liberals destroyed this sport

Revisited your vid showing my bros what hang gliding could be like. Farging brilliant!!

The lessons have become too expensive in the US. Mexico, Brazil and other SA destinations are a better option

Ryan, thank you. It takes guts, seeing as I view you as one of the world's top flyers, to come out and say: I got distracted and fell victim to too much of self-induced time pressure. I do a lot of self launches and I have too made mistakes. Luckily the Malibu 2 is super forgiving and I was able to pretty much stall straight down from a harness line entanglement. It really makes you wonder how you could get distracted with something that has been taught us from the beginning. Seeing how I grew up hang gliding having my Dad, Uncle and Brother running the Midwest School of Hanggliding and US Moyes in the 70's. Thank you for making me think about slowing down.

brilliant idea to give a shoutout to your sweetheart..........indeed she is the conduit to your existence as a hang glider pilot.

Thanks for your confession. It's more than a wake-up call, as you realized the thing that could have been forgotten, could have been fatal. I suggest working with a checklist. Once worked through, ready to go, read it through from start to end again, making sure you really did each point. It takes a lot of time, but forces you to perfect your rigging and pre-flight procedure. Stick the checklist to a down tube, so that it's easily readable while standing, hooked in.

Sometimes when we mentally remind ourselves to do something we think we actually did it. I think those little red remove before flight ribbons can be helpful for a lot of things. Maybe the nosecone should have one? Thanks for posting

what glider is it Ryan?

Wow...amazing flying and control!

how many kilometers it can travel?

I once saw a female pilot climb on the uprights to put the nose cone (that way she could do that without the risk of flipping the glider)... I guess it's not doable if you are a heavy pilot?

Good to see back on KZbin Ryan. I always wanted to experiment with wingtip vortex sail slits radiating out in the last three panels on a single surface wing to creat multiple smaller tip vortices. Need an old bagged out Falcon. If you ever plan to fly Lookout Mountain we have two spare guest bedrooms just a mile away. - Nick Caci

Best place for some who try this out in nyc ??

Some good points, but a plane that stalls in a coordinated bank, the nose doesn't drop straight down towards the earth. It pitches down (out of the turn) relative to the aircraft. Visualize this in the extreme to understand this. 90 degrees, 180 degrees (top of a loop). If you stall, the pitch, or at least the pitch rate in a loop, decreases.

I did that once.... on my birthday one time..... and.... in flight, the nose cone sounded like there was someone hitting the top of my glider with a bat.... LOL.... I had to land just cause the noise was so ridiculous. Never forgot it since. Because the nose cones these days are tied to the top nose wire.... and is basically out of sight on the roof of the glider.... it's an easy mistake to have happen.....

Navy teaches accelerated stall, break turn stall, power off stall, approach turn stall, power on stall. Yes, you can do your power off stalls at thrity degree AOB just fine and PPLs can learn this way.

I have a laminated preflight checklist that I have on a thin bungee cord that tucks up into my nosecone just before launch.

You should check out Medium with James McClaran Allen’s writings. “Going Beyond Procedure - An Open Letter” is all about spins with much more detail than typical training. “Improve your Landings with AOA and Power Techniques” will help you avoid the situation while “F-35C Crash in the South China Sea - A Case Study” compliments the AOA and Power Techniques in a different sort of hazard scenario.

The blowfish scenario is terrifying. Glad you're okay. I haven't heard about hooking the vest in before putting it on. It makes sense.

This is just incorrect. The aircraft will depart in the direction of the rudder deflection, so if you hold the up rudder in a turn - you will observe the turn rate lower than what you would expect in a coordinated turn at that bank angle (possibly even zero turn rate), and then the aircraft will depart through wings level in the opposite direction. So the idea that you could predict impending stall by observing anomalies in the turn rate is correct, but it can happen either direction.

