into a vertical dive and invert the wing. Control goes negative and then you are upside down, but, with today's engineering, I bet a designer can fix that one flaw.
I'm not chasing records or trying to do much XC. I just like floating around with absolute control and confidence.

[KaiMartin]

They don't know what they're missing and they never will. But why should we care?

Because of the numbers game. Over here in Germany we had close to 1800 PG "A-Schein" certifications issued in 2013. This is roughly comparable to PG3. The same year, there were 53 A-Scheins issued to HG pilots. While PG numbers have been floating about the same since 2000, HG is on continuous decline.
There is no market to sell beginners HG stuff to. And the old boys tend to quit. Consequently, local manufacturers have long been gone out of business. The famous system of the DHV-Siegel with its mandatory biennial checks is about to collapse because checkers are too few and far between. It is an accelerating downward spiral.

Making hang gliders more like paragliders isn't the answer.

Nobody proposed so. Even the Whoopy-fly which was designed to be a cross breed between PG and HG turned out to be something very much unlike a PG.
When Dayhead and I engage in looking at the PG, it is not about actual construction but abstract properties. Like portability, ease of landing, control...

Peace.

---<)kaimartin(>---

[Rick Masters]

Who can take the heat?

    I'm just saying that all the important parts were invented long ago. Harry reinforces the point. Hang gliding design is limited by aerodynamics and physics. Yes, we can tweak the designs, but these minor changes aren't going to revolutionize the sport. Minor tweaks are all we've seen for 35 years for a reason. For all their supposed faults, hang gliders seem to work pretty good overall.
    Hang gliders land fast because hang glider pilots demand fast hang gliders. Pilots could slow them down with drogue chutes the same way Harry slows down his ancient rigidwing with drag rudders, but they don't. They want simplicity. It's the odd man that goes to the extra trouble of more moving parts.
    More moving parts also means more to go wrong. A lot of hang gliding's attraction (and a hang glider pilot's survival over a flying career) has to do with its simplicity. Same for paragliding. That said, if you can build in more control without having to rig and de-rig it every flight, like Kai mentions, that might build traction.
    If hang glider pilots had demanded slow hang gliders, they'd be everywhere. Yeah, there are some out there but you don't see pilots flying them on XC attempts. It's not what they want.
    My personal XC glider was a rocket ship. It landed hot. In high-altitude-density outlandings, I was always looking for an upslope or a sandy spot for a hard flare. I was always landing in desert scrub. I'd flare hard and drop a few feet. It worked pretty good. I never wanted anything different.
    But what if we're barking up the wrong tree? What if a big part of the problem with the fall-off in hang glider popularity is the cost of new hang gliders?

[Harry]

Harry slows down his ancient rigidwing with drag rudders...

Hey, hey, hey...NOT ancient, "vintage"!

[Rick Masters]

This is the only Fledge that gets better with age.