Photo By Daniel West
Hang Glider is a simple lightweight aircraft with no motor. It is just a wing, frame and a harness which is below the wing and pilot control it by shifting body. The wing mostly made of composite laminated fabrics or woven polyester fabrics and the frame is made of aluminum alloy or composite material.
To launch a hang glider you can run on foot from a hill or being towed by a car, boat or an aircraft.
Modern gliders have built-in dive recovery mechanisms and pilots carry a parachute for an emergency situation which can manually deploy and get the pilot and hang glider to the ground.
You start flying from a base but you can gain height depending on weather condition, you have to find thermals (a column of warm air going up) or ridge lift and do the circle flying on it, the warm air will push the wing to upper height and you can stay in air for hours and cover kilometres.
Things you need to have for hang gliding are hang glider, Helmet, Variometer, Radio and GPS unit, knife, Goggles, jumpsuit, gloves, compass, … and you need to have a Wind Sock on the ground where you want to land to know the wind direction, you have to go for landing in opposite direction of the wind.
The world record of flying in the straight distance is 764 km by Dustin B. Martin in 2012 and Judy Leden get to the maximum height of 38,800 ft (11,800 m) in 1994, he also made the gain of height record of 13,025 ft (3,970 m) in 1992.
Most popular companies to supply hang gliders are: Wills Wing, Moyes, Aeros, UP Gliders, Flytec, Airborne, Avian, Bautek, Ellipse, FexGliders, Finsterwalder & Charly, Icaro 2000, Ikarus, La Mouette, North Wing, Quasar, Seedwings, Ulteam, Union
Photo by Virginia Finnimore
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