After The Gold Rush

In 1977 Star Trek's William Shatner, the original Captain Slog, learned hang gliding and flew in Hawaii and California for a television documentary. That year science fiction / fantasy gained popular acclaim with the release of the George Lucas movie Star Wars.

In July 1977 Jerry Katz, flying a Pacific Gull Alpine, launched from Cerro Gordo in the Inyo mountains on the east side of California's Owens Valley. Four hours eighteen minutes after take-off he landed at Betty's, a house of ill-repute in the Nevada desert, ten miles north of Benton Station. At 103 miles, it was the first hang glider flight longer than 100 miles, and was a world record.

The previous day he set an altitude gain record of 9 550 ft.

Also during 1977 a sci-fi-looking hang glider, the Miles Wings Gryphon (subsequently mass-produced by British manufacturer Waspair), gained supremacy. The Gryphon used a bowsprit (an extension of the keel tube in front of the nose) and cables to the leading edges instead of crosstubes to hold the wings out. This time it was the Americans' turn to do the copying. [ supHrnss.gif -- NOT a link ]

Paraglider pilots were not the first free fliers to aviate comfortably. This is the Sunbird supine hang glider harness of 1977.

Check out this sunbird.

The picture page linked to at right describes how gliders with cross tubes built after 1977-8 competed with bowsprit-rigged wings like the Gryphon.

Despite the cross-tube flex wing empire striking back at the bowsprit rebel alliance, the latter remained the choice of expert pilots into the late 1970s. Especially of those who flew them upside-down.