[yodude711]

I'm considering getting into what seems to be an awesome sport and an awesome community here with hang gliding. I'm reading as much as I can online about hang gliding, and I've found many articles and posts that talk about all the safety features of hang gliders, and how easy they are to fly, and how safe they are, etc etc.

But what I'm really looking for is information on how hang gliders can be dangerous. Not so that I can go do these dangerous things, but so I can get a better idea of the dangers and risks in the sport and how to avoid them when I do learn how to fly.

Any input would be appreciated. Thanks!

[knumbknuts]

1. go hang gliding
2. don't tell wife
3. she finds out

-- could be fatal

[knumbknuts]

edit:

forget my shpiel, reading your question, I'd say get a copy of

Dennis Pagen's "Hang Gliding Training Manual"

It covers dangers in there like rotor and landing in trees and what not.

[yodude711]

Great, I'll check it out for sure.

Thanks!

[mtpilot]

Wow what a topic.For me the greatest problem is the addiction.Hang gliding
is intense, joy ,sometimes glorious.The problem is it makes everything else seem dull.Yes you can get hurt or even killed the risk and reward are both
high and it takes attention and concentration but there is nothing like it.It's
not for everybody!

[Alan]

[red]

Yodude,

Like bicycles, the equipment is reasonably safe. You can (should) even have a reserve parachute, which would not help, on a bike.

What is dangerous here will be the choices. Your choices can be safer, or not.

You can land in a big, friendly field. Your flyin' buddies are all landing in a postage-stamp, marked on the map as "experts only." Can you do that, too? With enough experience and practice, probably so. Will you take the time to get that good (expert-rated), before you try to land with your buddies?

You had a bad week at work. Now you have a free day to fly, and you can almost taste it, the joy and release of pure flight. Unfortunately, there is a small storm brewing, maybe with lightning, just across the valley. Maybe it will still be safe to fly. (Maybe not, and the risk may be extreme). Will you launch, or pack it up and drive away?

Somebody who flies better than anybody you know has just done a really nice loop, out in front of launch. Will you be thinking this? "As soon as I do a loop, I will be as good at flying as he is."

This sport is as safe as you choose to be. There is always more to learn, and abilities to improve, in your flying. Below certain levels of knowledge, depending on the site and the weather, it can be extremely dangerous. HG lessons can fix that much, though. The right choices, the easy flyin' sites (even when that means a long drive, first), and the ability to seek advice from expert pilots first can keep you reasonably safe, as you learn more. There are no stupid questions, here. If you get a stupid answer, just ask more and better pilots.

In all cases, the responsibility to be safe and stay safe is yours alone, in the sky. Start with a good HG instructor. Advanced HG pilots will usually act as mentors, for new pilots. Ask here, for more specific answers. More on my web page, linked below.

[CAL]

[Karl_A]

Join the USHPA - United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association.

http://www.ushpa.aero/

Not that joining USHPA will get you in trouble, but both the magazine and the web site have what you are looking for: articles on safety and accident reports.

[FormerFF]

To my mind, the risks in this sport can be put into a few categories:

1: Flying in inappropriate conditions. On your first day, you'll need near calm wind. As your skills improve, you'll fly in light winds, then somewhat stronger winds. Hang gliders are low speed weight shift aircraft, and they only have a certain amount of control authority. If you go out in conditions that may exceed those, you're likely to have a fall.

2: Too much glider too fast. The more I'm around this sport, the more I feel that the majority of new pilots should start on single surface gliders, they're just more forgiving of mistakes.

3: Bad judgment. I was up at Lookout Mountain Flight Park yesterday, and a pilot got too far back of the ridge, sank out, and landed in the trees. He wasn't hurt, but why was he back there? There was lift all over the place, and there was no need. Another pilot came perilously close to a bad launch, because he did not follow the proper technique for launching into a 15 mph wind. Same question, why? The procedure for launching off Lookout's ramp in those conditions is well known, and there were any number of pilots who could have helped him. Some people like to do slipping turns close to the ground. I'm not a very experienced hang glider pilot, but I have been around aviation my whole life, and a slipping turn close to the ground is asking for problems.