For conventional airplanes, this really isn't factual information. An airplane in a bank that stalls may spin in either direction, and it has nothing to do with the ballistic trajectory causing the nose to swing down (in such a maneuvering it's actually most likely the high wing stalls first, which would promote a roll away from the initial bank angle). Unlike a hang glider which lacks a vertical tail and rudder, the wing that stalls first is driven by the rudder usage/slip/skid angle and can easily be in the opposite direction from the angle of bank. For a great example that shows how you can spin either right or left from a stall during a left turn, and vice versa, as well as how you won't stall if you're ballistic, and you won't spin if you're not skidding, check out kzbin.info/www/bejne/aKGqpqKZZpafrrs

What I have never understood is why we are teaching to not let the nose drop in our base to final turn (or downwind to base for that matter). A stall has nothing to do with speed, it's exceeding the critical angle of attack. Fly the wing! Don't pull back on the stick and you don't stall. Not imagine not flying a 747 pattern, but keeping things a bit more tight. Fly your baseleg and you'll get the feeling of being a little high. Now turn to final and do not pull back on the stick as you'd normally do, but let the aircraft sink a bit. You'll find that you're not losing any speed, as the aircraft will simply fly the speed you've trimmed it to. You are not yanking the stick back, so you're not increasing the angle of attack, so you're not inching closer to stalling. And because you didn't pull back on the stick hard, you've lost some of that excess altitude, putting you nicely on your desired glidepath. Win-win-win. But we're not taught to do this. I really wonder - why are we deliberately bringing ourselves closer to a stall during every turn that we do in the pattern??

Ryan, thanks for posting. I am soon returning to the Air after a 6 month injury and this will for sure help as a reminder to double/triple check at preflight. Like you I am almost always the last of launch .. safe winds

I feel like Accelerated Stalls should be required for demonstration for private pilot. I make sure to have my students do them at some point during training and talk about situations where it can happen.

20N? asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/315309

Makes me want to take the Decathlon up and illustrate this.

I think people don't understand stall. They go on and on about getting slow, focussing on 'a' stall speed, or maybe scaling that by some trig function of the bank angle... No, a stall can occur at any speed and any attitude, but only one critical angle of attack. The angle of attack on light aircraft is approximately entirely determined by the elevator position, so there is a position of the elevator which if you pull back beyond you stall, and forward of which you don't stall. All the other stuff about stall speed is sometimes true, and a single number is easier to teach, but it's a secondary effect, and things that prevent death shouldn't require maths - don't pull the stick back past the 'stall stick position' - 'the critical angle of attack'

Wow, I learned something! Great video!

I used to hook in the keel pull strap on my Combat before putting in the outer battens as it was convenient rigging with the keel on a stand. One day I forgot to tension the keel wire and flew only with the strap hooked. Glider felt slow and not so responsive and I realized when pulling the VB I had made this mistake. I landed safely and never hooked in the pull strap ever again. Your video was a good reminder of thinking through your routines. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Ryan. I've done that once, at Slide Mt., rushing to launch before it blew over the back, after getting the new pilots in the air. I found the pitch handling if my T2C was indeed affected. The cone flapped around, punched a small slit in the top surface, and eventually tore loose and was lost. I was also careful about not going fast, and cut my flight very short as well. As far as trusting habits to prevent the unthinkable mistakes, there are some other tricks you can use... in my airplane, I lower the gear on downwind abeam the numbers. If I need to extend downwind, and don't want the gear down, I put my hand on the retract switch and don't remove it until the gear is down and locked. BTW, my Lancair has no gear warning or stall warning horns or similar nanny devices. In a HG relevant example, a distraction when prepared to launch that causes you to unclip should set off all kinds of alarms about the high risk of forgetting to clip back in. It's important to recognize the first links in the chain of events that lead to mistakes, and (simply) do something to insure the chain is broken immediately.

There are certainly worst things to forget but your message serves as a reminder to all pilots that things can be forgotten/overlooked. Pre-flight check lists can be very useful, GA use them religiously. Small type on a laminated index card is easy to stow. I was always under the impression that without a nosecone gliders were squirrley at any speed. Glad it all worked out...

Thanks for sharing bro 🤘

Thanks for the video, its a good heads up on safety awareness.

Im tall enough to put the nose on without pulling the nose down

There are worse mistakes. Glad it worked out.

