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Hang gliding early 1980s part 1

This page follows Hang gliding 1978 and 1979 part 2.

Some images on this page are my artistic derivations of contemporary photos. See Copyright of early hang gliding photos.

The Gannet was successor of the Gryphon. See the related topics menu Miles Wings Gulp and Gryphon.

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

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I worked with him at Hiway in their South Wales factory for a short time. We made an extra large Demon as I remember, for a heavy customer. Bob drew out the sail and I did all the machining. They then got me to test fly it on a trike. Think someone flew it before my flight, but remember it was getting late. They had a short strip outside their Tredegar factory. Anyway got pretty high and remember cruising around for ages.
Happy days.

— Roly the sailmaker (5)

Hiway of Tredegar, south Wales, was by this time the largest hang glider manufacturer in Europe. (Their move from Brighton in Sussex in the 1970s was funded by government grants.) After Hiway co-founder Steve Hunt started his own powered ultralight manufacturing business, co-founder John Ievers brought in Miles Handley, Bob England, Bill Pain, and Keith Cockroft to drive further developments. They came up with the the Alien, a flex-wing, and the Explorer, a collapsible rigid. Both of them failed to reach production and Hiway Hang Gliders ceased trading in March 1983, at least in the form of a company with large premises and consequent ‘overhead’ costs. (1)

Upon Hiway’s closure, La Mouette of France, led by Gerard Thevenot, immediately became Europe’s largest hang glider manufacturer.

See the related topics menu Hiway of Sussex, England, and Abergavenny, Wales.

Iron curtain

Behind the iron curtain making progress was even harder to achieve than in the west.

Stephan Nitsch lived in East Germany, where he created gyroplanes and hang gliders, among other inventions. More than 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, Stephan and I encountered each other on a web forum nothing to do with flying. He ‘recognized’ me and introduced himself, sending me this photo among others. We were the same age and we had the same interests. The hang gliding world was just one group of people saddened to hear of his death from cancer in 2008.

See Ice man in Hang gliding 1978 and 1979 part 1 for a photo of hang gliding near Moscow.

Taiwan is not behind the iron curtain, but it is perhaps through one of those stylish bamboo curtains… Kris Hartinian was one of the early female pilots. She later married instructor Joe Greblo.

Cherokee, Storm, and Atlas

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.

Technical: Birdman’s idea of opening like an umbrella was a bridge too far, in my view. Rigging mine at Beachy Head, the wind caught it before I secured the crosstube centre box to the keel with wingnuts. The wind lifted the wing from the crosstube centre and broke the crosstubes (or crushed the ends maybe). I guess I was trying to ‘buy in’ to the umbrella idea, leaving the nose wires attached so the thing stood up on the control frame when I pushed the centre box back, spreading the wings at the same time. (It was a while ago and I don’t recall exactly.) What I do remember was the more than 40 GBP repair bill, but I upgraded to newly devised plug-in crosstube ends.

Technical (continued): After the repair and modification, each crosstube was ‘cut through’ about 18 inches short of the leading edge. (Each crosstube was made in two parts is what I mean.) A sliding sleeve joined the two parts with a spring-button thing, so it was completely secure. You left the centre box fully attached at all times, the wing nuts (butterfly nuts) being replaced by self locking nuts.

See the related topics menu Birdman of Wiltshire, England.

By this time, Roly had returned from the USA and was working for Solar Wings, based in Wiltshire.

Technical: The fixed exposed strut in the photo is an anti-dive strut. It plugs into the leading edge tube. (The two tubes are connected with a bungee and cable inside.) With the glider at rest on the ground, as here, the slack sail rests against the end of the tube. In contrast, in normal flight, during which the sail is inflated by the airflow, the wing tip rides clear of the strut. However, in an extreme nose-down pitch rotation, which could happen in severe turbulence where the airflow is parallel to the wing or even blowing down on it, the dive struts hold the wing tips up, where they act as up-elevators (they are behind the centre of mass) providing a countering nose-up pitch force.

See the related topics menu Solar Wings of Wiltshire, England.

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Then, in 1980, La Mouette in France released an apparently unremarkable single surface wing; the Atlas.

