This week I finished up my 4th hang gliding class. I've made a lot of progress, and I'm now going off the top of a 60ft hill, staying on course, and landing safely. My mental relationship to hang gliding is kind of like teenage pining love. I think about hang gliding all the time, and when I'm not hang gliding I'm prone to longing thoughts of when I'll be hang gliding again. Okay, it's not that bad, but it's a loud enough presence in my mind to be annoying.
So what is it that I like so much about it? In my dreams I fly from time to time. I'll often float in midair and then zoom along like superman. Hang gliding provides the closest real-world experience to it. I have a full 360 degree view of the world, and no sound of an engine to distract from the sumptuous visual panorama. Just about any other kind of airplane would provide a much more limited view, although I greatly enjoy even what I see out of little airline windows. I do enjoy aerial views in general -- they give me a chance to take in the grandeur and beauty of both natural and man-made features, and, in some trick subconscious metaphor, help me focus on the big picture in life.
Separately, I find the process of flight control fascinating. I envision each flight as a movement through a high-dimensional possibility space of different positions, velocities, orientations, wind conditions, and other factors. I need to learn intuitively to navigate this high-dimensional possibility space in a way that keeps me safe. Over my various flights I have wandered toward the edges of the safe zones as I learned the control process but I've always had enough room and knowledge to recover back to stability. The training process is fascinating, as the instructors need to provide brief and safe excursions through small pieces of this possibility space that allow beginners to pick up their bearings without getting themselves into trouble.
One of the big challenges of learning to hang glide has been the light controls. Basically, any attempt to hold on to the control bars results in the glider clamming up and diving, so you have to learn to gently handle the control bar. Unfortunately, it's hard to fight the biological impulse to grab the nearest solid object when you suddenly find yourself several feet off the ground. Any sort of fear or frustration will cause you to grab the bar even more, which is exactly what you don't want to do. I've found the most effective technique for overcoming this is to spend some time with my eyes closed visualizing possible flights and responding to controls the way I want to in my mind immediately before launch. I'm sure the techniques I'm having to develop are applicable to coping with fears in other areas.
I do wonder though if the learning process could be accelerated in other ways. In a single five-hour lesson I get to take maybe 15 flights, and that translates to roughly 5 minutes of actual airtime. If I was able to hang in a simulator for an hour or so, I could probably get a lot more experience controlling the glider in different conditions. All it would take is a harness and control bar, a treadmill, some sensors, a simple flight simulator, a big fan, and a couple of projectors. Unfortunately, I'm guessing the market for this is probably too small (maybe 200 students a year nationwide) for this to be interesting. On a side note, I do predict that indoor vertical wind tunnels will have a huge impact on skydiving training. It really only takes a few minutes to learn how to freefall properly, but you only get 30 seconds of freefall per $200 skydiving lesson and it takes 15-20 skydives to get certified. With just five to ten minutes of windtunnel time, you could probably cut that down to five lessons or so. Plus, experienced skydivers can use the windtunnel to work on maneuvers, so the market is larger than just students.
Update: People
have built a hang gliding simulator, though it doesn't say if it's been used for training hang gliding students.
Anyway, I should stop gushing now. On to other things. Hang gliding is glorious -- give it a try if you have the chance.
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