I'm very GLAD it worked out fine. NICE video, please let me add one thought for everyone of our friends that might see this video. I don't care who is headed for launch, it could be a rank new pilot or the legendary Paul Voight, everyone there should be looking their friends over and asking themselves "Is that guy ready to fly? Is he hooked in, are the batons secure, shoes tied, chute secure, is everything setup right? " Friends don't let friends launch unhooked or with an incomplete setup. Ryan confessed to launching a glider with a setup issue but who else on launch missed that, or didn't say something? Perhaps no one could have seen it, but please think about this: Look your friends over, be sure they are hooked in, set up right and ready to fly.

Humility and willingness to share. If we all did that...

Been there done that, but on a sport 2 probably wasn't as big of a deal.

Good material, I'm at the same flight school you were at! My aviation adventures also started with hangliding. Recently bought an Atos.

I'm enjoying my sailplane flying very much, but there is nothing like the pure flight of hang gliding.

Which 360 camera are you using?

It is so amazing that your Falcon 4 has better performance than ANY hang glider from 1983. I want a Falcon 4 or a moyes Malibu 2!!!

Excellent photography/video. Love the way this was done.

I learned alot as a new (but older) HG pilot. Really useful. thanks

Epic man, loooove the landing approach. I’m working my way up to loops, we may be in contact soon if you’re willing to give some advice. 😊

didn't know there was 4.2 million instructors out there!

I totally agree that piston aircraft engines are extremely antiquated! The systems that control ignition and fuel delivery were designed prior to WWII and have not changed. I would argue that a significant portion of their reliability is dependent on the pilot remembering to do the right thing at the right time. This increases pilot workload and distracts from actually flying the plane. Even then the mechanical systems in use today are crude, and don't optimally operate the engine. If the pilot isn't paying attention engine failure due to improper mixture control can happen in a matter of minutes. Mike Busch from Savvy Aviation argues that replacing the mechanical ignition and carburetor systems presently in use with their electronic equivalents as has been done with car engine for the last 40 years will make the engines 10x more reliable. Unfortunately, when the requirements for certified engines were written no one had ever conceived of the possibility of more automated engine controls so the requirements were prescriptive instead of performance based so we have been stuck with what we have. In experimental aircraft electronic fuel injection and electronic ignition are possible and in use.

...That was me...I crept up to NW launch 3 times during most blown-out portion of last Friday...about 3:30 to 5:45pm...and strong winds were mostly crossing from WSW some SSW and occasional (but still crossing) west cycles. That morning, I noted the 'big picture' of that great big Low-pressure system centered hundreds of miles almost due north, driving the stronger winds, augmented by Highs to the south and west; also noted how much extra wind there was around Albany area, VT, NH, etc. I chatted with wire crew, well aware I could and did have a long but educational wait for mellow-enough air for my single-surface, large, lightly-loaded wings of my Falcon 195. I feel bit badly that I squandered some time among each of the crew, all (much more) experienced pilots than me. After 15 minutes, I withdrew from launch with their help, removed harness, waited in wind shadows a little while, hooked back in, ventured to launch 2nd time, watched very consistently strong and crossing wind some more minutes, again unhooked, and after 30 more minutes, saw another HG starting to penetrate well forward of launch after being 'parked' or even drifting tiny bit backward well above our heads. Seeing that, just the larger and more numerous cloud shadows as a collection of cumies formed for about 90 minutes before all dissipating, influenced my decision to suit up once more, move to NW launch, and await a decent cycle. Air was much straighter in, velocity diminished a bit, and I safely took off, steadily climbing and finding, as anticipated, smooth air once aloft and well clear of launch. I ventured back no more than about 250 feet above launch (and that was when I was 600-plus feet above it), adapting my flight plan to the sustained robust winds...no 'benching up' further back, and staying way in front of the long ridge's crest. I 'boxed' launch for a while, cruising in wide circle a bit beyond the periphery of pilots, winds, and vehicles, then headed north and landed after 45 minutes in the mellow LZ.

Has anyone done an analysis of xcontest distances vs standard pressure using a historical weather api?

Really great explanation and presentation. Just what pilots need to know.