During my one flight in the Atlas I had a wing loading of 1.6 in the 175 square foot glider and was easily able to outfly two top pilots from another manufacturer who were test-flying production gliders at a wing loading of 1.3. The glider outperformed their latest hot ship so much it was embarrassing.

— Chris Price writing in Hang Gliding, June 1980

Everyone I knew who could afford a new glider placed orders for Atlases and every other manufacturer raced to catch up with La Mouette’s carefully crafted wing. However, the day of the single surface wing with exposed cross-tubes or bowsprit cables, as the case may be, among top performance hang gliders was about to end.

South downs

Bill Pain continued with hang glider design after the Pelican. (Indeed, in 2010 he was in Australia flight testing another prototype.)

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.

Also in the USA in 1980, Bill Lemen flew a hang glider at Torrey Pines, San Diego, for 12 hours and 12 minutes. Such stunts were no longer regarded as official records.

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See the related topics menu Southdown Sailwings, Vulturelite, and Aerial Arts of Sussex, England.

Arrow

Eric Raymond developed the Arrow, a conventional glider with three-axis controls, but made out of hang glider materials and fittings, for Ultralight Products. (See the related topics menu Ultralight Products of California and Utah.)

In Britain, Len Gabriels created a canard version of this concept; the Orion. See under Hang gliding in Skyhook Sailwings.

Lightnings, Comet clones and pod people

The double-surface revolution came with the Comet in 1980, and all the new gliders started looking alike as wild innovation gave way to steady improvement.

— Mark Sawyer (2)

The Ultralight Products Comet of 1980, designed by Roy Haggard, was the first really successful double-surface flex-wing hang glider, where a battened undersurface (not visible from this aspect) encloses the crosstubes. Prior to the Comet, no flex-wing could compete with the popular Fledgling 2 rigid wing. Modern flexwing hang gliders fly better than the Comet, but they look similar.

(For my painting based on this photo, see Comet in A painted history of hang glider design.)

Roy Haggard, Pete Brock, Mike Quinn, and Gene Blythe were principal contributors to this minor revolution. (3)

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Technical:

“The Comet was the first glider in which the cross spar was restrained aft with a cable that allowed the sail force to position the cross spar vertically.” That accomplished two things:

• It nested the cross spar neatly between the upper and lower surfaces to provide an uncompromised airfoil section.
• It greatly improved the pitch stability by allowing the entire root section airfoil to reflex at low angles of attack. (The center of the cross spar would move down nearly a foot and rest on the keel.)

Source: Reference 4

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Pete Brock was an automotive designer before (and after) he ran Ultralight Products. He fitted his Volkswagen van with a big engine and welded aerodynamic roof bars, all integrated into the structure for adequate strength. In a documentary video by Jay Leno’s Garage (linked in the UP related topics menu) he says that the success of his team in competitions in the Owens Valley partly resulted from this vehicle, which could carry pilots, hang gliders, and their gear up the steep and rugged fire tracks without overheating.

See the related topics menu Ultralight Products of California and Utah. And see Rick Masters’ web site (linked farther on) for more about the Owens Valley among many other things.

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Ironically, the first successful British double-surface flexwing hang glider, the Southdown Sailwaings Lightning, while possibly inspired by the UP Comet, was not a Comet clone, as the following photos illustrate.

Note the rearward raked king post and integral fin. The sail planform is also markedly different from that of the Comet. In addition, the Lightning had no stand-up keel pocket. When its designer Ian Grayland brought the prototype to Mill Hill, near Shoreham in Sussex, I was so astonished at its retrograde appearance (narrow nose angle, short span, broad chord and crosstubes instead of a bowsprit — although those crosstubes were hidden inside the double surface sail) I said, “What’s the idea behind this then?”

“Less drag.”