4: Too much too soon. Red gave the example of someone being tempted to try a loop too soon. (For me, never would be too soon, but there are pilots who do them quite successfully.) At my level, flying too close to the ridge would be an example of too much too soon. There are many more experienced pilots who can do that safely, but I'm not there yet. Be patient, this is not a sport that is going to come quickly to most people. Maybe if you live in California and have no responsibilities, but for most of us, it will take a while.

[onceupatime]

Hi,

I'm joining this great site because I feel, in this instance, you're getting some answers that are a bit vague or glossy. I see that there's a similar active thread, but I'm posting to this one because it seems more relevant. Crazy long first post...

As I see it, there are several broad areas of danger in hang gliding:

Area 1) Insufficient training.

Area 2) Overconfidence.

Area 3) Inattention.

Area 4) Equipment problems.

Area 5) Environmental problems.

You'll have some pilots and instructors tell you that these boil down in all cases to "pilot error," because the pilot should have been aware of his/her insufficient training or overconfidence or should have been paying attention better or should have preflighted and maintained his glider better or should have understood the environment better but didn't because he was flying in the environment with overconfidence in his insufficient training and just wasn't paying attention, etc. It becomes something of a circular, though perhaps valid, argument. True but unhelpful.

Area 1) Insufficient training. The fact is there are times in training when you have to push yourself a bit. That time happens whenever you do ANYTHING new. That's why you're training. The sensations of every step are new and unknown the first time you experience them. A MAJOR function of training is to get a sort of "body memory" of how things should feel when you're doing them correctly. The trouble is, you have to learn how to do them correctly first, and at least some of the time you do that by learning from your mistakes. A mistake is an opportunity for chaos to step in, with its consequently unpredictable effects. Another important function of training is to reconcile your "book learnin'" and your hands-on experience. For example, you can read about something called cross-controlling, but until you do it and feel it, you don't really get it.

The first time you get into a Condor (a very "forgiving" glider used almost exclusively for training), you'll run down the bunny hill with the instructor running along with you (if this is the sort of training program you're in). You can trip and fall because it's weird running with this big thing attached to you. OK, no big deal. Next time, you get a little bit airborn, just a few feet, but as you land and are being told to flare the glider, the wings are slightly tilted, and you don't quite hear the instructor calling out to keep the wings level, and then suddenly one wing drops and you spin a bit as you land and you skin your elbow. Once again, no big deal. The thing is, these incremental learning steps can carry increasing levels of danger to you as you progress in altitude and speed, with potential consequences greater.

For example, the first time you switch from a single surface glider to a double surface glider, it can surprise you how much faster you seem to be going when all your training so far has told you that, at this point in your bunny hill flight, you shouldn't be going this fast. As you flare, you throw your legs forward to help you stop yourself. Doing that brings your nose down and you pile in. If you're unlucky, you sprain your ankle and that ends your training session for the day.

Another example, your first high altitude flight: From up there, the appearance of your ground speed is MUCH different than it has been in all your low altitude training flights. You've never seen the ground "move so slowly" as a pilot, and you've never heard the wind in your ears like you're hearing it now, and you don't have sufficient experience to judge your airspeed, so you assume that you must be flying too slowly and you pull in to go faster. Soon, you're going much too fast. The glider starts to oscillate, which freaks you out and you struggle to control it... Oh, yeah, finally that little book-learned voice from your training kicks in and you think "PIO, pilot-induced oscillation. I must be going too fast." You ease out and everything is cool again. But what if you didn't hear that little voice, or didn't believe it?

Or, you fly in traffic for the first time along a ridge. That provokes anxiety, especially because you've seen that guy in the red glider do a couple crazy and unpredictable things. The intuitive, visceral response to anxiety is to tighten up. You tighten up and consequently you fly faster and, more importantly, you're less sensitive to the glider. You've just lost a little control. Or maybe instead of tightening up and pulling in, your reaction is to tighten up and push out because, Jane, you just want to stop this crazy thing. You stall and down you go.

