Party trick - preferably with a halfway intelligent five to ten year old kid.
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This is a kite with a fishing sinker tied into its string four inches below the wing. It's flying into the wind and we're looking at it from behind. The guy on the other end of the string flying it runs to the right. Hell, you get on the other end of the string, fly the kite, and run to the right. We'll stay here and watch from behind with our cameras rolling.
1 - What's the kite do?
2 - And does it really matter whether or not we have the weight on the string underneath it?
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We've built a bigger kite with a frame built in below it. We're running paired wires from the two bottom corners up to the nose, out to the wings, back to the tail to make it stronger. And the weight is now a person - you, to be precise. We now have a hang glider and you're the pilot. That's all a hang glider is - a big strong kite with a frame bracing it from below and somebody hanging under the wing in a harness. You're not doing anything with your hands beyond just resting them on the bottom tube of the frame. The string is now a rope and there's two guys at the other end flying you in the wind just like the little kite. They're running to the right.
3 - What's the big kite do?
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Donnell Hewett - 1982/09
In addition to the above mentioned roll and yaw tendancies, there is some sideways force on the pilot due to the body line. This is illustrated below:
As can be seen, this sideways force tends to pull the pilot over to the correct side to make the glider turn naturally in the proper direction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvhzoVC1UqM
Simple Progression for Teaching Hang Gliding
Bonus questions...
4 - What do you think you need to do to get his your wing back down and the kite rolled and pointed back towards the rope and the guys pulling on it?
5 - How many hands are you going to use to do it?
6 - What does it look like Ninja Matt's doing with his hands to get his high/right wing back down?
7 - What do you think will happen to the wing when Ninja Matt lets go of the control tubes to allow him to run harder to the right in order to pull the right wing down faster and harder?
8 - On a scale of one to ten how would you rate the stupidity of the individuals who insist that the kite will roll to the right when the string is pulling it to the right?
-- (a) 15
-- (b) 25
-- (c) 50
-- (d) all of the above - cumulatively - times five
-- (e) Tad loves to speak of himself as a scientifically minded person. Yet he ignores a data pool that is
at minimum three orders of magnitude higher than his. It is thus that I ignore him.
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Answer Key:
1 - Rolls hard the other way.
2 - See above. No significant difference.
3 - Exactly the same thing. And I hope you've got me up really high.
4 - The same thing Ninja Matt's obviously doing with his hands in 069-25104 - preferably while proned out with my hands on the control bar (they call it that for a reason) and not making an easy reach for anything with even one of them.
5 - All of them. More if any are available.
6 - Left torqueing the crap outta the control frame to roll the wing to the right while running to the right and desired heading.
7 - I have no freakin' clue 'cause nobody's ever been stupid enough to actually do this. But whatever it is it's gotta be pretty ugly.
8 - D.
If you open in new window this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/48631247211/
you can use your right and left arrow keys to jump forward and backward through the three images. And you can blow your screen up a bit to lose the junk below the images.
Jonathan...
47-3106
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5740/22929339631_51243531bc_o.png
...applying mild left torque to the control frame and sidewires to move his weight to reduce load on his port wing, increase load on his starboard wing, raise and lower angles of attack port and starboard respectively (exactly like ailerons), roll his glider out of its left bank, bring his heading back towards starboard.
P.S. It's just now dawned on me that Donnell has his pilot center of mass below, outside of the control frame. Astounding that he was able to get one thing fairly right ahead of everybody else on the planet outside of Sussex and package it with such astonishing loads of crap.
Donnell Hewett - 1980/12
Now I've heard the argument that "Weak links always break at the worst possible time, when the glider is climbing hard in a near stall situation," and that "More people have been injured because of a weak link than saved by one." Well, I for one have been saved by a weak link...
If that's true - and I rather doubt it is 'cause you've never provided us with a punctuation mark's worth of an account of this alleged near fatal incident, let alone the formal report you should've submitted to R.V. Wills - that was the single biggest disaster in aviation history. Modern towing would've evolved from the common sense Brooks Bridle foundation rather than this ultra lethal lunatic fake physics cult base of yours.