Kite Strings

If you don't do risky foot landings at airports and in wide open pastures every single flight of your entire hang gliding career you might not be able to safely land on your feet in a narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place or a field filled with seven foot high corn. For eve...

And, at the discretion of the instructor, that's exactly what the USHGA Pilot Proficiency System is - one massive, 35 year long, stupid, useless, occasionally deadly spot landing contest. I think I'm one of the few people that agrees with you on this. For anyone not familiar with USHPA's 'Optional ...

Tad, We were discussing our tug weak link on the Releases thread, but I'm going to continue that discussing here since it's more relevant to this topic. I noticed last weekend our tug had six strands of 130 lb Greenspot instead of four of 205 leech as Gregg reported. I wrote him about this and he sa...

One of the guys in our club (one of the few that actually realize taking a hand off the bar to release is a very bad thing) developed a variant on the spinnaker cable release. It's used in a single-point configuration with the release entirely on the pilot. A loop runs around a finger and is attache...

Glad to have you with us, Mike. Tad, my confusion stemmed from the fact that I didn't realize you were talking about a perfect world (where everyone uses sane releases). I think I got you now. Weak links are for releases, releases are the same for all pilots/gliders, so weak links should be also. In...

I'm not following you here, Tad. You've been advocating glider-appropriate weak links, and now you're suggesting one-size-fits-all (or two sizes)? Why? I also don't get your statement that "all gliders use the same releases." I've seen a lot of different release configurations. Very few ar...

What's being used at the front end at Columbus? We're using two loops of 205 leech line, which Bill tested as breaking at over 600 lbs. I emailed Gregg and Mick to see if they were interested in converting to Shear Links. Mick didn't respond and Gregg doesn't see a need to change anything. I'm not ...

Hi Bob, ...I'd like to know if you would mind me linking to this forum. Not at all. Now that Tad found your forum, however, this one may become less relevant! My hat is off to you and your respect of free speech. Thanks, but I really just created this forum so Tad and I could continue our discussion...

If you start at my left shoulder and go through the tow ring up to my primary release it's fabric to metal to fabric to metal to fabric to metal to fabric to metal to fabric to metal. What about your right shoulder? :mrgreen: I don't really grasp why string-on-string is so terrible (other than abra...

I agree that the horizontal components of the pull forces are the same regardless of whether the bridle is anchored to the hips or the carabiner. However, are those forces not distributed over a wider area (the pilot's sides) when anchored to the carabiner? At the very least, it seems like this woul...