The medical risks in early training (and this is almost a complete guess on my part) are primarily skinned knees, twisted ankles, minor abrasions, with the occasional broken arm or torqued knee. Oh, I guess I should add fatigue and sore muscles if you train on a bunny hill. I believe that very serious injuries or death are quite rare in early training.

Another factor, it must be said, is that you are relying on the judgment of an instructor to assess just about everything in your flight, from the conditions of flight to the soundness of your glider and harness, to your own abilities and readiness. Don't be macho in training with an instructor and don't let your instructor be macho with you; share your concerns with your instructor and other pilots. If they can't or won't listen, get somebody else to listen to you.

There's an adage that you should never introduce more than one new thing at a time in hang gliding. In other words, don't try a new harness for the first time at a site you've never flown before, or don't try to top land for the first time when you're wearing a brand new helmet. It's a good guideline for experienced pilots, but it just isn't as applicable in early training. EVERYTHING is new in training, and just when you get the feel of this thing, some new new thing comes in like... a gust of wind.

Area 2) Overconfidence. There's a phenomenon in aviation (and many other higher-risk activities) called "intermediate syndrome," when you begin to get so comfortable with the activity that you forget the slumbering dragon in whose breath you are thermaling. My interpretation of this is that, because pushing your limits is such an integral part of training, you get accustomed to doing it, and doing so has given you FLIGHT. You are psychologically rewarded for pushing yourself. Now, careful instruction has done its best to make sure that the limits you are pushing are still within a broader range of relatively safe limits. In other words, you're pushing your PERSONAL limits, but the glider, the environment, the tasks, etc, are reasonably benign. I'm thinking that intermediate syndrome can occur when one gets so comfortable that one no longer recognizes one's personal limits, or confuses personal limits with real-world, externally determined limits of safety.

You fly too close to the ground hoping to get a thermal, but there ain't none there, and you land where there ain't no place to land. Lucky for you, the tree was soft and fluffy. The next time, it may not be. Or... You launch in too much wind and get blown over and down... You don't carefully assess your trusty, familiar landing zone during your approach and discover too late that, on this day, the wind is going the "wrong" direction. You don't ensure that you can get your feet out of your harness until you're on final, you get distracted trying to pull out your snagged foot, you land on your bar and because you're very cool, you don't have wheels, so you bust one downtube and one humerus when you pile in.

Area 3) Inattention. It astonishes everyone except the Australians, but every year we hear stories of somebody taking off without hooking into the glider. It's the damnedest thing. Of course, I know that I will never launch unhooked because I'm much too careful. You can bet every pilot who has died or been injured by launching unhooked has said exactly the same thing. So, yeah, I'll SAY that, but I won't believe myself for a second. It seems obvious that inattention can be related to overconfidence, but they don't completely intersect. For example, there is a phenomenon in hang gliding called "object fixation," in which by fixating on an object you want to AVOID (such as a tree), you end up flying right into it. This is a form of inattention, because you are focused on just one tiny bit of your environment. I believe, in hang gliding, you have to have a sort of "holistic attention," in which tendrils of your attention extend to many things at once, each one tugging at you as a form of input. It's training and experience that help you filter out the relevance of these inputs. "Ground speed," not so important 99 percent of the time. "Wind noise," pretty important as an indicator of air speed. "Attractive naked person on beach," object fixation! (Or more likely, wishful hallucination.)

Area 4) Equipment problems. These are not so common, and can be largely controlled by the experienced pilot with careful preparation. BUT, they're NOT so easy to control by an inexperienced pilot. Within their limits and maintained properly, modern gliders are sturdy vehicles. Common (and some not-so-common) problem areas are out-of-true battens, frayed cables, faulty or worn cable connections, kinks in high-stress tubing, compressed parachutes, inadequately secured parachutes, sticking zippers on harnesses. Sometimes equipment will fail when stressed beyond design limits, during aerobatics for example, or extreme turbulence. And sometimes accidents have occurred because a pilot set something up incorrectly. It takes an experienced eye to assess both the details and the big picture.

