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Hang gliding early 1980s

Hang gliders: Birdman Cherokee 170, Cunion Crossbow (experimental) and modified Birdman Moonraker 78
Harness: 1970s stirrup harness
Camera: 110-format compact film

This page follows Hang gliding 1977 to 1979.

In 1980, having obtained an HND in computing and started work as a computer programmer for a large defence electronics company, I saved up enough money to buy my first car. Previously, my flying was restricted to (in the mid 1970s) my local hill (within walking distance) and by obtaining lifts from other hang glider pilots.

Cherokee

I took this photo with a 110-format camera taped to a downtube of my Birdman Cherokee in 1980. I digitized it by using a digital camera to photograph the print.

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Bob England went on to create the Hiway Demon, after which he moved to the USA and created the Streak. I read that he was killed about the turn of the century flying a paraglider at Torrey Pines.

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The crosstube fairings (made by a different manufacturer as an add-on) were intended to reduce drag and possibly even provide a small amount of extra lift. However, I suspect their main effect was aesthetic.

Those sailcloth crosstube fairings contained short battens, one each side, to eliminate flutter. However, the little battens were not well secured and on one occasion at 3000 ft above the Devil’s Dyke (a few miles north of Brighton, England) a sound like ripping fabric caught my attention. (As you might imagine. Incidentally, the red container you might discern on the harness at chest level contains an emergency parachute.) As the sound continued and the glider continued to fly normally, I realised one of the crosstube fairing battens had come loose.

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Bill Pain continued with hang glider design after the Pelican. (Indeed, in 2010 he was in Australia flight testing another prototype.) His most successful hang glider was the Offpiste Discovery, which in 1995 pioneered a reversal of the trend towards greater weight, complexity, and cost in hang gliding. The Discovery is almost as quick to rig as a paraglider.

The bowsprit configuration looked set to become the norm, at least for high performance hang gliders, foremost among which in late 1979 and early 1980 was the Southdown Sailwings Sigma, built near Brighton on the Sussex coast of England. However, in the USA, a refinement of an older innovation had been developed, which was to reverse that trend.

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During the winter of 1979 to 1980 I returned to designing and building experimental hang gliders, with this canard wing. However, as with my earlier creations, I found it was not as good as the state of the art. I believe that Skyhook had a similar experience with their earlier canard hang glider.

The canard configuration (which places the tailplane ahead of the main wing) prevents the main wing from stalling. Unfortunately, its disadvantages outweigh that safety feature, at least in hang gliding.

Fly Navy

From my desk diary, Tuesday, March 30th, 1982:

R.N. Air Medical School.
07:50 a.m.

Seafield Park,
Hillhead,
Fareham,
Hants

The event was a disorientation and decompression course organized by the BHGA and run by the Royal Navy School of Aviation Medicine at a mansion requisitioned during World War 2. A large and very old multi arch bridge signified entering the Portsmouth area, but I was so disoriented navigating and driving, that I arrived late. As a result, I missed the disorientation exercise, at which (I heard later) Judy L excelled.

My most clear memory of the place is of beautiful Wrens in uniform (with high heels) standing and walking around the veranda carrying clipboards. (Wrens — WRNS — Women’s Royal Naval Service.) I could scarcely imagine that, ten years later, the nearest thing I ever had to a proper girl friend was a Wren. (She might even have been one of those there that day! It did not occur to me to ask.) I digress…

In the decompression chamber, one guy had to be let out through the air lock because of ear pain. A common problem where the ear is blocked with wax (as far as I recall). With the trainees in pairs sat next to each other, at an air pressure equivalent to (I think) 20000 ft, one of each pair removed his (or her) oxygen mask and carried out a simple repetitive exercise, while his buddy watched for signs of distress in case putting the other’s oxygen mask on for him was called for.

With my oxygen mask off, my task was to write out my name over and over. My signature definitely became scrawly near the bottom of the page. An older pilot, whose task was patting his knees and clapping hands alternately, started missing in the latter. It was like something in a film. One guy had to fit plastic shapes inside a hollow plastic sphere with matching shaped holes, which he did until he started struggling to fit a rectangular block through the circular hole.

The exercises over, we watched a US Air Force film about disorientation, featuring F-100s flown by pilots in silver flying suits. It is a serious danger in hang gliding in the event of being ‘whited out’ by cloud suck. Unlike F-100s and most other conventional aircraft, hang gliders are not equipped with ‘blind flying’ instruments.

Johnny C mentioned the recent television series Fighter Pilots, about selection and training of RAF aircrew. (Rhod S, best man at the wedding of two of my hang gliding friends, was thrown off the course in about the second episode, although he passed subsequently.) Johnny asked the instructor how us hangies might fare in such a process. I think his words were “If there was another war, god forbid, and we were called up…” The navy flight surgeon and his comrades all agreed emphatically that we could not possibly be any worse than those guys! (Did Johnny know something the rest of us did not?)

Then a British film, narrated by a well-known television news reader, about how easy it was to convert from conventional aircraft to the vertical take off Harrier. (Most Harrier pilots impart the opposite impression!)

Three days later, Argentine forces invaded UK-owned islands in the south Atlantic and Britain was at war.

I was given a quick brief on deck operations and pointed at XZ 450, the Sea Eagle missile trials aircraft that had been hurriedly retrieved from British Aerospace at Dunsfold. It had no radar warning receiver and had been fitted with the Sea Eagle launch panel… Along the coast from Lee [on Solent] was Seafield Park, a minor country house on the beach appropriated by the navy during the war, which still housed the School of Naval Aviation Medicine.

— from Hostile Skies by David Morgan, who flew by Seafield Park on his way to the Falklands War just a few days afterwards. That lack of a radar warning receiver was at least partly responsible for it being shot down early on in the war. See South Atlantic Star, my review of Hostile Skies.

Art for art’s sake

I based one of my hang glider paintings on this photo. Reprinted courtesy of Ultralight Flying! magazine.

I had sold the Cherokee to finance my experimental canard hang glider, but I bought a Moonraker 78, an earlier design, to fly in the meantime. (I modified it.) In 1983, I was still short of money, so I continued to fly the modified Moonraker 78, in which I had sustained a crushed vertebra a few years before.

I took the photo of Adam Jefferson flying at Monk’s Down in April 1983. He was killed at Ringstead later in the year.

Internal links

Hang gliding 1989

Skyhook Sailwings, a short history of the early hang glider and powered ultralight manufacturer based in the north of England

Bill Pain’s response to Hang gliding early 1980s

[I copied this from the actual feedback, which, because I split the original page, ended up on the wrong page.]

Bill Pain says:
July 5, 2010 at 10:16 am

Hi Everard. Stumbled accross your web site. Thoroughly enjoyed. Could not help noticing the pic of me flying the Pelican. I have nothing from that era and would love a copy. It was a lovely glider to fly incidently.
I am still working on hang glider designs as well as flying sail planes. Living in Australia now. All the best Bill.

everardcunion says:
July 5, 2010 at 7:19 pm

Hi Bill,

The Pelican sure was a good-looking wing. Glad to hear that you are still designing the things.

I will send you a bigger copy of the photo (without my copyright mark on it).

Cheers,
Everard