On a Sunday in December 1980, soaring conditions prevailed at the Devil’s Dyke, a north-facing ridge north of Brighton on the Sussex coast, and a race was held. Johnny Carr won it flying a Fledge 2 rigid wing, but the Lightning was close behind. Results:

1. Manta Fledge 2 — rigid wing
2. Southdown Sailwings Lightning — double-surface flex-wing
3. Solar Wings Typhoon — double-surface flex-wing
4. Another Lightning
5. Hiway Demon — double-surface flex-wing
6. Moyes Mega 2 — high performing single surface flex-wing
7. Waspair Gryphon — high performing single surface flex-wing

Only the Ultralight Products Comet itself was missing from the race, but other flying days had proven it to be about equal to the Lightning, Typhoon, and Demon. (6)

The incoming wind was strong and quartering the rather gradual ridge face, creating a minimum of rather trashy and turbulent lift. Here, Haddon’s Comet displayed a clear-cut advantage. Its turn radius was tighter, and the Virginia pilot was able to scratch and pass the Fledge…

— James Hall (7)

Roly tells me that he still (in 2019) has this Lightning stored in his shed.

See the related topics menu Southdown Sailwings, Vulturelite, and Aerial Arts of Sussex, England.

Several pilots on the South Downs (Sussex) in 1980 used the speed of the Southdown Sailwings Sigma in a dive to pull up and over in a loop. It scared the bejeezus out of me watching these stunts. Then, one day, Joe 90 (as we called most pilots who wore spectacles, although this guy always flew with a tape player and earphones for music as well — the Battle of Britain movie theme tune for all I know) flying a Lightning at the Devil’s Dyke stabilized upside-down and rode it all the way down. (No idea why he did not deploy his parachute.) Amazingly, he was unhurt. The cause, he said (as I recall) was the different roll handling of the Lightning compared to the Sigma, which prevented him from turning the loop into a wang when he realized that he did not have adequate speed.

Here is a quote from the anonymous Ann Landings column in Hang Gliding, June 1980. (It immediately precedes Lauran Emerson’s Birds Eye View in the mag.) I hope its author does not mind me reproducing it here:

How about them glider loopers,
Ain’t they a sight?
Looping them gliders
Mornin’ and night.
Loopin’ them high ones,
Loopin’ them low,
Goin’ in fast
And comin’ out slow.
Loopin’ in the blue sky,
Pink smoke tralinin’,
Hopin’ them wing tubes
Won’t be failin.’
Wanna be a glider looper?
Ain’t nothin’ to it;
Just grab hold of your brain
And unscrew it.

Mega

The Moyes Mega was one of the last single surface flex-wings (with exposed cross-tubes) to be competitive after the release of the Ultralight Products Comet.

Harrier

Wills Wing did not, at first, jump on the double surface (enclosed cross-tubes) bandwagon. Instead, they refined the single surface hang glider, which resulted in the Harrier of 1980. It reputedly handled better than the Comet, but its glide at speed was not as good. In November 1980 Wills Wing started development on an enclosed cross-tube design, which they did not release until more than a year later.

See the related topics menu Sport Kites/Wills Wing of California.

Sierra

As far as I am aware, the Sierra was Seagull’s last hang glider. It might be that the advantage of permanently curved leading edges was insignificant in the age of the double surface wing.

See the related topics menu Seagull Aircraft of Santa Monica, California.

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This topic continues in Hang gliding early 1980s part 2.

External links

Don Liddard’s photos on flickr

Rick Masters, guru of the Owens Valley, California. His web site documents a whole world of adventure and creativity.

References

1. Stan Abbot article about Miles Handley in Wings magazine, December 1982 and report on Hiway’s demise in Wings, March 1983

2. Mark Sawyer, The History of Hang Gliding; a Personal View of a Collective Experience in Sky Adventures, Legends and stories About the Early Days of Hang Gliding and Paragliding edited by Jim (Sky Dog) Palmieri and Maggie Palmieri, 1998

3 & 4. Roy Haggard letter in Hang Gliding July 1993

5. Roly the sailmaker e-mail correspondence with the author, May 2019

6. The Great Clone Race by Tony Fuell, Wings magazine, January 1981

7. James Hall, Comet Vs Fledge — a Shoot-Out, describing world champions Rex Miller and Tom Haddon flying a one-on-one race at Ellenville, in Glider Rider, November 1980

Bill Pain’s feedback to Hang gliding early 1980s part 1

[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