Area 5) Environmental problems. Turbulence and competing traffic are the primary problems here. Both are predictable in varying degrees. Training and paying attention help you avoid most issues, but occasionally the dragon awakes and puffs at you when you just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, despite your experience in the area. A thermal peels off just as you happen to launch; a fellow glider who has no visible impetus to do so suddenly turns in front of you, or rises up from below and to the rear of you while you're busy looking out for another glider somewhat above and in front of you.

OK, so those are broad areas of danger. But what about specifics? Well, the big specific is crashing into the iron-hearted bosom of terra firma. You do that when you launch with unlevel wings and can't recover, so you get flipped around and chucked to the ground. Or your right wireman doesn't let go in time and you get flipped around and chucked to the ground. Or you trip in your launch run and go chin first to the ground. Or you push out too much at launch and mush down to the ground, where the wind catches your left wing and flips you around into the ground. Or you pull in too much as you launch and the glider gets in front of you and you trip and go chin first into the ground. Or you launch unhooked. Etc.

Once you're in the air and away from launch, you're much safer. There are fewer sources of crash-inducing turbulence at altitude. Dangers in the air are airsickness, colliding with other gliders, turbulence that tosses you so hard you hit the keel and hurt yourself or break the keel, turbulence that tosses you so hard that the glider flips upside down and breaks apart, thermals so strong that they pull you up higher than you want to go, such as into a cloud, winds so strong that your glider--going as fast as you can make it go--has a negative ground speed, pushing you to the leeside of the mountain, which has turbulence called leeside rotor that pulls you down onto the ground and flattens you like roadkill. Hypoxia from lack of oxygen at very high altitude. Cold. A lot of these sound scary, but most of them are almost always readily avoidable with a modicum of caution. And among the most disastrous ones, such as failure of the wing, there is the potential of OK outcome because you have a parachute. But again, these are rare events.

Finally, there's the landing, and a consequent return to a more dangerous part of the flight. Turbulent landing zone. No real landing zone. Overshooting the zone. Undershooting the zone. Downwind landing. Downhill landing. Flaring too early. Flaring too late. Wings not level when flaring. Flying too slowly in the initial landing sequence. Shoelace untied. Long grass. Too many trees. Too many rocks. Knucklehead in the way. Throwing your feet forward. Flaring by pushing straight rather than up. All of these (and more) are sources of danger, and the consequences on your health and happiness are directly related to the speed you're going relative to the ground at the time you reconnect.

When you hit the ground in an uncontrolled landing, the glider stops and you keep going, swung around by your hang strap. If you hold tightly onto the downtubes at that moment, you can break one or both arms. If the downtubes collapse more easily than your arms, your face can pile into the ground. Expect some unpleasantness to be staining your visage red, either metaphorically as your fellow pilots howl "Whack!," or literally from that hole where your tooth used to be.

Get on youtube. Check for hang gliding crashes, whacks, bad launches, bad landings, etc. You'll see the gamut of possibilities, and even one or two that are so unusual you can basically say they aren't all that possible.

Remember that, although you are not an average person by virtue of the fact that you wish to fly hang gliders, in most other ways, you are probably pretty average. That means you are subject to the same foibles, blind spots, mistakes that most people are. Even if you're better than most people in most ways, it's much safer to believe that you aren't. "I'm an average guy, I make average mistakes, I'd better check" should become the mantra of even gifted pilots.

