[wingspan33]

RS,

Your own thoughts on NEW ideas for hang gliding attachment design, etc trigger ideas in my own cranial 3D design program. As in my recent response to Bill C., I think I need to start a new thread dedicated to new and/or improved hang glider design ideas! Watch for the new topic!

It is so refreshing to find people who are actually using their own mind. I have not thought about the negative G predicament we face, I have not devoted one Nueron to thinking about it. Shame on me.
Okay...thinking...thinking.....re-reading presentation of problem and possible solutions....Kiss method?.....Okay...got an idea...

[wingspan33]

I would add here that "variable geometry" is one other thing that makes hang gliders unique.

Now, collapsible canopies occupants do distort/deform the shape of their canopy to affect control, but it's typically in a "destructive" or non-aerodynamic way. Subtle control input on a CC may be seen as being more of a change in "geometry", I suppose you could say. But, in a hang glider, you never "spoil" the air flow over one wing tip to help initiate a turn.

[wingspan33]

I'll add another feature that make hang gliders unique, while I wait for other member's brains to kick in.

Hang gliders have sails ! ! ! Sails are typically found on "Sail Boats". But when an aircraft has a sail for a wing, . . . that's unique!

I've thought many times about how, if someone a thousand years ago had thought to take a mast from a sailboat, multiply it by two and join those two masts together (to form two leading "masts"), and with the boom acting as the keel, . . . a hang glider could have been born way back then.

Cables (or ropes) and stays have long been part of a sailboat, so upper and lower "rigging" (a sailing term BTW) for the thousand years ago hang glider (or name given to it way back then - Sail Wing or Sail Bird) could have had similar mechanical support as compared to today's hang glider.

Launching such a wing would have best used a rail and roller system down a moderate to steep slope. This, considering that both the LEs and keel would have been wooden spars and the sail, canvas. With all this I do think flight could have been achieved (a safe landing ? ? ?). But, I also think that a contemporary hang glider pilot would be the most likely to think of all these possibilities and only IF they could somehow go back in time.

[ARP]

Wingspan,

Reinhold Platz did just what you said, 25 years before Rogallo's first patent. His sailwing was based on a sloop rigged sailboat :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LVtc8l3Z5o

This 1974/5 hang glider uses the same idea:-

[KaiMartin]

Hang gliders have sails ! ! !

Some, actually most, have. But I'd hesitate to call the wings of an Atos VR a sail. I'd also hesitate to define the term hang glider in a way that excludes rigids.

---<)kaimartin(>---

[wingspan33]

Kai,

It's interesting to hear about the pre-Rogallo designer who used sailboat tech to create a glider. The YouTube video is even more interesting because it shows the design in use! BTW - I'm half Dutch, but that side of the family came to the US in the mid 1800s. As a result I can't speak a word of Dutch (Netherlandian?). Still, the pictures speak a thousand words! Great find!

[MikeLake]

Face down prone flying, like Superman.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Face down prone flying, like Superman.

Ditto.             You can see the world like a bird from that position.   

By the way, a number of years ago, the then USHGA ran an article about a hybrid hang glider / paraglider with rigid wing tips that was flown from the prone position. It took me a while to realize that it was their "April Fools" edition.

[SamKellner]

like Superman.

Yeah, like Superman

[ARP]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Ul7iUGE7s

Video of grandson & friend "flying" with Superman harness as used in picture above.