Hang Gliding History

In July 1990 Larry Tudor launched his hang glider on truck tow at Hobbs, New Mexico. He landed nine hours later in Elkhart Kansas, setting a distance world record of 302 miles.

Flying from the same place a week later Kari Castle thermaled up to a new women's altitude gain world record of over 12 000 ft.

While paraglider development proceeded apace during the last decade of the twentieth century, but without noticeable outward sign to the non-expert, hang glider design has undergone two minor revolutions since 1995. First, the king post and top rigging have disappeared from high performance wings.

Like the emergence of the double surface flexwing in the Comet, a 'topless' hang glider is an idea that has been tried before. A number of hang gliders over the years have featured struts instead of cables for bottom rigging. What is new is the retention of cables for the bottom rigging. The strength for negative loads is in very thick crosstubes -- in many cases made of carbon fiber.

Filling the niche between cumbersome high performance hang gliders and paragliders that fit in a rucksack, a new kind of hang glider has emerged. Classified as performance intermediates or sports class wings, they are lighter, easier to rig, and easier to control than topless flex wings. Yet in most situations they perform equally well.

Gliders at the extreme of this trend are called skyfloaters. Light to carry, quick to rig, responding instantly to the pilot's control movements, they additionally exhibit low sink rates.

Striving for the performance of the Swift combined with the comparatively light weight and simplicity of a topless flex wing, designers created a bizarre hybrid that is proving successful. These new inhabitants of hang gliding's upper division are described on the next page.

The Final Frontier