So here's the story of this average guy. I'd taken instruction and gotten my Hang 2. The throwing the feet forward when flying a double surface for the first time I mentioned above? That was me. My heel hurt the next day. The misjudging speed on my first mountain flight? That was me. I could hear the instructor yelling something through the radio, but I couldn't hear what it was because the wind noise was too loud. Turns out he was yelling, "Slow down!" Well, I made it down (without PIO or injury), though I landed on my wheels. And then I moved to a different area where coastal ridge soaring was the way to go. I told my new instructor that I thought I needed some good review. So endless practice with landing, and learning to do crosswind landings, endlessly, and then finally, I'm ready to take off on my first unleashed soaring flight. It was glorious. Staying in the lift zone, no problem (though it was new to me), doing 180 degree turns on the ridge, no problem, though that was a new experience in those conditions. Flying in traffic, another new thing. I meet somebody head on with the ridge to my left, and I'm able to fly around and get back to the lift band. I see a bunch of gliders up ahead though, and that's too much traffic for me, so I clear my turn and go back 180. Along the way, I meet another glider head on. This time I have the ridge on my right and it's his turn to go outside. He does so. But I need to turn a bit to avoid him, and my glider doesn't respond. I seem to be flying right at the guy even though he's avoiding me. If I keep going like this, I'm going to hit him! I realize I'm cross controlling and maybe even have a bit of object fixation, and that's why the glider isn't responding, so I bump it correctly and we get past each other without a problem except to my embarrassed, pounding heart. I realize that I'm so tense about that encounter, I decide I really should land. That was enough new stuff for one flight. Better safe than sorry. So I do a 180 as needed at this site with this wind, but I'm still tense as I approach the beach. I realize that I'm flying too fast and am too low, so I decide to flare, but I'm too late. A wheel catches on a teeny tiny hummock of sand, I whack. Glider is fine, but my humerus is busted. So, my effort to be cautious and fly within my safety zone didn't work this time. The instructor was amazed that I'd broken my arm, because the whack didn't look that bad. It was a common beginner mistake that, in this particular set of circumstances, led to an injury. I think it's because I initiated my flare at exactly the same time that the wheel caught. (The biggest mistake was my using the doctor at the hospital I went to, who botched things up pretty well, but that's another long saga.)

My point here is that we're doing something that involves enough speed to do injury some of the time if things go wrong, even if most of the times we can be traveling just as fast and make the same number of errors, and we can get away with them with a chuckle. Was mine a major error with concommitent consequence, or a minor error with a disproportional consequence? If it was a major error, then you can see lots of those on Youtube with lots of people getting away with it. I didn't get away with my mistake that time, so from then on, I've considered it a major error.

OK, that's it for me now.

[HangDiver]

Dangers of Hang Gliding:
1) Sunburn
2) Empty Wallet
3) Divorce (see number 2)
4) Fast food
5) Speeding tickets

[iSoar]

[SlingBlade]

It's good to assess the risk before you get into something, and the fact you are asking these questions and looking at this means you'll most likely be a "safe" hang glider pilot. Every hang glider pilot has looked at the risks and decided that the experiences are worth risking their life for. That's saying something. It's an incredible sport, with amazing people, and amazing experiences. Nothing I have done has come even close to being as awesome. As hang glider pilots, we will tell you unequivocally that the risks are worth it. If you haven't taken a tandem yet, I would highly recommend it.

But if survival to an old age is your top, overriding priority, then hang gliding may not be for you. There are risks, and they are not insignificant. It's more dangerous than riding in your car. It certainly isn't "safe" in the way that people in general would use the term. If you were at an amusement park, and they had a ride that a million people rode last year and 1000 people died on would you ride it?

[UnTuckable]

Too much speed combined with too little altitude.

[CHassan]

[Jason]

I really don't consider hanggliding dangerous, and don't think it will preclude me living to old age. I recall seeing my fathers friend fly Yosemite on his 70th birthday. My dad just flew there 5 days ago at 63 years old and has been flying for 30+ years

Is it possible to hurt/kill yourself, absolutely. I have seen people get hurt, and generally the people that get hurt you can see them coming, a history of bad decisions they get away with until one bites them.

Im more nervous for my safety on my motorcycle

Hanggliding though, i feel I have far more control of the outcome

If you want to fly safely you need to be honest with yourself as to your capabilities, if you aren't you probably will end up doing something to hurt yourself, if you are, I think you can fly for 60 years and have a great time doing it

[yodude711]

hey, thank you all so much for this great insight, especially you, "onceupatime". I really appreciate the detail and specifics that you provided.

thank you!!

for me, even with all these risks, i still need to try it or i'll always regret it. i think a tandem flight is a good suggestion.

thanks!

[Jason]

if you are in NC check out Kitty Hawk

from what i have seen people that take a tandem flight first are less likely to get into it then people that start on the training hill and and feel their feet lift for the first time from their own actions

[SlingBlade]