Haggard's Comet

1979-80 saw a significant advance in the state of the art. The UP Comet was the first really successful double-surface flexwing hang glider.

Also during 1979-80 the first popular personal computers appeared. But most hang glider designers used programmable calculators which were becoming ever more capable yet less expensive. After all, what could a computer be used for except number crunching?

Note the double surface wing enclosing the crosstubes on this, the Southdown Sailwings Lightning.

At about this time somebody stuck half an old standard rogallo hang glider onto a surf board and a new sport was born that half the world took up.

Not directly to do with hang gliding and paragliding. In 1983 Janice Brown flew the Solar Challenger from an airfield outside Paris to Croydon, near London, at a cruising altitude of 12 000 ft. Composite materials technology played a major part in this solar-powered project.

In the early 1980s the cocoon harness replaced the stirrup prone harness.

In July 1983 British pilot Judy Leden went to the Owens Valley in California for a week's flying. One promising day she launched from Horseshoe Meadows in the Sierras north of Lone Pine. The Owens is known for its turbulence. "I could feel that the air was rough" she wrote later, "and increased my grip on the base tube. Five seconds later, my Duck was hit by such severe sink that my harness went slack and my hands were nearly wrenched off the base tube." (Duck? The Duck was Wills Wing's first double surface hang glider.)

The cocoon harness she flew with was not much warmer than previous types. Reaching altitudes of around 18 000 feet "I was shivering so hard that the Duck was shaking." She landed seven-and-a-half hours later in Nevada, setting a distance women's world record of 146.8 miles.

Flex-wing hang gliders built after 1980, such as the UP TRX, are mostly Comet derivatives.

Double surface flex wings, although providing a major increment in performance for the experienced pilot, are harder to fly than the lighter, simpler, and slower-flying single-surface equivalent.

Soon after the emergence of the Comet and its clones, the first double-surface intermediate hang gliders appeared.

In 1987, covered on the next page, a parachute saved the life of a Wessex club pilot.

While on the subject of parachutes, here's an idea. Why not take a rectangular ram-air parachute, of the kind used by sky divers of this era, build it lighter, with wider span, and fly it like a hang glider?