This is some real good entertaining flying....

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=SiX2eGYJ2Kc&vq=hd720

That does look like fun!

Born 40 years too late. <edit> doh! 40 years to early!

...That was sweet!

That looks like a lot of fun.

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING

Great bag wing flying, they seem almost too good to be true! Though I have seen one collapse, that lead to a emergency parachute deployment that saved the pilots ass, I understand the inflight stability has improved and in large part is dependant on the pilots ability? They sure are lots more portable then a hang glider. Coastal conditions like shown would be perfect for one of them, mid afternoon mountain thermals not so much, that's what lead to the collapse I witnessed. One second an aircraft, next second a bag of fluttering laundry

I've been resisting the temptation to price them out ever since I saw first saw them fly up close a few years ago. However, as much as I love the video and would love to own one, the last 20 seconds will probably help me resist the temptation awhile longer.

So far, I've managed to keep those in the same category as wingsuits and mistresses--they may look like more fun than you've ever had before, but I'm staying away from them because they're likely to end up getting a guy killed!

Can you imagine how many hours of film they have just to get the 5 minutes done....

Thank God they didn't have that kinda stuff around when I was 20. I'd probably be dead by now Makes crotch rockets and airplanes look safe!

scottnt wrote:Thank God they didn't have that kinda stuff around when I was 20. I'd probably be dead by now Makes crotch rockets and airplanes look safe!

Crotch rockets and airplanes ARE safe.

EB

Flown Sauze du Lac. Even this movie doesn't do it justice. A morning flight can last till lunch, and an afternoon flight can have you deciding just how dark is too dark to get back to the LZ...

The canopies are a lot safer now. I still have my racing canopy, and it flies at trim only slightly slower than my TRX hang glider did. A good modern intermediate wing performs almost as well at lower speed. I gave it up after realizing the rocky mountains are not as friendly to paragliders as the European sites.

After living in Europe, where I would travel to a town by train and bus on a Friday evening with just my paragliding gear and a change of boxers to fly every day, all day most weekends until Sunday night to get back to work just in time on Monday, getting collapses and blown out in Colorado seemed too edgy to be fun. I turned chicken.

My blood still boils when I take it out on a perfect day, though. The best PG can't hold a candle to a good day's ride on a hang glider. And any flying at all of any sort is a good way to spend a day.

I stayed at that Marriot in the video for 8 days last year, in the Miraflores district of Lima, Peru. On the sunny days, there were 60-70 of those in the air at once. All very silent. Very nice, thanks for posting.

totally wicked! I'm signing up for the next para course... a young lad was up at 9,000' above Whitehorse last week...but the low level flying is so much more fun!

When I first saw the powered ones I got real excited. I mean the foot launched back type models..... I believe an all electric one is out, with 45 minutes or so of range. Yesterday,all I would have needed to get up to the ridge line and the lift would have been 3 or 4 minutes of flight time! Strong lift yesterday, straight in at 15 to 20+, enough to ridge soar the S-7 no sweat, for sure a para glider!

On the same subject, they just had a big x-c meet in the Sun Valley area for pg's, I didn't know about it until I read in the paper they finally found the 2 guys that were missing for 2 days, both from out of the country. It seems they found a little too much lift and got swept away and pretty much ran through the ringer downwind. I still remember the helpless feeling of being maxed out speed wise in my first or second hang gliders over a ridge (Big Southern Butte/Arco Desert, 30 mph +winds) and still being pushed back and REALLY not wanting to get in the rotor right behind..... the speed range is so limited you really need to pick your days I guess. I know they can "pull ears" I think they call it, and sink out, but that doesn't get you forward I'm thinking? Sure would be fun on the right days, winter too with power anyway.

WOW! I just wonder how many people jet effed up doing that stuff? just saying

G'Day

courierguy wrote:I still remember the helpless feeling of being maxed out speed wise in my first or second hang gliders over a ridge (Big Southern Butte/Arco Desert, 30 mph +winds)

I got sucked up to cloud base on my third HG launch *ever*. It was a 50' high, on shallow slope south of Livingston, MT. I didn't know the reason the wind went from thermal cycling to steady (but 12 mph perfect) was from a cold front that happened to come through at that moment. Even with the bar all the way back, I was going backwards to Livingston, MT, at about 10-15 miles an hour or more (double surface glider too...). I got rained on sporadically. All from a bunch of fluffy little cumulus patches that materialized out of nowhere. I had never so much as made a 90 degree heading change before on a hang glider, and ended up throwing up (twice) all over my harness from the stress and continuous spiraling down to try and lose altitude. I ended up getting low enough to make headway and landed just several miles closer to where I had left my vehicle with some school friends, who were sort of clueless about my situation. They happened to see me just before I landed...i was too far up to be seen during the ordeal. The entire flight was only 40 minutes, but for my third time leaving the ground ever on a hang glider after 2 ground skimming flights, I was happy to be alive. That's what I got for not having the sense of mortality at that age to fly with an instructor. You just don't know the power of the wind until you fly a HG or a PG or a sailplane.

But- experience changed things. After a while, I would drool over conditions like that (they were rare), and got a faster glider (UP Axis) that could do 60 mph with my hang weight. I was only blown back involuntarily on one occasion after that...in a wave over Kremmling, CO. Another pilot who wasn't even a couple thousand feet lower than me in the same situation got trashed in the rotor (which I didn't even feel). He got flipped up into the wing so hard it ripped. When he landed, the only thing holding his wing together in the ripped Dacron panel was the kevlar tape across the trailing edge...his sail was completely de-tensioned, and he had his parachute bag ready to throw in his hand the entire way down.

Yes, you can get f'ed up. But HG is downright safe in 'fun' conditions compared to PG. And in calm or coastal conditions, I've flown with gaggles of jr hi aged kids who were better at it than me. There really is nothing like either of them.

Awesome video!!!

My Wife and I were going give that a try when we were in Miraflores (Lima, Peru). But one day it was dead calm and the other day it was very windy. I imagined it would be a real hoot and after watching at video I should have made more of an effort to go for a ride.

Some pictures from the May trip:

Those last pictures look very much like Sand City, (less the buildings though, no city at Sand City) on the coast N of Monterey, where I taught myself to fly hg's. Glass smooth THICK sea level air.....nothing like it! I learned the hard way what a center of gravity is, what a stall is when and what a flare is, what a dumbass! But a lucky dumbass anyway, no school back then, too early, but I eventually got hooked up/tutored by the then famous Dave Kilbourne, the first in the US to foot launch a rogallo wing (he did it mid 60's I think) and stay up/soar. He started out as a hired hand flying in Aussie Bill Bennett's water ski team, towed behind boats only. Dave took it from there, and eventually he and his girlfriend Donnita Holland, famous chick pilot, would stay the weekend at my girl friends and mine place in Carmel (OK, her mothers place, a rich Carmel hippy chick) and we would pioneer sites in Big Sur. 3 and 4 K launch sites over the Pacific, landing in the surf,great fun and again lucky as hell!

Great story Lesuther, HA HA you lucky too

It's been blowing straight into the range here since 1:00 at soarable strength, way soarable, 18 to 27 mph, all this talk about soaring has got me wound up, I think I'll get out the fat tired motor glider bush plane (?) and get some dead stick time

Got some....2.6 hrs dead stick with a 1k gain after shut down. Spent most of it at 9k +. Thread drift, my bad